The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France

“Land yielded life-sustaining crops as well as lucrative rents, in either coin or kind, along with levies of mail-fisted knights and men-at-arms. Land was thus the feudal nobility’s main source of wealth, power, and prestige – and the most enduring thing a man could pass down, with the family name, to his heirs. Valuable and coveted, it was also the cause of many quarrels and deadly feuds.”

Land was not only central to medieval Europe’s economy but to the nobility’s power and status. This explains why Jean de Carrouges IV was so concerned with taking ownership of the estate of Aunou-le-Faucon. Further, it also explains why the dispute over Aunou-le-Faucon seems to have sparked the feud between Jacques Le Gris and Carrouges.

“The squire’s ideal bride would be of noble descent and wealthy, with a dowry that would enrich him and enlarge his estate. She had to be young and fertile as well, to provide healthy sons, although there was no way to guarantee that with a virgin. And she had to be virtuous and chaste to ensure legitimate heirs. If the girl was pretty, too, there was no harm in that.”

Because of the nobility’s strong investment in questions of lineage and inheritance, the choice of a wife was wrapped up in concerns over sexuality, morality, and fertility. This also made sexual assault a devastating offense against both women and their husbands since it raised questions about a child’s legitimacy and could damage the woman’s honor, especially if there was suspicion that the woman had consented to sex with a man other than her husband.

“Whatever liberties noblemen allowed themselves with peasant women on their estates or mistresses in town, they insisted on absolute chastity in their own wives.”

This is what was called “the double standard.” The dominant culture of medieval Europe did not forbid men from seeking sexual relationships outside marriage; in fact, it was often encouraged for young men. However, adultery by the wife was considered a major moral violation and even a legal crime.

“Jean’s resentful behavior only worsened his reputation as a jealous, contentious, irascible man, and he withdrew from the court.”

While Jean de Carrouges IV was often successful in war, he was less so as a courtier. By engaging in lawsuits, Jean damaged his own career and his reputation. Even though medieval law did allow multiple legal recourses for disputes, medieval law and politics were still very “personal” in that failing to have a good relationship with your overlord could cause a noble serious problems.

“As fear and alarm galloped everywhere, Jean de Carrouges and his comrades threw themselves into the maelstrom of war, slaughtering enemy soldiers and civilians alike, seizing livestock, and carrying off any valuables. A French chronicler reports that his countrymen brought ‘murder, pillage and fire’ to the land, ‘destroying all by sword or fire, mercilessly cutting the throats of peasants and anyone else they met, sparing no one on account of rank, age, sex, not even the elderly or the infant at the breast.’”

Despite ideals of honor among the nobility, neither side of the Hundred Years War or any medieval conflict took the high ground when it came to the treatment of civilians. Although, not unlike today, there were certain moral standards when it came to war and the treatment of non-combatants, pillaging enemy territory and harming civilians living there were an accepted part of war.

“Whatever happened at Count Pierre’s palace that day, the encounter there between the knight and the square apparently triggered something in Jacques Le Gris.”

This part of Jager’s narrative shows the limitations of his sources. We cannot know, based on the lack of available historical sources, exactly why Jacques Le Gris allegedly planned his attack on Marguerite. Still, Jager can offer informed speculation as to what happened to drive Le Gris’s accusations.

“’I don’t want your money!’ she exclaimed. ‘I want justice! I will have justice!’”

Jager takes care throughout “The Last Duel” to emphasize Marguerite’s strength and agency. Her demand for justice in his description of Le Gris and Adam Louvel’s attack is one such instance.

“So if in theory rape was a serious crime for which the law provided heavy penalties, in practice it often went unpunished, unprosecuted, and even unreported.”

Throughout “The Last Duel,” Jager fights against the stereotype of medieval Europe as “lawless” (69). Nonetheless, he also admits that, due to the misogynistic aspects of medieval law and culture, the laws against rape that did exist were not often enforced.

“As she finished, she pleaded with him to seek vengeance for the sake of his own honor. Marguerite that Jean’s honor and reputation would stand or fall with her own—a principle that from now on would join their fates even more closely than the usual shared fortunes of marriage. She also knew that under feudal law she had absolutely no legal standing in such a case without her husband’s support and advocacy.”

Another example of Marguerite asserting herself and seeking justice for herself was how she used cultural norms about honor to her advantage.

“But despite the long odds against obtaining a trial by combat, and the grave risks of fighting one, Jean de Carrouges may have felt by this point that only a duel to the death would enable him to avenge the terrible crime against his wife, to prove his charges against Jacques Le Gris, and to vindicate the couple’s honor. Perhaps he believed that God would favor him and that he could not fail in battle.”

Again, the limitations from the sources prevent us from knowing what exactly Jean de Carrouges IV’s motives were. Why did Carrouges take such a drastic and dangerous step? Jager offers a couple of possible answers, but he can only speculate.

“From the moment that Jean de Carrouges resolved to seek a trial by combat, he was bound by the strict rules and procedures of the royal decree.”

The 14th century was a time when there were sophisticated law codes and legal procedures. Even judicial duels were subject to this, following over a century of successive royal decrees regulating such duels.

“By now the quarrel had become a subject of gossip and heated debate in the royal court, where the principals or their families were well known to many, some of whom had already taken sides before the official enquete even began. Soon the affair would attract great controversy all over France and even beyond the realm. What had started as a local dispute at a seigneurial court in Normandy was rapidly becoming a cause celebre that would play itself out on the French national stage.”

