Joan of Arc as prisonnière de guerre

Abstract

Contrary to what has been previously claimed, the birth of the French term prisonnier de guerre dates back to long before the early seventeenth century. The corpus of documents which form the foundation of this article includes some sixty occurrences of the term (in French or Latin) over a period of more than a century, the earliest dating to 1357. In contrast with previous studies on the status of prisoners of war which have tended to rely on a modern conception of the term, this present investigation focuses on contemporary perceptions of those who were designated prisonniers de guerre in the later middle ages. The significance of this discussion is demonstrated in particular through the case of Joan of Arc, who, perhaps surprisingly, was considered a prisonnière de guerre by the English. In her case – which was by no means an exception to the general rule – the status of prisonnier de guerre derived from the property rights which her ‘master’ (or captor) enjoyed over her. It did not involve any protection of the prisoner her (or him) self. Contemporary debates around the status of prisonniers de guerre, when such questions were raised, were focused on the rights of the master. Perhaps is it more appropriate not to speak of the status prisoner of war but rather the status of the master of the prisoner of war.

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