Acclaimed writer and UCLA professor Eric Jager explains how he wrote the French medieval crime story ‘The Last Duel’ (Broadway Books) as well as Jacques Le Gris’ suspected guilt in the raping of Sir Jean de Carrouges’ wife.

The ‘Last Duel’ is an intriguing tale of power and lust, which details the last act of an ancient form of justice, the judicial duel. The book is based on real facts and a real case, set in Norman France and Paris at the end of the Hundred Years War.

Jager also discusses the likely adaptation of ‘The last Duel’ for the big screen -- Martin Scorsese bought the rights and is set to direct, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are rumored to be playing the feuding Norman noblemen. 

What is the book, ‘The Last Duel’, about?

It’s about a very famous legal case that blew-up in the late 14th Century France, 1386. The story involved two Noblemen from Normandy. One of whom accused the other of having raped the first man’s wife, so it was a charge of rape that led to a number of court proceedings and legal maneuvers.

Eventually, the case, because it was so-contested, came before the French Supreme Court, known then as Parlement of Paris, it was the highest court in France. And because of the law at the time the accuser had the right to challenge his opponent to a duel. It was the Parlement then that authorized the duel, which then went ahead and actually took place a few days after Christmas, the same year 1386. A huge event, it was obviously timed for the holidays, the King having just come back from the campaign.

All the court and nobility watched were there, thousands of people watched this thing that unfolded in Paris on a very cold morning. That would decide the fate of the two men but also of the woman, who would either be vindicated in her own claims or shown to be a perjurer if her husband and her champion lost the duel. 

How did you come across this story?

It is a well-known story to French historians and others who study the Middle Ages. The story is actually told in some length, maybe five or six pages, in one the chroniclers of Jean Froissart. That’s where I first encountered it, reading the chronicle, in the early ‘90s while in New York.

I did some research on Geoffrey Chaucer (famous English Poet from 14th Century), teaching a Chaucer course and doing some research on the Hundred Years War, reading Froissart, when I stumbled upon this story of this famous duel. And that’s when I thought wow that’s an amazing story, I can hardly believe this really happened. I started digging a bit and it turned out it was mentioned in other war documents apart from that one. And then I found out that documents from the case survived, we have a lawyer’s notebook, one of the lawyers left very detailed notes.

The trial transcripts don’t exist but we have a very detailed Latin summary of the case that goes on for pages and pages, and family documents. Then I got interested in writing a book about it, and then I dug further and realized that no-one had really written the whole story. And that took me to France and the archives, and I found a number of new things, and I was able to re-correct a few things by re-reading the documents. It actually became an archival project by the end.

Norman Cantor, the author of ‘Inventing the Middle Ages’ said the book is “Enthralling… and reads like fiction”. Where do the facts end and the fiction begin?

I wanted to be absolutely as faithful as I could to the known facts of the case, and again we do have a lot of documentary detail, for example if you read the last account of the testimony we have Marguerite, that’s the woman, describing in great detail how on one cold January morning, in 1386, she was at home alone, her husband was gone for several weeks in Paris, seeing to some business affairs of his. She describes in great detail how a man comes to the door, Adam Louvel, who claims to be there to see about a loan, that her husband had apparently given to him sometime before, and he wants an extension to the loan. And then she says she knows nothing about this, and then he hooks on to that, and brings a greeting from his friend Jacques Le Gris, other nobleman ultimately accused of raping her. The other fellow soon appears, and pretty soon this turns violent, and eventually she claims a rape.

There is a great deal of detail here, she talks about how she was forced to sit down on a bench, and Jacques Le Gris grabbed her by the risk, and she was forced her to listen to him for a while. So what I add to a scene like that is a reference to the cold weather, or some reference to how, when the doors opened, an icy blast of air fills the hallway, and the front of this Chateau, or how when he’s sitting next to her he’s sitting so close that she can feel his breath on her face.

