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

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On December 29, 1386, a knight and a squire faced each other on a field of battle outside a Paris monastery. They would fight to the death to prove which man's cause was in accordance with God's will. A crowd of eager spectators looked on, including King Charles VI and other royal courtiers. The accuser was Jean de Carrouges, a knight from a distinguished Norman family, whose volatile temperament had more than once found him involved in legal disputes. The accused was Jacques LeGris, a squire of lesser birth but with great political savvy, who was charged with raping Carrouges's wife, Marguerite.

In the Prologue, Eric Jager masterfully sets the scene on the battlefield to convey exactly how high the stakes were for the two noblemen --- and for Lady Marguerite de Carrouges, who would be burned at the stake as a false accuser if her husband were to lose. Jager then goes back in time to trace the sequence of events that found Carrouges and LeGris facing each other in combat. The crime against Lady Marguerite had taken place eleven months earlier, but the duel was the culmination of years of bitterness and rivalry between the two men, who had once been friends.

Jager, who first came across a reference to the Carrouges-LeGris duel a decade ago, draws on legal records, chronicles, and other historical documents to unfold the story. By putting the duel in the context of the time period, he also provides a fascinating account of life in fourteenth-century France. He describes a tumultuous era --- the volatile relationship between the French and the English, played out in numerous battles; crime and punishment, often delivered in harsh methods; religious beliefs and practices, and how they impacted medieval laws; the hierarchy of the regional and central powers in France, and the importance of land in securing one's standing; and customs, politics, and intrigues of the royal court.

The relationship between Jean and Marguerite de Carrouges also allows for a look at feudal matrimony and the rights, or lack thereof, of women during this time. Lady Marguerite, who emerges as one of the most interesting figures in the book, could not accuse LeGris directly of raping her. She had to seek her husband's championship on her behalf, as she was considered his property and so the crime was technically committed against him. Marguerite, who endured a public pregnancy in the months leading up to the duel, stood to lose her life if her husband failed on the battlefield. It would have been much easier for Marguerite to keep silent about the attack by LeGris, which occurred while her husband was on business in Paris, and Jager leaves no doubt that it took a tremendous amount of courage for her to speak out in favor of justice.

Jager also charts the surprisingly complex medieval legal system and the judicial process that ultimately resulted in the sanctioning of the duel by the French Parlement and King Charles VI. Through the different phases of the court proceedings and leading up to the duel, Jager draws out the suspense to the point where it's almost unbearable. The temptation to turn ahead will be overwhelming. Resist at all costs. Jager takes great care not to give away any details that would reveal the outcome of the duel, and to turn the pages too quickly will mean that you lose much of what this book has to offer.

Eric Jager is a professor of English at UCLA, where he specializes in medieval literature. If THE LAST DUEL is any indication of his skill in the classroom, he must be the best kind of instructor --- you learn something and have fun doing it.

--- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna

In The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France author Eric Jager provides a fascinating account of a feud that erupted in the late 1370s between two friends and culminated some years later in the disputants' trial by combat. The bad blood between Jean de Carrouges and Jacque Le Gris began with jealousy, as Carrouges watched Le Gris become the favorite of the Count whom both men served as chamberlains. Le Gris was Carrouges's social inferior, and it rankled that he rather than Carrouges was the more successful at court. Further insults followed, and Carrouges became increasingly hostile to his old friend, whom he suspected of plotting against him.

The final straw, the crime that led the principals in this story to seek one another's death before thousands of spectators and King Charles VI himself, was Le Gris's alleged rape of Carrouges's wife. Marguerite de Carrouges maintained that Le Gris had attacked her while her husband was away from home. The events of that day--whatever happened to Marguerite in fact--led inexorably to a walled-in jousting field on which the two combatants stabbed and hacked and beat one another until one of them lay dead.

