37 pages • 1 hour read
Eric JagerThe Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapter 9-AppendixChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary and Analysis: “Mortal Combat”
The duel finally began with the herald shouting, “Faites vos devoirs!” (“Do your duty!”) (165). The duel was fought without rules, meaning any type of attack was allowed (167). The battle turned in Le Gris’s favor when he managed to kill Carrouges’s horse. Even unhorsed, however, Carrouges managed to dodge Le Gris’s attacks and mortally wound Le Gris’s horse.
As the two fought on the field without horses, Le Gris managed to wound Carrouges on the thigh. However, Le Gris took his sword from Carrouges’s wound, instead of taking full advantage, and backed away from the knight. This might have actually saved Carrouges’ life (176). Even with the wound, Carrouges managed to topple Le Gris, who could not get off the ground because of his heavy armor. Carrouges cried out for Le Gris to confess. After Le Gris continued protesting his innocence, Carrouges stabbed him to death with his dagger. Carrouges then turned to the crowd and shouted, “Ai-je fait mon devoir?” (“Have I done my duty?”). The crowd responded with, “Oui! Oui!” (“Yes! Yes!”) (179). King Charles gave Carrouges a reward of a thousand francs and sent his personal physician to treat his wounds.
As for Le Gris, his corpse was treated like the body of a condemned criminal. An executioner dragged Le Gris’ body to a gallows at Montfaucon where it was hanged. Jager cites the medieval chronicler Froissart, who saw the rise and fall of Le Gris as an example of Lady Fortune rising a person high in society only to leave them lower than they were when they began. In other words, it was an example of how “sometimes the humble grown proud are humbled once again, and there is a rough justice in the great scheme of things” (185). Although it may seem arbitrary to us today, for medieval observers like Froissart the judicial duel and its result reflected greater divine and cosmic truths about justice.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis: “Convent and Crusade”
In this last chapter, Jager describes the aftermath of the duel and how medieval and modern chroniclers and historians interpreted the case surrounding it. After the duel, the Parlement of Paris rewarded him with a further 6,000 livres to compensate Carrouges for his legal expenses. Carrouges tried again to buy the estate of Aunou-le-Faucon, which caused much of the conflict between Le Gris and Carrouges in the first place, from Count Pierre, who received the estate after Le Gris’s death. Instead, Count Pierre granted the estate to his illegitimate son.
Still, the judicial duel gave Carrouges a degree of honor and recognition he did not have before. He was even given a place among the king’s retinue. This was why Carrouges was present when, during a military campaign to Brittany in modern-day northwestern France, Charles VI had a mental breakdown that would signal the start of a mental illness that would haunt the king for the rest of his life. Carrouges would later join a multinational crusade to battle the growing Ottoman Empire in eastern Europe. There, Carrouges likely died or was taken prisoner and later killed at the disastrous Battle of Nicopolis in modern-day Bulgaria.
As for Marguerite, she would go on to have two more children, both sons. At the time of Carrouges’s death, her son Robert would have been only 10 years old. There is little evidence surviving attesting to her fate after her husband’s death. Even the year of her death is not known. One story claims Marguerite joined a convent, but Jager argues the little evidence we have suggests otherwise.
Jager explains that both medieval chroniclers and more recent historians have expressed the theory that Marguerite misidentified her rapist. These accounts claim that Marguerite and Carrouges were both overwhelmed by guilt, and Carrouges went on crusade to atone. However, Jager writes that “no evidence has been offered for these implausible tales” (197).
The judicial duel between Carrouges and Le Gris would prove to be the last one authorized by the Parlement of Paris. Still, judicial duels did continue in parts of France and outside Europe. Over time, however, it went from being a legally circumscribed and religiously significant ritual to “a furtive and outlawed custom confined to forest clearings or empty fields on the literal margins of civilization” (199). The judicial duel had origins as a way to prevent wider and more destructive feuds (198), and by Carrouges’s time it had been increasingly brought under government and church authority. As governments further consolidated legal authority over their nations, duels stopped being a legitimate way to settle disputes, but remained a fundamentally lawless activity.
Epilogue Summary and Analysis
Jager describes visiting the village of Capomesnil, where Nicole de Carrouges once lived. He stops at the site where the crime against Marguerite would have taken place, where he finds a man working in his yard. According to Jager, he asked the man if he knew anything about the Carrouges family or the old chateau. The man only tersely directed him toward the local town hall, the mairie.
For Jager, this encounter conveys something of the history of Normandy itself. “Normandy has a long, cruel, and bloody history, and still today strangers are potential enemies until they are proven friends” (202). In other words, Jager suggests that the events surrounding Marguerite and Carrouges reflected the turbulent history of the region itself, and that history has a legacy that lingers even today.
Appendix Summary and Analysis: “The Quarrel’s Aftermath”
In this appendix, Jager discusses how historians have treated the story behind The Last Duel. For Jager, the different conclusions made by historians suggest that even at the time the case against Le Gris sparked different opinions and interpretations. This is verified by the journal of Le Coq, who “reports that reactions were mixed at the time of the duel, some people viewing Carrouges as vindicated, while others thought Le Gris unjustly slain” (203). In the end, Le Coq himself concluded the full truth of what happened to Marguerite could never be known (204).
Contemporary sources also varied. Froissart argued Le Gris was guilty and the verdict of the judicial duel was widely celebrated. However, another source, the Saint-Denis Chronicle, suggests that Marguerite had made a false accusation “though in good faith” (203) and someone else stepped forward and claimed responsibility for the crime. A version of this story was spread decades later by the writer Jean Juvénal des Ursins and became repeated by more modern writers and historians. However, Jager argues this interpretation is very unlikely. Jager is also skeptical of another enduring interpretation of events that Marguerite knowingly made a false accusation against Le Gris. If that was Marguerite’s plan, Jager argues, why include Adam Louvel in the accusation (204)?
Still, the idea that Le Gris was an innocent victim persisted in the work of historians. For example, Voltaire cited the story of Le Gris being falsely accused as evidence of the barbarity of the custom of judicial duels (205). Two 19th-century historians, Louis du Bois and F. Le Grix White (who claimed to be a descendant of Le Gris), repeated the story that Marguerite mistook Le Gris for her true rapist. Another local historian of Normandy, Auguste Le Provost, on the other hand, argued for Le Gris’s guilt. Most 20th-century writers, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, have tended to agree that Marguerite was wrong, either mistakenly or maliciously.
This brief historiography, a history of how past historians and other writers have interpreted an event or historical figure, reveals how historians may be influenced by their own biases and times. For example, Jager discusses how F. Le Grix White was motivated by his claims of ancestry and by being a “chivalrous Victorian” to see Marguerite as a “woman wronged” who nonetheless accidentally made a false accusation (206-207). One can argue that The Last Duel is Jager’s attempt to correct this record. He never claims to be free from bias and agrees with Le Croq that the full truth will never be known. However, by returning to both primary sources and the historical contexts of Marguerite’s time, Jager is attempting to present as meticulous a narrative of events as possible.
