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The normal practice was to guarantee so many knights per fighting season to one's feudal lord. If a vassal had twenty knights and had guaranteed (or whatever the correct word is) 10 knights to the lord, that left him 10 knights for other purposes. This seems to be reflected in the part of LotR where the various vassal lords are sending such small pittances of soldiery to Minas Tirith to help.
Gondor always had Harad to contend with. But it seems that there was more nationalistic (if I may use such a word in the context of Middle Earth) fervor in Third Age Midde Earth compared to medieval Europe. Gondorians, given a chance to leverage against the Steward by means of Harad or the Easterlings, one gets the sense from the way Tolkien has presented things, that Gondorians tended not to attempt such things.
Kin-strife, however, was more a problem, eh?
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