The Picard ManeuverI wonder if anyone needs help with anything
waiglLiteracy rates in medieval times were not what they are today, but they’re still routinely underestimated. Most places, including peasant villages, would have had some people around who could read.
Then again, it also depends heavily in what part of the middle ages you are talking about. Early, high and late middle ages were almost different worlds in many regards.
It’s really easy for people to fail to really grasp that the middle ages still account for about half of the common era. They began in the 5th century and ended in the 15th. It was so long and so much happened. At the beginning Europeans were abandoning Roman structures and by the end they’d built things that even the greatest Roman engineers would be amazed by and wars included guns.