Date: April 12, 2012
Time: 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: Wisconsin Veterans Museum
City: Madison
Contact: Jeff Kollath
Phone: (608) 261-0541
John Lynn, Distinguished Professor of Military History, Northwestern University
Lecture and discussion
This lecture will trace the distinctly Western tradition of honorable surrender, which took shape in medieval Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries and was eventually codified in the literature of chivalry and the law of arms during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. After displaying valor in combat, the Western military elite could surrender in battle without incurring shame and be promised personal protection and eventual liberation from captivity through the payment of ransom. By the seventeenth century these promises of honor, protection, and release were extended to common soldiers as well as to the well born. The provisions for reasonable treatment of prisoners agreed to in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became the foundation for much of the humanitarian law of war. Therefore, critical documents and events of the American Civil War, including the Dix-Hill Cartel of 1862, the Lieber Code of 1863, and the terms of surrender agreed to by Grant and Lee at Appomattox in 1865 are all direct linear descendents of a medieval innovation in military practice.
A 2012 Dr. Richard H. Zeitlin Distinguished Lecture Series Event
Presented in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of History
