News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on 60 knights paused a war to fight a battle royale. Parent comment

Re:60 knights paused a war to fight a battle royale by telchior on Friday September 23, 2022 @02:47PM (#32955620)
Probably much more important than chivalry: you can't ransom off a captive who is dead.

Ransoms were really, really large in that period. Five years after this battle, the English captured the French king at Poitiers. His ransom was 4 million gold coins plus, I think, various concessions. The French ended up having to pay a lot of ransoms through the whole war, and as a result, the nobility and crown were so poor they couldn't prevent banditry and famines.

Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century is a very engaging account of this period.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:60 knights paused a war to fight a battle royale by greesil on Friday September 23, 2022 @08:39PM (#32958730)
My takeaway from reading that book was that if I was a time traveler I'd avoid that place and time. I thought the banditry may have served as inspiration for the middle books of Game of Thrones.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:60 knights paused a war to fight a battle royale by MomoXenosaga on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:51PM (#32959338)
I think the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century were worse. Even high nobility was not immune from torture and gruesome executions.

You can't bribe a fanatic.

[ Parent | on HN ]