Definition
Appatissiez lieux (Law French) refers to places — towns, villages, or localities — that agreed to pay a sum of money to an enemy force in exchange for being spared the destruction and plunder of war. The term describes both the arrangement itself and the communities that entered into it: a negotiated payment securing immunity from military ravage. It belongs to the vocabulary of medieval English and continental warfare, where such compositions between occupying forces and civilian populations were a recognized, if grim, feature of armed conflict.
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Common Language
This is pure legal and historical jargon with no meaningful counterpart in modern ordinary English. The COMMON LANGUAGE section is omitted.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear almost exclusively in sources touching medieval English law, the law of war, and early property or municipal records. Researchers should be alert to several navigational points.
First, the term is Law French — the formal legal dialect of medieval English courts — not Modern French. Spelling variants are common in manuscript and early printed sources. Researchers searching historical indexes or digitized records should expect inconsistent orthography, including abbreviated or phonetically rendered forms.
Second, the conceptual territory covered by appatissiez lieux overlaps with the broader law of ransom, tribute, and military composition. Related arrangements — the payment of pâtis or appatis on the continent — appear extensively in French and Burgundian sources from the Hundred Years War period. English records touching occupied French territories, as well as domestic records concerning Scottish or Welsh border warfare, may use analogous terminology without using this precise phrase.
Third, Burrill's entry cross-references Kelham's Norman-French Dictionary, which remains the primary historical glossary for Law French terms of this character. Researchers working from Burrill alone should treat his definition as derivative of Kelham and consult Kelham directly for fuller context.
Fourth, the immediately following entry in Burrill — APPAYE / APPAY / APAY, meaning "satisfied" or "contented" — reflects the same root concept of settlement or composition. The proximity in Burrill's arrangement is not accidental: both terms belong to the vocabulary of medieval financial satisfaction, whether in a military or private-law context. A researcher who encounters one in a source is likely to encounter the other.
Finally, this term has essentially no modern operative legal significance. It surfaces in historical legal scholarship, legal history surveys of the law of war, and antiquarian treatments of medieval municipal practice. It does not appear in modern statutory codes or case law. Its research value is descriptive and contextual, not doctrinal.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary (the sole source in the Law Mind corpus for this term) provides a concise and accurate entry, attributing the definition directly to Kelham. Burrill renders the meaning as places agreeing to pay money to the enemy in lieu of being ravaged — a definition consistent with the broader historical record of appatis arrangements in medieval warfare.
No significant disagreement among historical dictionaries can be assessed from a single source, but it is worth noting what Burrill does not supply: any discussion of the legal framework governing such arrangements, the enforceability of such agreements under medieval law, or the distinction between voluntary compositions of this kind and outright tribute exacted by conquest. These are meaningful distinctions in the historical law of war, and their absence from Burrill reflects his dictionary's orientation toward defining terms rather than expounding doctrine.
The entry immediately following in Burrill — APPAYE — shares the same etymological root (the Old French apayer, to satisfy or appease) and reinforces the theme of financial composition running through this cluster of Law French vocabulary.
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Jurisdictional Note
This term belongs to medieval English law and the law of war as practiced in the Anglo-French sphere. It has no modern jurisdictional application in any common law system.
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