corvee
Definitions
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- noun An obligation to perform certain services, as the repair of roads, for the lord or sovereign.
Examples
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Recruits to the cause were extracted from the so-called corvee (the conscripted labour force), which was made up by the fellahin (the peasantry), and though serving in the corvee was an unappealing activity, conscription into the army was even worse.
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If you can take your eyes off the handsome lads and their underpants for a sec, I'd like to add that the mandatory corvee demanded of French peasants (mostly to build roads) is considered a major source of discontent leading up to 1789.
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The man's one living son, traveling to market, had fallen foul of a Roman patrol and had been impressed into a corvee for road work.
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The canal was indeed built by what amounted to slavery, the forced labour (corvee) of the Egyptian peasants being enforced by the rawhide whip of the overseers (courbash).
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Many allusions have been made, in writings on the old regime, to the habitant's corvee or obligation to give his seigneur so many days of free labour in each year.
The Seigneurs of Old Canada : A Chronicle of New World Feudalism
Note
The word 'corvee' comes from a Latin word meaning "to entreat together".
