I have researched in the various NAE records for information on the question of how ordinary people live in the Empire.
In this essay, I'll address the situation of the common farm workers in the core of the empire. Of course, the situation of artisans, fishermen, hunters, merchants, large landowners and government officials is quite different. Also, conditions outside the core of the Empire are different. Indigenous people in some parts of the core of the empire also have different circumstances.
When I say "core of the Empire" I mean the Twin Peninsulas, especially near their tips. Outside that area, even the ordinary farmers have different circumstances from what I'm going to describe.
But more than 95% of the entire population of the Twin Peninsulas consists of farmers, so what I am going to say is widely applicable. Since the condition of many such farmers has undergone a radical change in the past century as a result of the Nobles Revolt, this essay will end up examining the Nobles Revolt and the power structure of the Empire as it relates to the farmers. I'll also make comparisons to the Roman Empire and medieval Europe.
Serfs and Farmers
The most detailed information revealed so far about the lives of ordinary farmers in the core of the empire is in the Tollania thread in the North Peninsula Regional forum.
The picture presented is that most farms around Tollania are owned by small, poor independent farmers. What is not mentioned there, but is mentioned elsewhere, is that the provincial government levies a substantial farm tax (the amount varies from province to province).
This situation of mostly small family farms with a few larger estates is typical of the core areas of the Empire at this point in time.
Tollania is similar to many other large estates. Like many others, it consists primarily of lands formerly owned by noblemen. As in the rest of the core areas of the empire, the noblemen lost their lands in the Nobles Revolt, but their lands have been partly taken over by new owners who are nobles in all but name. The new large landowners are either upstarts like the owners of Tollania or, quite often, are in fact nobles who have recovered some or all of their lands, but no longer have their titles because of a decree of Emperor Cledman III during the Nobles Revolt.
Some of the large landowners do employ slaves on their estates, but slaves are a small minority of the total farm workers even on most large estates. The Tollania thread doesn't mention slaves because there are no slaves in Tollania. Tollan and his successors were already investing heavily in acquiring the land so they were reluctant to invest more in slaves. It was not necessary because there was another source of labor that they didn't have to buy or pay. That labor source is the peasant tenant-farmers who were already working the land.
Peasant tenant-farmers are mentioned on page 1 of the Tollania thread here:
www.naegame.proboards83.com/index.cgi?board=northpeninsula&action=display&thread=1183599821&page=1Peasant tenant-farmers are farmers who do not own any land. Instead, they farm land owned by others. For the use of the land, they pay a portion of their harvest and also usually have other obligations such as working on roads on the estate. This is in addition to paying the farm tax. Some tenant-farmers are required to help with maintenance of the manor houses of the large landowners, just as serfs in feudal Europe did, but this custom is rare in the Zekresh Empire. It was common in medieval Europe. I'll explain the reasons for this.
In the late Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages, coinage virtually disappeared and economic relations were carried out largely without money. Even Imperial taxes were collected "in-kind" in the late Roman Empire rather than in coin. Earlier, Imperial taxes had been collected in coin. The reason for the change was continuing debasement of the coinage by the Imperial government.
Though there has been debasement of the coinage in the Zekresh Empire, it has not reached such an extreme. At least, not yet. Also, the late Roman Empire made laws that changed the status of the coloni (non-slave farmers). These laws made free men into serfs. One of these laws forbade farm workers from moving to a new place. They were "tied to" the land. It was not so easy to hire laborers for money in the late Roman Empire because money was almost unusable and the whole economy was reverting to barter. This was one reason the Roman landowners ended up getting their serfs to do work like repair roads and do maintenance on their manor houses, especially roof repairs. In the Zekresh Empire, the landowners do not have as much power over tenant-farmers as the Romans had over their serfs. Also, coinage is much more available and holds its value better so it is far easier for Zekresh landowners to just hire laborers. (Often they hire their own tenant-farmers, but still the relationship is as paid laborers, not serfs.)
