1066, England. William the Conquering just taken the throne.
Within months, he issues the Forest Laws.
Hunting deer is now forbidden to anyone below noble rank. The punishment isn't a fine. It's death.
Not execution by sword, which would be quick. Execution by hanging, slow strangulation, body displayed in the village square as a warning.
Sometimes they'd blind you first and let you starve instead. The cruelty was the point.
These weren't conservation laws. The deer population was massive. Herds roamed freely across thousands of acres of "royal forest" that just happened to include the land peasants had been hunting on for generations.
The real reason becomes clear when you look at what replaced venison in the peasant diet. Bread. Lots of bread. Grain-based gruel. Pottage made from whatever vegetables they could grow.
The lords continued eating venison. Multiple deer per week. Whole roasted boars. Fatty game birds. Their tables groaned with meat at every meal.
The peasants ate grain and were told it was God's will that only nobility could hunt. The Church backed this up with sermons about knowing your place in the divine order.
A peasant family could watch deer walk through their barley field, destroying their crop, and be executed for killing the deer to feed their starving children. The deer belonged to the king. The barley belonged to the king. The peasant belonged to the king. And the king ate venison while the peasant ate gruel.
This wasn't about protecting animals. It was about controlling protein access. A population fed on grain is weaker, more compliant, easier to manage. A population eating meat is stronger, more energetic, more likely to cause problems for the ruling class.
The Forest Laws stayed in effect for 800 years. Eight centuries of restricting meat to the elites while forcing the masses onto grain. And during those eight centuries, the peasant class got shorter, weaker, more disease-prone with each generation.
The nobility, eating their venison and boar, stayed tall and strong. You can see it in the armor. Noble armor from the 1400s fits a 5'10" man. Peasant remains from the same period average 5'3".
Same genetics. Different diets. The nobility ate what humans evolved eating. The peasants ate what they were allowed to eat.
The elites have always known: Control the meat supply, control the population.
