Beyond the courts and castles of the lords, kings and emperors, life in the medieval period for most was tough and gruelling. Keeping the higher classes rich, and the bigger cities fed, the peasants toiled from sunrise to sunset, often little more than slaves. With long days of backbreaking work, oppressive masters, barely enough food to survive, terrible living conditions, and waves of disease, the peasants’ life was a simple, miserable, and thankless one that remained virtually unchanged for centuries. But while the medieval period was the slow evolution from the old world into the new, as empires rose and fell, and epic warfare was waged, for those at the bottom rung of society’s ladder, centuries passed by with little change. To the peasant, rather than paying tax to a Roman provincial governor for living on and working their land, they paid it to a local noble instead.