Gillingham on surrender and mercy in medieval warfare

 I just came across an article by John Gillingham, one of the best medieval military historians, where he argues that the laws and practices of war were not the same over the whole Middle Ages.  Note what he says about surrender and ransom:

But it is important to bear in mind the  exact title of  [Maurice]Keen’s book – The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages – and   note that when he used phrases such as ‘in the middle ages,’ he was not in fact  thinking of  the whole period, only of its last two centuries  [i.e. the14th and 15th; Phase 2].The neglect of Phase One [up to about 1300] by historians of medieval war has not unnaturally led  to them taking a cynical view of chivalry.. [since many people, during Phase One including women and children, were not allowed to surrender, but were killed or enslaved].

But had they measured the treatment of women, children and the poor by soldiers in the so-called ‘age of chivalry’[ Phase  2] against    some  ideal  standard, but against the standards that  had been  regarded as acceptable and  honourable in all previous ages, they might have taken a different view.