Reciprocity or Uncertainty: The Experience of the Prisoner of War During the War of the Spanish Succession

Abstract

In the prisoner of war defeat is personified, and the victor is portrayed. This figure is of particular interest during the War of the Spanish Succession. Here, we find a global conflict and, at the same time, on the Spanish front, an international and civil war. Consequently, the prisoner of war presents many faces, from the English soldier to the Valencian miquelet, from the Irish deserter to the Portuguese high-rank officer. All of them were prisoners of war, but their social condition and their luck were dissimilar. Only one principle, reciprocity, seemed to regulate their situation, and one strength, the captor’s arbitrariness, distorted their fate.