The judicial deal drew a lot of attention and inspired differing opinions, which will influence how historians see the event. Also, the popularity of the case and the debate over it was likely a key reason the Parlement of Paris allowed the duel to proceed (125-126).

“The risk of adultery was threat enough to the purity of noble bloodlines, so the idea that nonconsensual sex, or rape, could likewise produce illegitimate children, further contaminating the family lines, was too threatening to admit as a possibility.”

Jager argues this is the reason the idea that a child could not be conceived in rape persisted in medieval thought, even though it was biologically incorrect.

“Le Coq’s final comment on the case is the most telling. Despite his privileged viewpoint on the legal proceedings, and his many opportunities to observe and question his client, the careful lawyer seems to have recognized the limits of his own knowledge, and the limits of human knowledge in general. For he concludes his commentary on the case by tersely remarking that ‘no one really knew the truth of the matter.’”

One of the most important sources for The Last Duel is the lawyer Jean Le Coq’s personal journal. Although he suggests he at least seriously considered that Jacques Le Gris was guilty of Marguerite’s rape (122), Le Coq also admits here that the full truth cannot be known. Nonetheless, Jager argues that there is no proof that Marguerite unwittingly or maliciously made a false accusation.

“With the young king and his uncles away in Flanders and occupied with planning the invasion of England, the high court may have feared taking sides and arousing even more controversy, deciding instead to grant the knight’s request, authorize a duel, and leave the whole perplexing matter in the hands of God.”

Jager suggests the motive for the Parlement of Paris to allow such an increasingly rare duel was to deal with the growing controversy surrounding the Carrouges-Le Gris case.

“[The story of a dog winning a judicial duel] appears in many histories of France and was even put into verse by poets, although it may be apocryphal. Yet even if it has little basis in fact, it illustrates the popular belief that a bloody combat between ‘equals’ could yield a just verdict. The king, who reportedly witnessed the duel between the man and the dog, saw the outcome as ‘a sign of the miraculous judgment of God.’”

While absurd and even a little comical to modern sensibilities, the legend of a dog avenging its murdered master by winning a judicial duel did emphasize something serious about the idea of the judicial duel. Such duels were miraculous events, expressing the will of God over someone’s guilt or innocence.

“The priests, the altar, and the sacred objects on display were meant to sanctify the combat as a divine judgment, or judicium Dei. The crucifix and prayer book also called to mind the trial, judgment, and execution that Christ had innocently suffered for the sins of mankind.”

The idea of divine intervention was so essential to the idea of the judicial duel that, when it came to the ceremonies surrounding the event, it was in many ways treated like a religious event.

“In swearing the oaths, the combatants put at hazard not only their lives, fortunes, and word of honor but also their immortal souls.”

Oaths sworn under God were an important part of medieval society. These oaths had not only a spiritual dimension but also a powerful cultural element based on medieval ideals of honor.

“They would fight not only without quarter but also without rules.”

Like actual combat in warfare, the judicial duel had no true rules outside banning outside interference from observers and mandating certain weapons be used. This is in contrast to the elaborate rules and ceremonies that defined the legal process leading up to the duel.

“In Froissart’s scale of values, the mud where Lady Fortune flings down the squire is the moral equivalent of the ground where the avenging knight threw down and killed Le Gris during the combat and the floor to which Le Gris himself had hurled down the defenseless lady to violate and shame her. The squire’s ultimate fall thus embodies a justice both poetic and real.”

Froissart’s view of the result of the duel likely reflected the views of other people who believed that Jacques Le Gris was guilty. It was not that Jean de Carrouges IV won the duel simply because he was the superior combatant. He won because God favored his just cause.

“Some have alleged that the ‘true’ felon’s confession was what prompted Jean de Carrouges to depart on crusade, either to escape the resulting scandal or to do penance for his sins. And some have claimed that news of the belated confession drove Marguerite into a convent, consumed by guilt and remorse for having accused the wrong man and unjustly caused his death. One account says that Marguerite took the veil and made a vow of perpetual chastity, another that she became a religious recluse and ended her days performing pious exercises while walled up in a cell. But no evidence had been offered for these implausible tales.”

However, other observers than Froissart believed that Jacques Le Gris had been innocent. Despite the spiritual significance of the duel, then, some clearly still thought that an innocent person could be killed in a judicial duel.

“In its private and illegal form, the duel only dimly reflected the solemn grandeur of its medieval golden age, when angry nobles challenged each other and threw down the gauntlet, then sheathed themselves in armor, swore heavy oaths before priests, and spurred their warhorses onto a walled field to fight it out before thousands of witnesses with lance and sword and dagger, putting at risk their word and their honor, their fortunes and their lives, and even the salvation of their immortal souls. The world was not to see the like of such spectacles ever again.”

This illustrates an idea Jager returns to often in The Last Duel. The Carrouges-Le Gris case illustrates a pivotal time when religious rites had more significance than they do today and when violence was much more common in daily life. At the same time, central governments were becoming stronger and the law more complex and formalized.

“But Jean Le Coq, the accused squire’s lawyer, reports that reactions were mixed at the time of the duel, some people viewing Carrouges as vindicated, while others thought Le Gris unjustly slain.”

Here, Jager argues that it was not just that opinions about the Carrouges-Le Gris case differed at the time. These differences in opinion also produced conflicting testimonies that influence historians to this day.