Non-combatants in the military law of the Hundred years’ war

Author(s):  D.V. Bayduzh, candidate of Sciences, Tyumen State University, Tymen, Russia, bayduzh@yandex.ru

L.O. Raevskii, Tyumen State University, Russia

Issue:  Volume 45, № 4

Rubric:  Topical issues of political science

Annotation:  The article considers the way in which carried out protection of the civilian population in period of the Hundred Years' War, by means of the law, as well as peculiarities of representation of the civilian population in legal sources. The authors used historical-comparative and historical-legal methods. The analysis showed that the concept of "non-combatants" is historiographical. In the sources, there is no single name for non-combatants as opposed to soldiers, for which there is a single concept – gens de guerre (people of war). The sources mention only certain categories of the population: clerics, pilgrims, students, wounded soldiers, etc. The mention of non-combatants in legal sources is usually related to their protection. The hypothesis of this study is that the emergence of certain categories of non-combatants in legal sources had a precedent character. It is important to note that in the ordinances considered, the articles for crimes against the civilian population are placed immediately after the articles for crimes against the Royal person, which reflects the high importance of the protection of non-combatants for the Royal power. It is established that the most frequent articles concern the following crimes against civilians: murder, capture, looting of the Church, rape of women, burning of property. The most common punishment in ordinances is death. However, in relation to crimes against children and peasants, the penalties are milder and limited to the loss of property. This confirms the thesis that non-combatants were not perceived as a single social group-the civilian population, but were divided into separate categories of the population. Therefore, the standards of protection and punishment of crimes against different categories of the population are also vary.

Keywords:  history of law, Hundred Years’ War, violence, theory of just war, history of ideas, civil population, legal awareness.

Full text (PDF):  Download

Downloads count:  358