Criminal soldiers and the military experience in pardon letters (15th-century France, England, the Low Countries)

Verreycken, Quentin [UCL]

Soldiers were probably the most prolific perpetrators of violent offenses in late medieval and early modern Europe. They were also frequent beneficiaries of royal and ducal pardon letters. This paper examines pardon letters granted to soldiers in fifteenth-century France, England, and the Low Countries, focusing on the legal and rhetorical arguments used by the combatants to make their cases pardonable. When petitioning for pardon, soldiers insisted on their military services as a good reason to be pardoned. They also frequently argued that the crimes they committed were connected to the usual practices of war (such as looting and plundering) or, in the case of homicides, they insisted on the fact that they were only defending themselves against hostile non-combatants or even undisciplined fellow soldiers. Ultimately, this paper will show that the depictions of military outlaws in fifteenth-century pardon letters followed the transformations of military structures and justice.