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In the first, you are a free and independent peasant living in a village. Your field is your own. Your crops are you own. After working, you huddle before the fire in your peasant hut until you fall asleep. A smallpox epidemic comes. You, your spouse and your children all die.
In the second, you are a peasant living in a village. Once a year a thug with a spear--Sir Pierre de Bois-Guilbert, say--comes and takes 10% of your crop. He uses his takings to live well in the castle up on the hill. He also employs a troubadour who comes and entertains the peasants nightly in the village square, singing, juggling, and telling stories. He also employs chirurgeons who undertake research into the balance of the four humours. One day, the chirurgeons come with their knives: they cut the arms of you and your family, and insert some cowpox-infested tissue. When the smallpox epidemic comes, you and your family (and the other families in the village) survive.
In which situation are you "freer"? Do you really care whether you are "freer"?
But then again, in both situations we are looking at it in 20/20 hindsight. We don't have that knowledge prior.
Considering the time period, those chirurgeons could have just as easily killed you with the infection from the dirty knife they used or bled you to death when all you had was a simple cold.
Freedom is a matter of possibility not fact. Sure, you may have a better life when you are a serf, but you can never be any more or less than that.
lawman
