Quarter in Battle?

[Bowerthane]

Just been doing a bit to my version of the Battle of Tettenhall in AD 911 for my kiddies' book, that's the one where a combined West Saxon and Mercian army defeated a Norse host, basically because I've had an access of inspiration for how to end it... and this happens.


Just what is the likelihood that a Pagan Norseman would ask for quarter when King Eowils is dead ( or anyhow lost in all that smoke from the barley-stubble set alight by the fire arrows) and his comrades are taking to their heels or thinking about it?  And how likely would his Christian Mercian or Saxon opposite number let him live, anyway?


Now I come to think of it, in the light of the harrying this host did before Lord Athelred and King Edward the Elder brought it to battle, I'm guessing there'd be too much hot blood on the Christians' ( especially the Mercians') part and any Norseman too slow or too proud to leg it would be fighting for his life.


An added complication is the presence of Half Danes or indeed ethnic Angles in the Norse ranks.  Not many maybe, though I'm using their presence to explain what went wrong for Eowils.  But, again, what with hot blood, the tension of battle and ( in my portrayal) hearthtroopers and mounted skirmishers anxious to make sure Eowils isn't getting away, I wonder how far an Angle pressed into fighting for a Norse jarl, Half-Danes suddenly eager to pretend that they were, and anyone else going down with the willies who reckoned their English was good enough, would get anyway?


( "H-, hey guys!  I'm on your side really!")


Opinions, anyone?

[Deorca]

Call me cynical, but I can't imagine quarter ever being given except when calculated as benefitting the one giving the quarter. But, not knowing the details of this battle well enough, I'm afraid couldn't comment otherwise.

[Bowerthane]

Cynical or not, Deorca, I think you’re right.  I do recall reading something by one of the Harrier pilots from the Falklands War, how on the voyage south he and his comrades talked about flying over Argie transport planes, or waggling their wings or something, to give the crews time to bail out – but when it came to it they just shot ’em down and hurried to the next target.  No doubt anyone back from Helmand Province will correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing that the learning curve you go up is that it’s all you can do keeping ahead of a sticky end yourself, never mind worry about other people’s lives.  Thus you soon put the ‘hardened’ into ‘battle-hardened’ if, indeed, you live that long.

I say this because many of my characters at the Battle of Tettenhall are first-timers and they don’t all make it, either.


( My next problem is just how much pitiless savagery I should portray in a book meant for the under-fourteens!  I know kids can be callous these days, but parents and education authorities won't pay up for anything they feel dubious about.)

[ubique]

Cynical or not, Deorca, I think you’re right.  I do recall reading something by one of the Harrier pilots from the Falklands War, how on the voyage south he and his comrades talked about flying over Argie transport planes, or waggling their wings or something, to give the crews time to bail out – but when it came to it they just shot ’em down and hurried to the next target.  No doubt anyone back from Helmand Province will correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing that the learning curve you go up is that it’s all you can do keeping ahead of a sticky end yourself, never mind worry about other people’s lives.  Thus you soon put the ‘hardened’ into ‘battle-hardened’ if, indeed, you live that long.

I say this because many of my characters at the Battle of Tettenhall are first-timers and they don’t all make it, either.


( My next problem is just how much pitiless savagery I should portray in a book meant for the under-fourteens!  I know kids can be callous these days, but parents and education authorities won't pay up for anything they feel dubious about.)

In Helmand both the taliban and the Afghan army/police will not normally give each other much quarter.As for us in my opinon we would but they tend to either fight and die or run away.It goes without saying though that captured or wounded Talibs/afghans are treated with every legal/cultural humanitarian quarter we can think of (as they should be in my opinion).

[Wulfric]

I guess this falls into the category of quarter benefiting the one giving it.

Depending on the social class of the people in question individuals may have been "saved" by the possible ransom they could be worth to relatives.

As for the Anglo-Danes trying their luck, who knows I suppose that would hang on whether the skein of their fate ended their or not