“Then a great misfortune befell them”: the laws of war on surrender and the killing of prisoners on the battlefield in the Hundred Years War

The Battle of Agincourt has been seen as glorious feat of arms for the English, and for Henry V in particular. However, for many historians, Henry’s conduct was marred by his order for the killing of French prisoners, which has been characterised by some as a war crime. This paper examines how common were such massacres of prisoners, and whether such attitudes were shared by contemporaries. It has usually been considered that the ethics of chivalry and the laws of war forbade the deliberate killing of prisoners; how then could such conduct be justified