‘Then a great misfortune befell them’: the laws of war on surrender and the killing of prisoners on the battlefield in the Hundred Years War

ABSTRACT

The Battle of Agincourt has been seen as glorious feat of arms for the English, and for Henry V in particular. However, for many historians, Henry’s conduct was marred by his order for the killing of French prisoners, which has been characterised by some as a war crime. This paper examines how common were such massacres of prisoners, and whether such attitudes were shared by contemporaries. It has usually been considered that the ethics of chivalry and the laws of war forbade the deliberate killing of prisoners; how then could such conduct be justified?

KEYWORDS:

• Hundred Years War
• laws of war
• casualties
• prisoners

Acknowledgements

I have to thank Dr Rémy Ambühl and Dr Claire Etty, as well as the anonymous readers, for helpful comments on various drafts of this paper.

Notes on contributor

Andy King is Lecturer in History at the University of Southampton. He has published work on the Anglo-Scottish Marches, late medieval warfare, chivalry and the laws of war, chronicles and castles.

Notes

¹ Keira Borrill, trans., ‘Jean Froissart, Chronicles’, Book III, f. 240v, in The Online Froissart, eds. Peter Ainsworth and Godfried Croenen. Version 1.5 (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 2013) http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/onlinefroissart (Accessed 17 December 2015).

² Diana B. Tyson, ed., La vie du prince noir by Chandos Herald (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975), 86.

³ For this figure, see Chris Given-Wilson and Françoise Bériac, ‘Edward III’s Prisoners of War: the Battle of Poitiers and its Context’, English Historical Review 116 (2001): 802–33 (802–4).

⁴ Andy King, ‘“According to the Custom Used in French and Scottish Wars”: Prisoners and Casualties on the Scottish Marches in the Fourteenth Century’, Journal of Medieval History 28 (2002): 263–90 (269–70); Rémy Ambühl, Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War: Ransom Culture in the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 38–9.

⁵ See, for instance, Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: the English Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 331–2; Clifford J. Rogers, ‘The Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years’ War’, Journal of Military History 57 (1993): 241–78 (255–7); Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996).

⁶ Sir Thomas Gray, Scalacronica (1272–1363), ed. and trans. Andy King. Surtees Society, 209 (Woodbridge: Surtees Society, 2005), 75. To be precise, Gray’s father fought in the skirmishing on the day before the battle, during which he was captured.

⁷ ‘Si blecerent et occistrent maints hommes qui ne porent venir a raençon’: Valentina Mazzei, ed., ‘Jean Froissart, Chroniques, Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 864’, f. 174r., in The Online Froissart, eds. Ainsworth and Croenen.

⁸ Ranald Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots: the Formative Years of a Military Career, 1327–35 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 87–9; Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy Under Edward III, 1327–60 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), 43–5.

⁹ ‘In medio exercitu Francorum multi compressi a multitudine honerosa sine wlnere opprimuntur’: E.M. Thompson, ed., Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), 84; Michael Prestwich, ‘The Battle of Crécy’, in The Battle of Crécy, 1346, eds. Andrew Ayton and Philip Preston (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 150.

¹⁰ ‘ … tanta erat indisciplinata violencia et pressura posterioris multitudinis, quod vivi super mortuos caderent et super vivos etiam alii cadentes interficiebantur’, ‘[congeries] … interiacencium oppressorum’: Frank Taylor and John S. Roskell, eds. and trans., Gesta Henrici quinti: The Deeds of Henry V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 90, 91; the translation is reprinted in Anne Curry, trans., The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), 37. Clifford J. Rogers, ‘The Battle of Agincourt’, in The Hundred Years War (Part II): Different Vistas, eds. L.J.A. Villalon and D.J. Kagay (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 95–9.

¹¹ On the rules and practice of surrendering, see Ambühl, Prisoners of War, 102–11.

¹² ‘Invasit enim eos timor et tremor, nam fuerunt quidam ex eis, ut verbum erat in excercitu, etiam de nobilioribus eorum, qui se illo die plus quam decies reddiderunt. Sed nullus vacabat eos captivos recipere, sed fere omnes sine discrecione personarum, ut ad terram prostrati erant, vel a suis prostratoribus vel ab aliis insequentibus, nescitur quo occulto dei iudicio, sine intermissione dabantur in mortem’: Taylor and Roskell, eds., Gesta Henrici quinti, 90, 91; Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 37.

¹³ ‘ … voiant qu’il ne povoit eschapper du péril de la mort en eslevant sa main dist au roy d’Angleterre: “Je suis le duc d’Alençon, et me rens à vous.” Mais ainsi que le roy vouloit prendre sa foy, fut occis prestement par les dictes gardes’: L. Douët-d’Arcq, ed., La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet. 6 vols. (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1857–62), 3: 119–20. The translation is from Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 168. Alençon’s attempt to surrender is discussed by Anne Curry, Agincourt: a New History (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), 258–9.

