Even restricting the application of the principle of opportunity cost to just one facet, such as castle building in the High Middle Ages, involves many difficulties. Taxation, budgeting, and spending in the Middle Ages can only be described as haphazard, or at least they appear so because of the paucity of records.
It would be very interesting to know the sums spent by medieval monarchs on fortifications in their countries. It is known that cities gave enormous sums for building walls and ramparts, and for digging moats. Unfortunately there is a total lack of information about costs for this period.
This quotation, from a standard work on the military history of the age, reveals some frustration of the study of the period. Fortunately, progress has been made, and even as debate regarding the exact numbers will continue, a number of deductions can be made about the labor and capital cost necessary to construct medieval fortifications. About the overall cost there is little dispute. Medieval rulers had the greatest difficulties in paying for their wars, and powerful monarchs had no less trouble despite initially starting with more. “All were driven to desperate expedients to make ends meet.” Worse, possession of more power and territory gave one more to defend. Castles and troops were both necessary, and this led to every conceivable way being devised to raise money. “Since the time of Cicero and Tacitus to the fifteenth century and beyond, authors often asserted that the tranquility of nations was impossible without armies, armies without soldiers’ wages, or wages without tribute.”
The result of the search for funds has been described as “less a system of taxation than a system of plunder,” and this was no metaphor. In England, for example, goods were sometimes seized from merchants and only released after “tax” was paid. And it was never enough. Despite the most vigorous tax collections England had ever known, Edward I (r. 1272–1307) constantly outran his financial resources. Between 1294 and 1297 wars with Scotland, France, and Wales required such heavy war levies that laity and clergy alike rebelled, leading to a major constitutional crisis. This was not the result of mere royal greed; bad policy is another matter. In Edward’s last years, the Wardrobe, as the department that paid the army’s bills was called, rarely had a thousand pounds at any given moment, while earlier in his reign it had been able to send its paymasters sums as large as £5,000 at once.
Credit was no permanent solution. Since the twelfth century credit had been steadily expanding across Europe. Tempted, Edward I took two steps: he borrowed, usually from Italian bankers, and he did not repay them, at least not completely. His first bankers, the Riccardi, failed to collect some £18,924; the Frescobaldi firm was shorted some £25,000. It did little good. At his death, Edward I left a debt of some £200,000, almost four times the entire annual royal revenue. Justly, some of this could be attributed to the policies of a king who not only made war constantly but pursued policies almost guaranteed to lead to further wars. Unsurprisingly, periods of peace led to dramatic improvements in the condition of the treasury. But there was more to the matter than the behavior of an overly, and overtly, aggressive king. Far more interesting about Edward I is that, despite running repeated campaigns in France, Wales, and Scotland, he nevertheless chose to plow fortunes into the building of castles
Source: Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History
Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll
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