In medieval tournaments, a victorious knight claimed as forfeit whatever horses, armor, and weapons his defeated challenger brought onto the field with him. Knights could choose to keep these valuable items or to ransom them back to their owners for quick cash. Tournaments thus provided a way for skilled-but-penniless knights (like Ivanhoe, recently returned from the disaster of the Third Crusade) to make quick money. Again, this fact makes an equivocal case for chivalry. On the one hand, it allows knights a clear victory without necessarily having to shed blood. But on the other hand, it cheapens the ideals of courage and valor by reducing them to spectacle and economic opportunism.