The Impact of the Hundred Years’ War​ The Hundred Years’ War contributed to the decline of feudalism by helping to shift power from feudal lords to monarchs and to common people. During the struggle, monarchs on both sides had collected taxes and raised large professional armies.

Why and how did feudalism develop in western Europe? The people of western Europe needed a source of protection from many invading threats with order. As a result, they invented a system in which people of higher classes provided protection for lower classes in return for their loyalty to them.

Why did feudalism develop after the fall of the Roman Empire? When the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 C.E., a state of chaos encompassed Western Europe for many centuries. Essentially, the people of Western Europe needed some form of a political system to defend themselves. Thus, feudalism developed.

Three major crises led to radical changes in all areas of society: demographic collapse, political instabilities and religious upheavals.

labour ratio fell as productivity slumped. The inevitable result was a crisis of subsistence. The fourteenth century experienced a catastrophic decline in the level of the European population. Famines were legion throughout the century.

Henri Pirenne established the centrality of trade in rise and decline of feudalism. He believed that the revival of trade and urban centres marked the beginning of the decline of feudalism. Dobb did concede that the urban centres were rising but he did not link it with the growth of trade.

The rise of towns tended to weaken both feudalism and manorialism. So the rise of towns weakened lords even as, generally speaking, it strengthened kings. Towns weakened manorialism by supplying serfs and peasants with a way to escape their lot in life.

By the High Middle Ages, towns were growing again. One reason for their growth was improvements in agriculture. Farmers were clearing forests and adopting better farming methods, which resulted in a ​surplus​ of crops for them to sell in town markets.

When William the Conqueror became King of England in 1066 he introduced a new kind of feudal system into Britain. William confiscated the land in England from the Saxon lords and allocated it to members of his own family and the Norman lords who had helped him conquer the country.

Feudalism brought help to Western Europe. It helped protect communities from the violence and warfare that broke out after the fall of Rome and the collapse of strong central government in Western Europe. Feudalism secured Western European society and kept out powerful invaders.