no quarter

No quarter, during military conflict, implies that combatants would not be taken prisoner, but killed. Since the Hague Convention of 1899, it is considered a war crime; it is also prohibited in customary international law and by the Rome Statute. The Hague Convention of 1907 states that "it is especially forbidden[...] to declare that no quarter will be given". Etymology The term no quarter may originate from an order by the commander of a victorious army that they will not quarter (house) captured enemy combatants. Therefore, none can be taken prisoner and all enemy combatants must be killed. A second derivation, given equal prominence in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is that quarter (n.17) can mean "Relations with, or conduct towards, another" as in Shakespeare's Othello, Act II, scene iii, line 180, "Friends all[...] In quarter, and in termes, like bride and groome". So "no quarter" may also mean refusal to enter into an agreement (relations) with an enemy attempting to surrender. The OED mentions a third possible derivation but says "The assertion of De Brieux ( (1672) 16) that it arose in an agreement between the Dutch and Spanish, by which the ransom of an officer or private was to be a quarter of his pay, is at variance with the sense of the phrases to give or receive quarter." History During the English Civil War, the Parliament of England issued the 24 October 1644 Ordinance of no quarter to the Irish, in response to the Irish Confederacy electing to send troops in support of Charles I, against the English Parliament: By the 17th century, siege warfare was an exact art, the rules of which were so well understood that wagering on the outcome and duration of a siege became a popular craze; the then-enormous sum of £200,000 was alleged to have been bet on the outcome of the Second Siege of Limerick in 1691.