Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

“That the duel shall only be permitted when there is presumptive evidence against the accused, but without clear proof.

“That on the day appointed the two combatants shall leave their houses on horseback, with visor raised; their sabre, sword, axe, and other reasonable arms for attack and defence being carried before them; when they shall advance slowly, making from step to step the sign of the cross, or bearing an image of the saint to whom they are chiefly devoted and in whom they have most confidence.

“That having reached the enclosure, the appellant, with his hand on his crucifix, shall swear on his baptismal faith, on his life, his soul, and his honour, that he believes himself to have got a just subject of contention, and moreover that he has not upon him, nor upon his horse, nor among his arms, any herbs, charms, words, stones, conjurations, pacts, or incantations that he proposes to employ; and that the respondent shall take the same oaths.

“That the body of the vanquished man, if he is killed, shall be delivered to the marshal, until the king has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him; that is to say, hang him up to a gibbet by one of his feet.

“That if the vanquished man still lives, his aiguillettes shall be cut off; that he shall be disarmed and stripped; that all his harness shall be cast here and there about the field; and that he shall remain lying on the ground until the king, in like manner, has declared if he wishes to pardon him or to do justice upon him.

“That, moreover, all his property shall be confiscated for the benefit of the king, after the victor has been duly paid his costs and damages.”

In regard to capital crimes, the issue of a combat authorised by law and consecrated by religious ceremonies was looked upon as a formal judgment by which God made known the truth or falsehood of the accusation. The defeated combatant was dragged on a hurdle in his shirt to the gallows, where, dead or alive, he was hanged. The church itself adopted and sanctioned the superstitious idea that the vanquished in the judicial duel must necessarily be guilty. The one who had been killed in such a duel or combat was, says Brantôme, “in no case received by the church for Christian burial; and the ecclesiastics alleged as a reason for this that his defeat was a judgment from Heaven, and that he had succumbed by the will of God because his quarrel was unjust.”

The judicial duel was fully recognised by the Church of Paris. Louis VI. declared that the serfs and ecclesiastics of the Church of Paris might “testify,” that is to say maintain their word by a duel. In the reign of Louis the Young the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Geneviève, whose domains covered all the high ground which now overlooks the Panthéon, offered to prove by duel that the inhabitants of the little village in the neighbourhood were the serfs of their abbey. In the same reign (1144) the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés having demanded a duel in order to prove that Étienne de Maci had wrongly imprisoned one of their serfs, the two champions fought for a long time with equal advantage; but at last, “by the help of God,” says a chronicler, “the champion of the abbey took out the eye of his adversary, and obliged him to confess that he was conquered.”

Among the most remarkable judicial duels may be mentioned one that took place between two Norman knights behind the church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in presence of Charles VI. and the whole court. Jacques Legris had been accused by the wife of Jean Carrouge of having entered his castle, masked, in the middle of the night, under pretence of being her husband, who was on his way from the Holy Land and whose return she was daily expecting. He protested his innocence, and on the demand of Carrouge the Parliament ordered the matter to be decided by duel. The judgment of God was unfavourable to Legris, and on being vanquished he was hung up at the gallows attached to the lists. Some time afterwards a malefactor, on the point of being executed for other crimes, confessed to having committed the infamous action for which Legris had suffered. This cruel mistake led to the abolition of the judicial duel. All demands on the subject addressed to the Parliament were from this time rejected—the judicial duel was at an end.

Appeals for a decision by single combat could still be made to the king, who sometimes granted what was known as the Congé de la Bataille. But simple crimes were no longer the cause of duels; and the personal conflicts that now take place turn upon the modern “point of honour.” Assemblies, however, were still held for the purpose of enacting that {347} duels should not be fought without the recognition of the superior authorities and without fair play. Two French officers having quarrelled on a campaign, one of whom had suffered from the other a personal affront, the case was brought before a tribunal of honour, with the highest personages of the court, the Chancellor, the Pope’s legate, two cardinals, and a certain number of prelates as judges; when, without any appeal to the sword, it was decided that one of the antagonists should go down on his knees before the other and declare that “madly and rashly, irreverentially, badly advised and badly counselled, he had given a box on the ear or blow with the fist to the other, in the tent and presence of the Duke de Longueville.”