It was easy for landowners in the late Roman Empire and the early medieval period to employ serfs for these tasks because the serfs could not legally go anywhere else. In the late Roman Empire, they were legally prohibited from earning a living as anything other than farmers. Most or all professions had legally restricted membership under the control of a "collegium" or guild. It was even made illegal for farmers or their children to marry anyone who was not also a farmer. Similar marriage restrictions existed for many other professions as well. This is all during the late Roman Empire. Many of these restrictions ended when the empire ended, but during the middle ages the amount of work required of serfs gradually increased. The typical medieval serf's obligations to work on repairs of the roads and manor houses of their feudal lords for a certain number of days per year may have been legislated in Roman times as well, but I'm not sure. I'm fairly certain the more controversial "jus primae noctis" was a later invention, but then again, it's named in Latin.
In many ways, the Zekresh Empire in the time of Emperor Cledman VI is far less totalitarian than the late Roman Empire. In the Zekresh Empire, there are no serfs. There are no marriage restrictions. Guilds exist, but their legal position is not nearly as powerful as that of a Roman collegium. The percentage of slaves is smaller than in the late Roman Empire. The amount of new enslavements is much smaller. In fact, slave owners and traders in the Zekresh Empire believe that there is a slave shortage and have been lobbying the government to do something about it.
There are no legal restrictions on farmers moving to other lands. There used to be such restrictions, but they were mostly imposed by the nobles, not the Imperial government. When Emperor Cledman III abolished the titles and privileges of the nobles during the Nobles Revolt, the serfdom which had evolved on many nobles' estates was effectively abolished.
This did not give the former serfs the land they needed to become independent farmers, but a further decree of Emperor Cledman III in the same year offered land to veterans of the Imperial Army. The intended purpose of these decrees was to cause chaos on the estates of the rebellious nobles and to draw away their farm workers and make them soldiers fighting against the rebellion. This had its intended effect and it is the primary reason that the Nobles Revolt failed. At least a hundred thousand serfs served in the Imperial Army during the Nobles Revolt. Emperor Cledman III confiscated the lands of the rebellious nobles and gave them out in small pieces to soldiers who had served him including many who had previously worked on those same lands as serfs. These decrees have been previously mentioned. In addition to those who officially served in the Imperial Army, many other peasants, serfs, slaves, and vagabonds took up arms against the nobles, killed them or drove them away, looted their estates and took their land. The number of such informal warriors far exceeds the number who were ever formally in the Imperial Army. Emperor Cledman III later issued a decree retroactively declaring them all veterans of the Imperial Army and allowing them to keep all lands and other property that they had taken from the Emperor's enemies.
There is no parallel to the Nobles Revolt in the history of the late Roman Empire that I am aware of. There is also no parallel to it anywhere else in Zekresh history. It has radically altered the power structure of the Empire. Since at least the days of Emperor Marivuk I (the "Husband Emperor"), the power of the Emperors has depended upon powerful warlords and other nobles who had their own armies and held authority over the people in their lands. This made it possible for the warlords and other nobles to conspire and overthrow emperors. This happened the first time when Tarno I elevated himself from warlord to emperor. It has happened in various forms repeatedly since then.
For well over a thousand years, this was the power structure of the Zekresh Empire. The emperor was on top, the nobility were the next level and the freemen, serfs, slaves and barbarians were below that. There were efforts to replace the higher nobility with appointed government officials such as the Gurikano and the Uloro, but the nobles retained their estates, their military tradition and their ability to press their serfs into service as soldiers.
In the Nobles Revolt, Emperor Cledman III responded to the revolt of the nobles by leading his own revolt of the serfs and peasants against the nobles. He declared them to be Imperial Army soldiers acting on his authority, but there were two armies calling themselves the "Imperial Army" during the Nobles Revolt. One consisted of most of the troops and almost all of the officers of the Imperial Army as it had existed prior to the revolt. The other one consisted of some of the troops, a lot of newly appointed officers and vast hordes of unorganized peasants and serfs. The only reason the second one had any claim to being the "Imperial Army" is because it was led by the Emperor. The Old Order died on the battlefield and the peasants and serfs won the war for their Emperor. (Of course, the nobles had a claimant to the throne who they called "Emperor" during the course of the revolt.)
The Imperial Army as it exists today is derived from the army of serfs and peasants that Emperor Cledman III led during the Nobles Revolt. The old officer corps was never reinstated. In fact, former noblemen have been deliberately kept out of positions of power in the Imperial Army ever since. The sole exception to this is the cavalry. As the cavalry increasingly became small and militarily ineffective, former noblemen were permitted to join. The primary reason that the cavalry became small and ineffective in the first place is because the cavalry had been almost exclusively made up of noblemen prior to the Nobles Revolt and virtually all of them turned against Emperor Cledman III. There were no real cavalrymen left in the Emperor's service by the end of the war.