¹⁴ M.H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), 104–5.

¹⁵ ‘vexillum rubium quod erat mortis signiferum’; ‘ … edidit preceptum ne quis Anglicus vite reservaretur, solo principe excepto’: G.H. Martin, ed., Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–96 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 142, 143; for Knighton’s use of a newsletter, see Martin, ed., Knighton’s Chronicle, xxxv.

¹⁶ ‘Et si n’y aiez point de depart, Qe touz ne les mettez a mort’: Tyson, ed., La vie du prince noir, 74.

¹⁷ Philippe Contamine, ‘L’oriflamme de Saint-Denis aux XIVe et XVe siècles: étude de symbolique religieuse et royale’, Annales de l’Est, 5th series, 25 (1973): 179–244 (233).

¹⁸ ‘ … nullus sub certis penis Anglos captivaret sed indifferenter sine quacumque redempcione occiderentur’: Walter Bower, Bower’s Scotichronicon, ed. D.E.R. Watt and others. 9 vols. (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987–98), 8: 126 (my translation).

¹⁹ Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, ed. Charles Samaran. 2 vols. (Paris: Société d’édition Les Belles Lettres, 1933–44), 1: 98.

²⁰ ‘Tantum securi fuerunt in multitudine sui exercitus heroes Francorum, quod singuli pecierunt singulas personas Anglicas suis carceribus mancipandas … set tirannus hastutus, timens ne circa capcionem nobilium redimendorum sui forent nimium ocupati, et proinde segnius ad communem victoriam hanelarent, iussit explicari suum vexillum quod vocatur Oliflammum, quo erecto, non licuit sub pena capitis aliquem capere ad vitam reservandum’: Thompson, ed., Chronicon Galfridi le Baker, 82.

²¹ Borrill, trans., ‘Jean Froissart, Chronicles’, Book III, f. 272v. For the battle and its background, João Gouveia Monteiro, ‘The Battle of Aljubarrota [1385]: a Reassessment’, Journal of Medieval Military History 7 (themed issue: Clifford J. Rogers, Kelly DeVries and John France, eds., The Age of the Hundred Years War) (2009): 76–103.

²² Borrill, trans., ‘Jean Froissart, Chronicles’, Book III, f. 272v.

²³ ‘Si peut avenir encores … que quant ce avient que l’en a afaire sur les champs, pluseurs sont qui regardent a prendre prisons et autre gaing; et quant il ont pris et autres biens, il ont plus grant volonté et desir de sauver leurs prisons ou leur gaaing que de secourir et aidier de mettre la journee a bonne fin. Et bien puet avenir que par tele maniere peut l’en perdre la journee’: Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny, eds. Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 98, 99. For the date of composition, 22.

²⁴ ‘ … nul, de quelque estat qu’il fust, ne fust si hardy que de prendre prisonniers au jour de la bataille, jusques à ce que on voye plainement que le champ soit gaingné’: Douët-d’Arcq, La chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, 4: 160. Monstrelet here appears to be copying from a text of the ordinances, which presumably survived in the Burgundian ducal archives.

²⁵ ‘Capitur nullus. Cæduntur multi. Anglicus vero postquam jam in medium acceptus est, ad cædum acrius accenditur, ut cui nulla præterquam in victoria salutis spes reliqua videbatur … Vero cum Galli jam leto dediti forent, et ipsa victoria certa videretur Anglicis, ecce cædi parcitur, Galli capiuntur, principes, domini, nobiles quamplurimi’: Thomas Hearne, ed., Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis, Vita Henrici quinti, regis Angliæ: accedit, sylloge epistolarum, a variis Angliæ principibus scriptarum (Oxford: e Theatro Sheldoniano, 1716), 19–20. The translation is from Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 62. Tito was an Italian humanist, writing in England some 20 years after the battle; although he was in the household of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, there is little to suggest that the duke supplied him with any information. Tito does appear to have relied heavily on the anonymous Vita et gesta Henrici quinti, but the Vita et gesta’s account of Agincourt does not include the details in this passage. David Rundle, ‘The Unoriginality of Tito Livio Frulovisi’s Vita Henrici quinti’, English Historical Review 123 (2008): 1109–31; for the Vita et gesta’s account, see Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 71–4.

²⁶ Thompson, ed., Chronicon Galfridi le Baker, 83.

²⁷ William Hardy and E.L.C.P. Hardy, eds., Recueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bretaigne a present nomme Engleterre par Jehan de Waurin. 5 vols. Rolls Series 39 (London: Longmans, 1864–91), 3: 116, 118.