Jager does a simply excellent job in this book. He builds the story of Carrouges and Le Gris carefully, describing the causes for complaint between the two and the progress of their feud as well as its historical and social context. We learn in the process about the history of judicial combat and the surprising particulars of the battle itself. The event was not, as one might suppose, an occasion for revelry, with rowdy onlookers yelling insults or encouragement at the fighters. It was instead a solemn event, and impossibly harsh strictures were laid on the spectators to guarantee their good behavior: anyone who rose from his seat during the fight was to be penalized by the loss of a hand; coughing was punishable by death. Most of us would probably quail at the prospect of merely attending such an event, let alone participating in it.

But Jager's account is not only informative, it is downright riveting. Because the author has so carefully described the antecedents to the fight and the harsh consequences for the combatants--and for Marguerite herself--riding on the battle's outcome, readers will have their emotions and intellect invested in the story by the time they arrive at Jager's blow-by-blow account of the duel: I defy anyone to put the book down during its penultimate chapter.

Whether Le Gris was guilty or innocent is a question that has been debated for centuries, and convincing arguments can be made in support of either position. Jager makes his own opinion about the matter clear, but to his credit he does not obscure the ambiguity inherent in the case, leaving plenty of room for readers to debate for themselves this most fascinating piece of legal history.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

This is one of my first reviews here. If I had not read the person's review who gave this book one star and wrote such drek about it I would not feel compelled to add my thoughts. I bought the book after hearing the author being interviewed on NPR. The interview itself was so compelling that I had to buy it. It was extremely interesting all the way to the heart-pounding ending. A great read!

The Last Duel does what any great general reading history should do, by putting the reader squarely into a time and place and being as easy and gripping to read as if it were a novel. The last trial by combat authorized by the High Court of Paris was a duel to the death between a squire accused of raping his adversary's wife. Why and how this "death joust" took place is set forth in this book in detail so rich and real you can imagine the events taking place before your eyes -- the cold and loneliness of traveling over mud roads in winter, the majesty and solemnity of the formal proceedings before the king and the court, and the duel itself, in a great enclosure in a field behind a monastery, with every class of France, from the king to the lowest commoner out watching.

Well-researched and superbly written, The Last Duel is a page turner that hooks you from the opening chapter right up until the bloody ending.

Highly recommended.

"The Last Duel" is a phenomenal book that is a historical page turner. The legal minutiae that inundated the lives of the characters in the book could have been made boring, but instead Mr. Jager brings it to life in this very fast read. Any serious history of the Middle Ages runs the risk of being so inaccessible to the common reader, because the characters seem so distant to our own age. However, in Mr. Jager's capable hands, this life of the high nobility is filled with sex, betrayal and violence. I usually do not read books on the Middle Ages but for this I was certainly glad I made an exception. Overall, a wonderful read.

A wonderful window into the lives, loves and politics of the upper class in 14th century France. The duel at the end was frosting on the cake.

I love this type of book. The author paints a vivid picture of the society the duellists live in - its customs and values and does a great job of linking these to their emotions and motivations. He describes the places where the action took place in detail, providing pictures and telling the reader where they were and what they are - or are not - now. Having created the world in which the duel took place, and the background, the account of the duel itself is riveting. All in all an excellent book.

Jager blends scholarly research with pure entertainment in this story of Medieval France and the judicial process of trial by combat. An excellent and quick read for those with interests varying from Medieval History, to Jurisprudence, to the art and ceremony of mortal combat. He raises the bar for educators everywhere. When is his next publication being released?

Only true history fans will really like this book, but even people bored by history may become captivated by the story that Jager describes so very well in his book. Restricted to historical documents, Jager makes a few assumptions here and there, but it is hard to argue with his deductive reasoning.

The author bring Medieval France alive. He gives us the historical context of the events taking place and expresses very well the attitudes of the people involved in the scandal. Is the squire guilty of this heinous crime or is he being framed by a rival? Will the knight avenge his allegedly wronged wife in combat? Those questions kept me interested throughout the book. As an amateur history buff, I can honestly say that I learned a great deal about Medieval history while trying to also find out who wins the duel.

Overall, this book will captivate the reader with its true life crime story.

The climax of this true story is so absolutely intense that I put my book down every paragraph just to absorb it. The entire story is absolutely riviting. The only thing I should warn people about is the book is written to a degree of detail that historians love but the layman can find a bit overwhelming.