> I wonder if serfs really had it better. They still had no freedom to move, and in the early Middle Ages there was no appeal granted to serfs under a tyrannica

> I wonder if serfs really had it better. They still had no freedom to move, and in the early Middle Ages there was no appeal granted to serfs under a tyrannical lord. In Poland, peasants actually were freer in the Middle Ages then they were in later centuries. Serfdom became more of a thing with the rise of the wealthy landed magnates whose greed increasingly bound the peasants to production. Poland was, among other things, the breadbasket of Europe, and in the preindustrial era, agriculture was a major source of wealth, and so among its exports to Western Europe, grain was a major source of revenue. The nobility in Poland was quite large (around 10%, as opposed to the ~2% in a country like France), but over time, a part of that nobility managed to become fabulously wealthy and maintained private armies that I believe could rival the army of the Polish Crown in size, and owned hundreds of villages, towns, and even cities. Eventually, Poland's last king, Stanislaus II Augustus, placed the peasants under the protection of the State.