In the new social order that emerged as a result of the Nobles Revolt, the Emperor's power derives from a more centralized Imperial Army whose officers are commoners, not nobles. It is an army that relies almost exclusively on light infantry. The kantoro of light infantry that are the standard unit of the Imperial Army are merely a more organized and better equipped version of the armed peasants and serfs of the Nobles Revolt. The old Imperial Army had been far more dependent upon armored knights on horseback.
In a way, Cledman III's response to the Nobles Revolt was simply a more drastic version of the reforms of Emperor Tarno III many centuries earlier. Tarno III had sought to reign in the warlords and to create an Imperial Army that was unified and was loyal primarily to the Emperor. The Imperial Army he inherited consisted of a collection of warlords' armies that might or might not obey the Emperor's orders depending on the opinions of the warlords. Cledman III had the same motives as Tarno III. Both had been threatened by the armed force of the nobles and realized that the Imperial Army was unreliable. The main difference is that Tarno III implemented his reforms after defeating his main opponents. Cledman III was caught by surprise by a large and determined conspiracy and only drastic action could regain the throne that he had all but lost.
Cledman III never set out to become a social reformer. He did what he had to during the crisis without considering the long term. The new social order he created was unplanned. There was considerable danger that once the serfs and peasants had defeated the nobles, that they would turn on the emperor as well. This was dispelled by the fact that the peasant soldiers were counting on the emperor to give them lands after the war as he had promised. He kept his promise and most of his soldiers were weary of war and eager to start a new life as independent land owners.
Prior to the Nobles Revolt, only about a quarter of farmers in the core areas of the Empire owned the land they farmed. (In medieval England this number was about 10%. In most of Europe it was even less.) After the Nobles Revolt, the number of yeoman farmers who own their own land was the majority. There were still a great number who did not get land and many whose condition worsened because they were serfs who did not join the revolt and were thrown off the lands they had worked.
Of those who did not end up with land at the end of the Nobles Revolt, most had little choice but to offer their services to the new owners of the land as tenant-farmers. Some of these ended up buying land during the time after the Nobles Revolt when new owners grossly mismanaged their lands and ended up in bankruptcy. Many of those who had obtained land during the Nobles Revolt lost their lands in this time and became tenant-farmers.
So there are now far more family-owned small farms and far fewer large states. The serfs have been freed, but in their place are the tenant-farmers whose situation is better, but still not all that good.
The result is an empire built upon a different political foundation than before. The ultimate source of authority of the Emperor is his ability to command overwhelming military force. This backs up the laws, intimidates barbarian tribes, and deters rebels. Since the days of Marivuk I, that military force was led mostly by the nobles who were a caste of warriors raised from childhood to know the ways of arms. Even when the warlords were removed from power, new orders of lower nobility were created to take their place. Starting with Tarno III and continuing with other Emperors, the nobles were progressively weakened and also became less warlike. After the Nobles Revolt they were entirely dispossessed and disbanded. The Uloro were successors to the Gurikano who were created originally for the purpose of replacing the warlords. Now that process is complete. Uloro gained authority to levy taxes, the power to impose local laws and considerable influence over local military forces. During the conflict between Levorek and Rubanya, Uloro have gained direct command over their own provincial armies and even greater legislative power than before. The question remains whether an Empire can endure whose foundation economically, politically and militarily is small farmers, yet oppresses those same small farmers and offers them few benefits in return. It is not at all clear that any other Emperor could do what Cledman III did and put down a revolt by raising a peasant army. In the less than a century since the Nobles Revolt, the Imperial Army that evolved from Cledman III's peasants has yet to be put to any serious military test. Yet the Emperor is dependent upon the army more than ever before. The fact that the conflict between the "regents" Levorek and Rubanya has centered entirely around gaining control of army garrisons and their fortresses illustrates where the new centers of power are in the Zekresh Empire.
Possibly the most important long term difference between the policies of Rubanya and Levorek is that Rubanya has issued a decree handing control of the army to the Uloro while Levorek has endorsed Krulmuk's order giving regional army commanders operational control of the army.