A confused hand-to-hand fight involving multiple participants, or in medieval contexts, a type of tournament featuring group combat rather than individual duels. Medieval melees could involve dozens of knights fighting simultaneously in mock battles.
From Old French meslee meaning 'mixture' or 'medley,' derived from the verb mesler 'to mix.' The word originally described any confused mixture but specialized to mean confused fighting by the 13th century, reflecting the chaotic nature of group combat.
Medieval tournament melees were so realistic that they regularly resulted in actual deaths and captured prisoners who had to pay real ransoms—making them profitable ventures for successful knights! These 'war games' became so violent that the Church repeatedly tried to ban them, calling tournaments 'detestable fairs and markets of death.'
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