MEDIEVAL DUELS

In 1386, two Frenchmen fought a duel in a field outside Paris, each seeking to bury his blade in the other's body. One combatant had been accused of raping the other's wife, a charge he denied vehemently. After an initial verdict of innocence was returned, the accuser demanded a trial by combat. The judgment was now God's alone... ...who would be chosen to die?

- HANNAH SKODA

In the winter of 1386, a French noblewoman by the name of Marguerite de Carrouges found herself at the centre of a criminal case that electrified Paris, captivated the king and culminated in blood being spilled before an enormous crowd in a field just outside the French capital.

Earlier that year, Marguerite's husband, the knight Jean de Carrouges, had accused his former friend Jacques le Gris of raping Marguerite. After failing to get justice at the court of the Count of Alençon in Normandy, Jean beseeched the king for justice. He made a formal process of “appeal” or challenge against Jacques le Gris and requested the right to prove the justice of his cause in combat. This was the famous “trial by combat”, sometimes known as a judicial battle.

After an investigation, the parlement (the French sovereign appeal court) granted this right to de Carrouges, and he met le Gris in specially constructed lists, a space for tournaments, at Saint-Martin-des-Champs just outside Paris. The crowd was huge, and included King Charles VI himself. De Carrouges and le Gris took special oaths before the king, including a promise that they didn't have an unfair or magical advantage. Each man “placed his sole reliance on the justice of his cause, his body, his horse, and his arms”.

The fight itself was brutal. The two men charged at one another with their lances, butchered each other's war-horses and took to the ground in bitter and bloody combat. They were quite literally fighting for their lives. If de Carrouges won, he would apparently prove the justice of his cause, and le Gris would be found guilty and hanged. But if de Carrouges lost, le Gris' protestations of innocence would be proven true, and de Carrouges would be guilty of perjury, a capital offence.