In respect to the medieval times, how serious a crime was rape?

Sometimes people assume that in the chaos of the middle ages it might not have been taken very seriously but if you look at the law codes and the court cases at the time you did that rape was, in many instances, taken very seriously, it was a capital crime it could in fact lead to a death penalty, and the crucial thing was the status of the rape victim, if it were a high born woman, noblewoman, like Marguerite then she had a better chance of getting heard or some legal recourse. If she were of low status she would have a much slimmer chance of that.

Interestingly, Jacques Le Gris, the accused rapist, had an opportunity to claim benefit of clergy (and get a much more lenient court), and his lawyer advised him to do that, because the lawyer wanted the best deal for his client, and Le Gris for whatever reason refused to take that out and he could have avoided the duel altogether.

By the time of the 14th Century a judicial duel has become quite passé. What is a judicial duel? And why did it take place?

Originally and for a long time, it was a way of contesting a suspected oath. If two people went to trial, civil or criminal, they would have to swear oaths that what they were saying was the truth, and from its origins the judicial duel had been a way of challenging somebody’s oath. And that’s how the duel arose. That’s how this last duel arose, Jean de Carrouges challenged Jacques Le Gris’ oath in court.

Do you think Jacques Le Gris was guilty or was this part of a conspiracy?

I think there is enough there, in the historical records, to make us a little suspicious of Jean Carrouge. However, I do think Le Gris is guilty, and I do tend to believe Marguerite, and I explain that in quite a lot of detail in an appendix in the book. I do believe her husband was, in fact, defending a just cause, and she had been raped. Her account is just so circumstantial that even Jacque Le Gris’ lawyer even suspects his own client.

That said there is enough in the story to suspect that Carrouges is a very jealous, irascible man, that he was very land hungry, and frustrated in his attempts to buy land. He was particularly interested in the piece of land that Marguerite’s father had sold to this Barron, who had in turn given it as a gift to Jacques Le Gris, and what had Carrouges himself might have inherited through his wife’s dowry but did not inherit. There is enough there to make you wonder if Carrouges didn’t, in fact, set the thing up. But in the final analysis I’m convinced Marguerite was telling the truth.

The book has been made into a BBC television documentary, back in 2005. How much more exciting would it be if it were made into a film, directed by Martin Scorsese?

I would be thrilled if this were to happen, I was thrilled several years ago just to hear about the possibility. And I’m obviously grateful for the BBC’s interest, they did a wonderful job with the documentary, which I participated in. I got to go to France, did some interviews and revisit some of the scenes of the story. And Harvey, who directed it, did a wonderful job. But yes, I’ve been a Martin Scorsese fan for years, I guess when I saw ‘Taxi Driver’ when I was at college and I have been a fan ever since. And I know he would do a wonderful of it, so I very excited about that.

Do you like the idea of Leonardo Dicaprio playing Jacques and Matt Damon playing Jean? (Rumored to be lined up for the role)

Well, I’m not going to get into casting questions, it’s not really in my field. However, I would say this, that there is a script now, it was written by a very talented screenwriter Doug Jung, and he has to his credit a wonderful Los Angeles based thriller called ‘Confidence’, starring Dustin Hoffman and a number of other luminaries. So I can imagine any number of actors.

What other works do you have lined up?

I’m actually writing another book about a famous murder in the Middle Ages, about an actual murder case at a very high level, it is a political assassination, in medieval France, in Paris. I want to keep some of the details vague at this point, but it is a historical event, it has huge political consequences not just for France, but also for Europe, and it’s a very bloody assassination with axes and other weapons. And it had a huge political fallout.

Eric Jager is holding a book signing Friday, October 15 at 7 pm at Alliance Francaise 10390 Santa Monica Blvd. Suite 120, Los Angeles, CA 90025. The event is free, but reservations are required at adminafdela@gmail.com or (310) 652-0306.

Contact Staff Reporter Ken van der Meeren here.