While watching Troy last night (the fight between Hector and Achilles' cousin in his armor)I began to wonder if there are historical accounts of higher ranking people in battle seeking each other out while the lesser soldiers would avoid this private battle.
Obviously it makes for a great scene in a movie, just wondering if there was some unwritten rule among soldiers to not disrupt a special fight.
There are several examples of kings attempting to attack other kings or enemy generals. u/kmmontandon mentioned the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485). A century before that, King Philip VI of France tried to capture or kill Edward, Prince of Wales at the Battle of Crecy (1346). However, Philip was unable to fight his way through the English infantry to reach the prince. The "lesser soldiers," in this case, clearly did not care whether they were disrupting a potentially dramatic scene or not. Kings would have had a dedicated retinue of men-at-arms made up of their most trusted retainers and companions surrounding them to serve as a bodyguard on the battlefield. In general, an assault intended to eliminate a particular enemy leader was a target of opportunity situation, rather than a move planned beforehand.
Speaking from a medieval Japanese perspective, the basic mode of warfare was for the ashigaru or foot soldiers, to stab each other with spears and maneuver while the samurai of the warrior class found each other on the battlefield. There would then be an introduction for each participant, where they would name themselves and give all their titles so that their opponent knew exactly who they were facing.
After the battle, social status among the samurai was affected by the number of heads of opposing samurai they brought back, and the quality of their kills. The more famous the opponent, the more status gained by his death.
Incidentally, this was one of the reasons why guns were unpopular with the upper warrior class, because it allowed an unskilled farmer ashigaru to kill a mighty general. This was what happened to the famed general Takeda Shingen according to some of the stories of his death (these stories were adapted to film in Kagemusha).
This style of fighting has since become the most popular style of combat in Japanese media depictions of the period, which makes it tempting to brush it off as merely a fantasy. However, early pseudohistorical and historical texts from Japan confirm that this was indeed the goal of samurai officers in combat.
One of my favorite stories is from the Tale of the Heike, in which the elderly samurai Sanemori Saito dyed his grey hair black in order to seem younger so that another samurai would seek him out on the battlefield, because an old man would not seem to be an honorable kill. After his opponent kills him, and the enemy officers are examining the heads, they recognize him and notice his dyed hair, and they praise him for his courage.