Tournaments Were Blood Sport

Medieval tournaments were not the elegant jousting matches from movies. Early tournaments were essentially organized gang fights called melees, where dozens of armed knights fought simultaneously across open countryside with few rules and frequent deaths.

The real prize wasn't glory — it was ransom money. Capturing a defeated knight and demanding payment for his release was incredibly lucrative. Famous knight William Marshal built much of his early fortune this way: by one contemporary count, he and a partner took 103 knights prisoner in just ten months on the tournament circuit. His admiring biography later claimed he captured over 500 across his career — a boast historians treat with caution — but even the documented figure shows how a skilled knight could grow rich on captured rivals.