²⁸ Friedrich W.D. Brie, ed., The Brut. Early English Text Society, Original Series, 131, 136. 2 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1906–8), 2: 498.

²⁹ Michael K. Jones, ‘The Battle of Vernueil (17 August 1424): Towards a History of Courage’, War in History 9 (2002): 375–411 (406–7); for Douglas’ dealings with the English, see Michael Brown, The Black Douglases: War and Lordship in Late Medieval Scotland, 1300–1455 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998), 219. Jones suggests that the declaration of a guerre mortelle came from Bedford, rather than Douglas; however, there is no contemporary evidence to warrant this.

³⁰ Given-Wilson and Bériac, ‘Edward III’s Prisoners of War’, 827–8.

³¹ ‘Lactitaverant nempe Galli se nemini velle parcere preter quam dominis nominatis et regi ipsi; reliquos se perempturos vel membris horribiliter mutilaturos. Qua de causa nostri concitati magis ad iracundiam animos erexerunt et se contra casus omnes mutuo confortaverunt ’: John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs and Leslie Watkiss, eds. and trans., The St Albans Chronicle: the Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham. 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003–11), 2: 674, 675 (see also 679). Walsingham was writing soon after the battle, and was generally well informed about events. On the other hand, it has to be said that his account was heavily influenced by classical models; his depiction of Agincourt may perhaps owe as much to the rhetorical flourishes of classical literature as the realities of the fifteenth-century battlefield.

³² Borrill, trans., ‘Jean Froissart, Chronicles’, Book III, f. 240v.

³³ Borrill, trans., ‘Jean Froissart, Chronicles’, Book III, f. 241r.

³⁴ There has been much debate about Henry V’s killing of prisoners; see (amongst many others), Christopher Allmand, Henry V. 2nd edn. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 93–5; Curry, Agincourt: a New History, 256–64; Juliet Barker, Agincourt: the King, the Campaign, the Battle (London: Little, Brown, 2005), 302–9; Rogers, ‘Battle of Agincourt’, 99–103; Craig Taylor, ‘Henry V, Flower of Chivalry’, in Henry V: New Interpretations, ed. Gwilym Dodd (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), 217–47 (233–6).

³⁵ ‘Clamor factus est bellum equestre posterius hostium, in incomparabili et recenti multitudine, stacionem et aciem resarciri ad veniendum super paucitate et lassitudine nostra. Et statim captivi, non attenta differencia personarum … ne nobis in ruinam essent in venienti prelio, ceciderunt’: Taylor and Roskell, eds., Gesta Henrici quinti, 91–2; Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 37. The authorship of the work is discussed in detail in J.S. Roskell and F. Taylor, ‘The Authorship and Purpose of the Gesta Henrici quinti: I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 53 (1970–1): 428–64.

³⁶ F.J. Amours, ed., The Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun. Scottish Text Society 50, 53‒4, 56‒7, 63. 6 vols. (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1903–14), 6: 12; Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, 138.

³⁷ ‘ … Anglici sagittarii maximam stragem perfecerunt. In crastino vero 100 captivos pridie Edward captos rex iussit decollari’: E.A. Bond, ed., Chronica monasterii de Melsa. Rolls Series 43. 3 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1866–8), 2: 370. For the compilation of the Meaux chronicle, see Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c.1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 358–60.

³⁸ Rogers, ‘Battle of Agincourt’, 100n.

³⁹ ‘Nec cuiquam redemptio concedatur, sed principes et pedites pariter pereant isto die’: William Stubbs, ed., ‘Gesta Edwardi tertii auctore canonico Bridlingtoniensi’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs. Rolls Series 76. 2 vols. (London: Longman and Co., 1882–3), 2: 115. For the Bridlington chronicle, see Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 113–15. The same chronicler remarks of the battle that ‘few [Scots] were taken prisoner’ (‘pauci capiebantur’), though he adds that many managed to escape: he does not mention whether any were put to death: Stubbs, ed., ‘Gesta Edwardi tertii auctore canonico Bridlingtoniensi’, 2: 116.

⁴⁰ See, for instance, the comments on the killing of prisoners at Agincourt by Given-Wilson and Bériac, ‘Edward III’s Prisoners of War’, 806–7: ‘there can be no doubt that the killing of men who had surrendered in return for their lives … was contrary to everything that the law of arms decreed about the treatment of prisoners’; and Barker, Agincourt, 302: ‘in chivalric terms, it was … reprehensible.’

⁴¹ ‘That to behald was gret pete, That mycht nocht help þaim self na thing, Sa to be slane without sparing’: Amours, ed., Original Chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun, 6: 12.

⁴² Bond, ed., Chronica monasterii de Melsa, 2: 370.

⁴³ Borrill, trans., ‘Jean Froissart, Chronicles’, Book III, f. 240v.

