THE ORIGINS OF RESTRAINT

Laws of war in the modern sense did not emerge in Europe until well after the terrible wars of religion and politics that marred the 80-year period from 1568 to 1648. Moves to govern the conduct of warfare began in the Early Middle Ages, but these early efforts could not be described in terms as concrete as “law.” Two concepts especially influenced this gradual development from a loose structure of moral rules to codified laws of war: One was the idea of “just war”; the other was the “ordinances of war” that sought to restrict the worst excesses of medieval warfare.

In the latter half of the 10th century, military and criminal violence pervaded every facet of life; often there was no appreciable difference between the soldier and the brigand. Historian Christopher Allmand has noted that medieval chroniclers were nearly unanimous in their depiction of the common soldier as “a symbol of something to be feared, the perpetrator of violence and destruction, whether this took the form of attacks on property (pillage and arson) or on people (murder and rape).” Often the worst offenders were not foreign raiders