Tag: Medieval Scotland

Articles

Killing or Clemency? Ransom, Chivalry and Changing Attitudes to Defeated Opponents in Britain and Northern France, 7-12th centuries

In the British Isles before 1066, the general fate of those defeated in battle or taken in war was either death or enslavement. The Norman Conquest, however, was to mark the importation into England of a differing military ethos, which placed an increasing stress on ransom and the sparing of knightly captives, and which eschewed the enslavement of prisoners of war as a token of barbarism.