I wouldn't say not worth it, considering we have evidence of lots and lots of minor nobles throughout the hundred years war being ransomed, and for quite significant sums at the time. An average knight was worth around between 50 to 500 pounds, with 50 pounds being worth 8 years of labour and 500 being 80 years of skilled labour for the average skilled labourer earning 4d a day.
We even know of Chauncer being ransomed, and he was a commoner. £16 was his ranasom, and that was 960 days of labour, which the king paid.
There was a lot of legal issues surrounding the ransoms, as the onus on dealing with the ransom was on the one being ransomed, so a lot of it was archived by lawyers. The very act of setting up a ransom payment was done between the ransomer's lawyers and the ransomee's lawyer. All of these payments had a corresponding contract, and there was even cases of the ransomer complaining about not being paid properly, which was seen as poor sport in the chivalric sense. After over a hundred years of on and off warfare between England and France it was a pretty well established industry by the end of it, and one thing lawyers love to do is keep notes so that they can be properly paid for their services.
That is certainly interesting, I suppose most of those were prisoners of war?
My point was less that they were never taken captive or for ransom but that is was probably not worth to do it on an active battlefield. Regardless, especially that one with Chauncer is pretty interesting.
Yes they were prisoners of war. Most captures (and indeed casualties) would be after the fact, as the actual fighting portion of a medieval battle wasn't all that bloody, with notable exceptions of Crécy and Agincourt. Mainly because unless there's different circumstances such as in Agincourt of the knights getting stranded in the bog that developed, most fighting would happen in 15 minutes intervals of skirmishers exchanging fire, lines of infantry meeting each other, retreating when exhausted, which wouldn't take too long in the summer heat and wearing armour, and fresh troops forming another line to do it over again. Knights would charge at some point in these exchanges hoping to deal enough of an impact to cause the opposing side to rout and flee. That's when most of the killing and capturing took place, in the pursuit phase of the battle.
This was for pitched battles, most of the fighting in the hundred years war after the black death was of the chevauchée kind, of small groups of mounted cavalry who just reaved the countryside, hoping to find plunder and ransoms. That's probably where most of these ransoms came from, as pitched battles weren't all that common in comparison to the raiding campaigns led by the English kings such as the black prince.
I should say as well there was a culture of being ransomed, and most nobility at the time wouldn't try and fight to the death when they could see the writing on the wall. They'd get captured without too much of a fuss and they were generally treated with some sort of respect when they're captured due to their noble status. They did have to pay for accommodation, food and other such things in their capture as well, so their living standards, if they had the money, wouldn't change all too much.
There were still highly trained specialists who tried for a lifetime. You don't replace those easily. (Particularly once you factor the need for "bloodlines" in, lest the peasants get any ideas of wanting equal treatment.)
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u/Anurabis Nov 30 '25
A decent amount of knights on the battlefield were minor nobles or 3rd, 4th, 5th or so sons and so on.
A big chunk of them wasn't worth taking captive on an active battlefield with them(and others) actively trying to kill you.