What Was the Ransom System?
The ransom system was the practice, common to the European chivalric tradition, by which a captured knight or nobleman could purchase his freedom by paying a negotiated sum to his captor. The system shaped the conduct of the Hundred Years’ War. It gave the war a financial logic that pure plunder could not; it encouraged the capture of high-value prisoners; it gave the captor a strong incentive to keep his prisoner alive, fed, and well-treated; and it shaped the politics of the war, because the largest single ransoms — those of King John II of France, of the duke of Orléans, of the count of Denia — were negotiated as instruments of state.
The ransom system was not a legal institution. It was a customary practice, enforced by the conventions of chivalric honour and by the chivalric courts of the French and English crowns. The customs varied from case to case: the ransom of a king was a matter of state, the ransom of a knight was a matter of negotiation, the ransom of a man-at-arms was a matter of bargain. The system worked because the conventions were shared: the captor who violated them lost his honour and his standing; the captive who violated them lost his life.
The mechanics of the ransom
The capture of a knight or nobleman was reported to the captor’s captain, who valued the prisoner according to his rank, his ransom value, and the political value of his release. The prisoner was held in honourable custody, often in the household of a noble friend or in a comfortable castle, while the ransom was negotiated. The negotiations were conducted through professional intermediaries — the procuratores redemptorum, the agents of the ransomed — and they could take months or years to complete.
The amount of the ransom was determined by a number of factors: the rank of the captive, the nature of his offence, the state of his finances, and the political value of his release. A wealthy nobleman could expect to pay a substantial ransom; a poor knight might be released for a relatively small sum. The captor had an interest in keeping the prisoner alive and well-treated, because a dead or mistreated prisoner was worthless. The prisoner had an interest in the rapid conclusion of the negotiation, because his family would have to find the money and his captor could change his mind.
The payment was made in instalments, and the instalments were secured by hostages — usually the prisoner’s sons or nephews, who were held until the instalments were complete. The hostages were themselves prisoners, and the hostage system could continue for generations. The duke of Orléans, captured at Agincourt in 1415, was held prisoner in England for 25 years; his ransom was finally paid in 1440, and he returned to France to be wounded at the battle of Herrings in 1429 (or rather, to be present at the engagement in which the English convoy of salt herrings was attacked by French forces under Charles, Duke of Bourbon).
The ransom of King John II of France
The most important single ransom of the war was the ransom of King John II of France, captured at the Battle of Poitiers on 19 September 1356. The English, having captured the French king, held him in honourable captivity in England while the ransom was negotiated. The ransom was set at 4 million écus, an enormous sum that was equivalent to perhaps twice the annual income of the French crown. The Treaty of Brétigny of 8 May 1360 was, in effect, the ransom settlement: the territorial concessions of the treaty were the price of the king’s release.
The ransom was never fully paid. The French, having already pledged most of the royal demesne and most of the movable wealth of the kingdom, were unable to raise the full amount, and the English became increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of payment. The issue of the ransom was one of the grievances cited by Charles V when he reopened the war in 1369, and it was a contributory cause of the Caroline phase of the war.
The death of King John in London in April 1364, while he was still technically a hostage for the payment of the ransom, was a serious blow to the English cause. The king had returned to England voluntarily, to negotiate the release of the hostages, and he died of an infection in the Savoy Palace. The French treated the death as a martyrdom; the English treated it as a political embarrassment. The ransom was renegotiated downward in 1364, and the hostages were released in 1369 in exchange for the renunciation of the territorial concessions of Brétigny.
The ransom system and the conduct of the war
The ransom system shaped the tactics of the war in several ways. The captor had a strong incentive to take prisoners, and the value of the prisoner was a major part of the financial calculation of the war. A successful captain could make a substantial fortune by capturing and ransoming enemy knights; the fines de sauve-têe, the payments for the sparing of a life, were a recognised part of the income of war.
The system also shaped the political negotiations of the war. The largest ransoms were negotiated as instruments of state, and they were linked to the territorial and dynastic concessions that the warring parties made. The Treaty of Brétigny was, in this sense, a ransom settlement. The Treaty of Troyes (1420) was, in part, a ransom settlement for the duchy of Orléans, who had been a prisoner in England since Agincourt. The Congress of Arras (1435) included the settlement of the duchy of Burgundy’s territorial claims, which had been entangled with the ransom negotiations of the previous decade.
The ransom system also shaped the ethical conduct of the war. The captor who violated the conventions lost his honour and his standing, and the chivalric courts of the period took the violation of ransom conventions seriously. The system was not a humanitarian system — captured men-at-arms of low rank were routinely killed, and the killing of prisoners of war was a feature of the war’s bloodier engagements — but it provided a framework for the humane treatment of high-value prisoners, and it was an early form of the modern laws of war.
The decline of the ransom system
The ransom system declined in importance during the late 15th and 16th centuries, as the development of professional standing armies and the increasing use of artillery changed the nature of war. The 17th century saw the emergence of the modern system of prisoners of war, in which captured soldiers were held by their captor’s state, not by their individual captors, and were exchanged or paroled in bulk. The ransom system, as a chivalric institution, was a casualty of the transition from medieval to early modern warfare.
The legacy of the ransom system is still visible in the modern laws of war. The Geneva Conventions of 1949, which provide for the humane treatment of prisoners of war, are the lineal descendants of the conventions of the chivalric tradition. The principle that the captor is responsible for the well-being of his prisoners, and that the prisoner is entitled to certain minimum standards of treatment, is the legacy of the ransom system.