⁴⁴ See n. 1, above.

⁴⁵ Mazzei, ed., ‘Jean Froissart, Chroniques, Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 864’, ff. 332r–v; David Green, Edward the Black Prince: Power in Medieval Europe (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007), 91–4.

⁴⁶ Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 164.

⁴⁷ Curry, Agincourt: a New History, 262–4.

⁴⁸ ‘ … les Françoisse rallièrent qui fut un bien grand mal, car la pluspart des Anglois tuerent leurs prisonniers’: Jean Juvénal des Ursins, ‘Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France’, in Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France, eds. MM. Michaud and Poujoulat. 1st series, 12 vols. (Paris: Éditeur du Commentaure analytique du Code civil, 1836‒9), 2: 519.

⁴⁹ ‘Moult avons grant merveille que vous souffres que tant de noble soit espandus car prendes les vis, vous en porries achiever grant partie de vostre guerre et en aries tres grant raencheon. Et li rois leur respondi que point ne sesmervillaissent car le cose estoit ensi ordenee et ensi convenoit elle estre’: Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries, eds. and trans., The Battle of Crécy: a Casebook (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), 104 (my translation).

⁵⁰ ‘For gud men for pete sauffit þare presoneris then; and sa quhat þare … sauffit were mony worthy knycht’: Amours, Wyntoun, 6: 12.

⁵¹ Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 163.

⁵² Waurin’s account of the battle is very closely linked to le Fèvre’s, who was probably his source for events in the English army (both accounts are also partially based on Monstrelet’s). For discussion of these sources, see Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 135–40.

⁵³ Ambühl, Prisoners of War, 52–3. For an example of an indenture including such conditions, see Curry, Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, 436–8 (438).

⁵⁴ For the numbers of prisoners captured at Agincourt, Rémy Ambühl, ‘Le sort des prisonniers d’Azincourt (1415)’, Revue du Nord 89 (2007): 755–88; Ambühl, ‘A Fair Share of the Profits? The Captors of Agincourt’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 50 (2006): 129–50.

⁵⁵ King, ‘According to the Custom Used in French and Scottish Wars’: 281–2; Given-Wilson and Bériac, ‘Edward III’s Prisoners of War’, 809–10; Ambühl, Prisoners of War, 56–7.

⁵⁶ Printed in Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed., Œuvres de Froissart. 25 vols. (Brussels: Victor Devaux et Cie, 1867–77), 5: 489–92.

⁵⁷ ‘ … et altres persons, chivalers et esquiers, a grant nombre, des queux homme ne sciet unquore les nouns en certein’: Lettenhove, Œuvres de Froissart, 5: 491–2.

⁵⁸ ‘Quia ante hec tempora dampna quamplurima per deliberationem Scotorum inimicorum nostrum de guerra captorum nobis et toti regno nostro Anglie diversimode evenerunt’: D. Macpherson, J. Caley and W. Illingworth, eds., Rotuli Scotiæ in turri Londinensi et in domo capitulari Westmonasteriensi asservati. 2 vols. (London: Record Commission, 1814–19), 1: 677; Martin, ed., Knighton’s Chronicle, 73.

⁵⁹ King, ‘According to the Custom Used in French and Scottish Wars’, 281–2.

⁶⁰ ‘ … entour V^C et XL des chivalers et gents d’armes qe furent occis a la bataille, forpris ceux qe furent occis a la chace’: Lettenhove, Œuvres de Froissart, 5: 491.

⁶¹ Amours, Wyntoun, 6: 180, 181, 184, 185.

⁶² C.J. Rogers, ‘The Scottish Invasion of 1346’, Northern History 34 (1998): 51–69 (67).

⁶³ Ambühl, Prisoners of War, 102.

⁶⁴ See the comments of Given-Wilson and Bériac, ‘Edward III’s Prisoners of War’, 807–8.

⁶⁵ Andy King, ‘A Helm with a Crest of Gold: the Order of Chivalry in Thomas Gray’s Scalacronica’, in Fourteenth Century England I, ed. Nigel Saul (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 21–35.

⁶⁶ For the Tree of Battles, see N.A.R. Wright, ‘The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bouvet and the Laws of War’, in War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C.T. Allmand (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1976), 12–31; Ambühl, Prisoners of War, 20–2.

⁶⁷ G.W. Coopland, trans., The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bonet (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1949), 134 (my italics). Christine de Pizan included this discussion in her adaptation of Bouvet’s work, written c.1410: The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, trans. Sumner Willard, ed. Charity Cannon Willard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 169.

⁶⁸ Jan Willem Honig, ‘Reappraising Late Medieval Strategy: the Example of the 1415 Agincourt Campaign’, War in History 19 (2012): 123–51.