Board Thread:Midian Ideas/@comment-4701109-20140821002122/@comment-24302820-20140916102510

From Rules of Engagement in Conquest: The White Horse:

One common rule of engagement is that prisoners will be treated humanely. They will not be tortured or killed out of hand. Prisoners will be provided with food, water, and shelter. Medical care may be provided. At the very least, prisoners will be allowed to attend to one another. Captured officers and other leaders will still be in charge of their units. Actually, this helps the ones doing the capturing maintain order at least as much as it aids the captives. Prisoners may be allowed to send letters home. This will certainly be true if the capturing forces are trying to get a ransom, especially of knights or nobles. Another common rule of engagement is that messengers will not be treated as combatants. To do otherwise really complicates attempts to receive a notice of surrender. This may also be extended to medics or healers (those who are not also soldiers, at least) and to ministers and priests. If the member of the cloth is of the same religion as the troops, they may consider such religious leaders rather sacred, and may even disobey orders to attack. Observers from neutral parties may also be accorded official non-combatant status, but it is unusual if they are even found on the field. If any of these individuals are found to be spies or otherwise unduly aiding the enemy, their status is revoked and they are often treated harshly. Other non-involved parties may also be spared from attack, at least directly. The civilian population may be out of the fight, and should be left unmolested. This may be extended to include all of the property of a citizen: no pillaging fields for food or demanding quarter in a peasant's home, or it may only include an agreement to not kill civilians who do not place themselves in harms way. Similarly, cities may be spared from violence or pillaging, or at least each side agrees not to destroy them utterly. These no-ravage rules are most often found when two sub-units of a greater nation are in conflict, and one is trying to annex the other. In wars other than conquest, or when the sides are foreign to one another, pillaging the enemy countryside is a time-honoured way to feed and pay your troops on the cheap.