It’s a bit tricky, because prices do fluctuate a bit. Let’s say a ransom is equal to the price of a horse and a suit of armor:
Horse prices: in 209 AC, Dunk sells Sweetfoot for three gold plus some silver, whereas 299 AC one gold per horse is the going rate. So let’s go with 1.5 gold on average.
Armor prices: in 209 AC, Dunk buys a set of plain steel armor for 800 silver (~3.8 gold), although this is mail, gorget, greaves, and greathelm rather than a full suit of plate, which one would guess would go for substanially more. The semi-canon RPG books give a price of around 14 gold for a suit of plate. So let’s go with an average of 9 gold.
So I would say that a tourney ransom is somewhere around 10-11 gold minimum, which means that Ser Humfrey made around 140-154 gold on the first day of the tourney. (Ransoms in times of war are a good deal higher – Brienne’s father offered 300 gold, which Jaime considers a good ransom for a knight – since there’s something of a disincentive to return an enemy combatant to the field.)
Now, how much is that worth? Well, given that a good income for a smallfolk works out to between 3.5-5 gold, that would certainly set an adult peasant up for the rest of their life. However, it’s not that extravagant by noble standards.
In terms of how much it’s worth by today’s money, that’s about $140,000-154,000 U.S dollars, which is quite a sum but not exactly “set for life” money.
Tyrion was making a joke – gilded armor does not contain a significant amount of gold, the no doubt master-crafted armor would be worth far more in its original state than melted down, and in either case would not have been worth enough to fund the Northern war effort.
And since you’re not the first person to ask me about jousts and ransoming armor:
Were tourney ransoms generally a form of collateral, to ensure prompt payment? In order to be of any use, armour needs to be a perfect fit, so another man’s armour would be of no use to the victor himself and would have very limited resale value.
As we see with the Mystery Knight, ransoming armor is not about being worried that someone else might sell it, although horses are a different matter, obviously, and the armor thing is not 100% (chainmail can be resized and human body shapes aren’t so wildly different that it’s always unusable). Rather, because a knight’s armor and horse are essential tools of their profession and prerequisites of their social class, no knight would willingly forfeit them and thus they are perfect collateral for a debt – the medieval equivalent of leaving your credit card for a deposit.
The other thing to keep in mind is the class expectations of the people involved – as noblemen, knights are supposed to be A. men of their word of honor (so being too pushy about repayment calls that into question), and B. not concerned about money (which means being too pushy about repayment is an issue, but so is not paying your ransoms). At the same time, noblemen also like cash to fund their magnificent lifestyles, so you need to make sure that you get paid.
Ransoming armor or horses, like handing over your sword when you surrender, is a way of resolving this tension: it allows both sides to pretend that this isn’t about money and that everyone trusts everyone else, while making sure that ransoms get paid on time.
I don’t think it’s an accident that there is a conflict between these two customs: guest right exists somewhat to create a systemic dis-incentive to kill hostages. And that’s not a bad thing, because the point of hostage-taking (and especially true with hostage-exchanges) is to create an alternative to wiping out your enemies root and branch, similar to how the custom of ransoms is there to encourage people to take defeated nobles prisoner instead of murdering them for the rings on their fingers.
However, there are cases where you need to execute a hostage. My guess is that the cultural circle is squared through giving hostages guest gifts:
“The Freys came here by sea. They have no horses with them, so I shall present each of them with a palfrey as a guest gift. Do hosts still give guest gifts in the south?“
“Some do, my lord. On the day their guest departs.”
“Perhaps you understand, then.“ (ADWD)
Thus, the hostage is no longer a guest and can be executed without violating the taboo.
I’m having difficulty finding sources to answer your question, but I’d imagine it’d be difficult to tell which lucky peasant was the one who captured the noble in battle, since they’d probably be in formation. My guess is that it would depend upon the general of the capturing side. A peasant rebellion against the nobility probably is killing any nobles they capture, and a feudal levy might be so tightly overseen that the captain in charge takes control of the POW fairly quickly.
My instinct tells me that the captain would reward the peasants that captured the knight, perhaps with coin, and the general would collect the ransom, but again, my typical sources aren’t helping me here. @racefortheironthrone might know, though.
Thanks for the question, Overlord.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
Good question.
Part of the tricky thing here is the term “peasant,” which I guess means peasant levy? Because there were a lot of soldiers who were non-nobles but professionals and therefore of higher status – your men-at-arms, your mercenaries, your household guard, etc. – who might technically be “peasants” in the sense of not being nobles or clergy, but who had all or most of the equipment and training of a knight.
But for more specifics, let’s jump on the research train!
Turns out…yes, sort of. Culturally/ideologically it was a bit of a problem: Michael S. Drake in Problematics of Military Power points out how the common soldiers was a bit of a problem conceptually for the medieval mindset in general because they were commoners who did knightly stuff yet were too necessary to ban; likewise, common soldiers were not necessarily ransomable (there were some pretty ugly mass killings of captured peasant levies in the Hundred Years War, for example) and one couldn’t necessarily trust them to ransom a noble as opposed to rob his corpse.
But, while I’ve seen a few legal scholars say the law of war forbade peasants/common soldiers from ransoming prisoners, they seem pretty well out-argued by the folks who can point to historical accounts of just that thing happening, so I’m going to say that whatever the laws of war might have said, once you have thousands of professional killers roaming the battlefield with misericords with profit in mind, those laws are promptly ignored so that nobles could be safely ransomed rather than being brutally murdered for their rings…
So yes, common soldiers could ransom, and odds are non-levies would be ransomed (because soldiers learned to keep enough liquid capital to pay a ransom pretty quick) albeit on the cheap. What seems to have become the practice vis-a-vis the common soldier capturing a knight is that the ransom would be bought by a higher up for a percentage of its value. For example, at one point Henry I of England bought the King of France’s banner (which had been taken on the field by a common soldier) for 20 marks, so that he could have the gloating privileges.
RFTIT Tumblr Backup 