In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down

[Peter Gutmann]

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:

>I find this very hard to believe.  Post links, or give citations.

Normally I'd dig up various refs, but since this topic has been beaten to
death repeatedly in places like soc.history.medieval, and the debate could
well go on endlessly in the manner of the standard "What would have happened
if the North/South had done X?", I'll just handwave and invite you to dig up
whatever sources you feel like yourself.

>>(There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death toll and
>> removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English
>> commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing
>> nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to
>> pieces on the spot.
>
>Wrong
>
>French nobles were taken prisoner in the usual fashion, but executed because
>the English King commanded them executed.

Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed.  Commoners
didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners.  Henry's orders didn't
make that much difference, at best they were a "we'll turn a blind eye"
notification to his troops.  When you have English commoner men-at-arms (front
row) meeting French nobles (front row, hoping to nab Henry and other for-
ransom nobles, and to some extent because it was unseemly to let the commoners
do the fighting, although they should have learned their lesson for that at
Courtrai) there's going to be a bloodbath no matter what your leader orders.
For the peasants it's "get him before he gets me", not a chivalric jousting
match for the landed gentry.  In addition the enemy nobles had weapons and
armour that was worth something, while a ransom was useless to a non-noble (if
Bob the Archer did manage to captured Sir Fromage, his lord would grab him,
collect the ransom, and perhaps throw Bob a penny for his troubles).

(There's a lot more to it than that, but I really don't want to get into an
 endless debate over this.  Take it to soc.history if you must, and if
 anyone's still interested in debating this there).

Peter.