Smackdown, Medieval-style

Historian Eric Jager slaps together an effusively informative but often workmanlike historical portrait (think History Channel) of 14th century France in all its disease-ridden, anarchic, litigious, bellicose glory—a place where land acquisition and foreign conquest drove the economy. Much like the future of the United States under the rule of Neo-con warlords, one’s vocational options in medieval France were few: you either inherited wealth and real estate, or joined the military to help your country acquire further real estate. Jager lays out, with no shortage of background and incidental information, the all-pervasive vassal-lord hierarchy that profoundly affected the lives of the eventual mano-a-mano combatants: Jacques LeGris and Jean De Carrouges. The titular death-match springs out of bitter land disputes between these two men, and from the intense competition to be their lord’s favorite vassal.

The nasty rivalry between Carrouges and Le Gris is the focus of The Last Duel, and interestingly, neither chap is painted in a particularly flattering light. Carrouges, a descendant from a long line of violent forbears, is a spoiled child of privilege, socially “impolitic,” a man hyper-conscious of his “noble” birth, and an aggressive mercenary who plunders foreign lands for his own personal gain and glory. After his first wife dies unexpectedly, Carrouges marries Marguerite—the daughter of a renowned traitor—mainly for her heir-producing possibilities and because her family owned a rather valuable chunk of sod.

And while Le Gris (of less-than-noble birth) is a despicable social-climber and sickeningly obsequious to his lord, the powerful landowner Count Pierre, he’s also shrewd enough to know the importance of court politics to further one’s precarious medieval livelihood. While Carrouges is out burning villages and slaughtering peasants, LeGris is proving his loyalty to Count Pierre (mainly by loaning Pierre 3,000 francs). Pierre naturally rewards Le Gris for this behavior—by granting Le Gris certain plots of land that Carrouges previously felt entitled to. So, naturally, there’s jealously and resentment on Carrouges’ part. From there, real-estate-related lawsuits ensue between Carrouges and Le Gris, and the animosity between these two unlikable jerks just continues to grow.

But the impetus for the duel is set in motion when a tired, frustrated, broke Carrouges insults Le Gris’s manhood one too many times (although we’re not told exactly what was said in Carrouges’ final insult), and the usually calm, collected Le Gris quietly snaps. Next thing you know, LeGris stalks and brutally rapes Carrouges’ new wife Marguerite while she was alone and vulnerable in her mother’s home. When Carrouges hears of this (after returning from battling, yes, Englishmen), he immediately approaches the court and seeks a duel to the death with Le Gris. This appeal leads to what could have been the medieval equivalent of an O.J. Simpson/Scott Peterson-esque trial, a pointless spectacle that gripped the attention of bored French couch potatoes and lonely housewives across the land.

The rape, of course, is a significant turning point—after Marguerite is violated, it’s safe to say that Le Gris officially becomes the villain (talk about commercial appeal—now we have someone to root for and against!). But the lower court, presided over by Count Pierre, refuses to allow the duel: Pierre obviously felt that his golden boy Le Gris would be summarily dispatched by his combat-hardened rival. But the higher court (the King’s court) shows a more liberal sporting nature, and allows this “trial by combat.” Leaving the final verdict in God’s hands was, according to Jager, an increasingly rare practice in the late 14th century. Secularist thought was creeping into legal and philosophical matters in Europe; and judges were becoming more reluctant to give God the final say when it came to the joys of meting out punishment.

Of course, all this “judicial” dueling under the “judgment of God” sounds silly to modern readers (unless you’re Zell Miller); but remember, this is a time and place where animals faced the same punishments as humans. For instance, if a pig munched on a small child, the animal was put on public trial and roasted at the stake. And as we junior medieval scholars learn, the stakes were pretty damn high in a duel of this nature: in this case, even if one combatant were forced to yield to the other (beaten but not killed) the loser would still be strung up by the court. And if Carrouges were to be bested in combat, his wife Marguerite would be burned alive for “lying” to the court about her rape. And of course, Jager plays up the added drama of Marguerite being suddenly pregnant—but by whom? We know not.

To Jager’s credit, when it comes time to feature the book’s main event—a spectacle at least on par with Ali vs. Foreman, or Balboa vs. Clubber Lang—suddenly Jager’s passively constructed historian prose takes on a swift-paced present-tense dynamism. The epic fight scene between Carrouges and Le Gris is impressively re-created and expertly narrated; it flits by in an almost too-quick flash of clashing swords, rearing horses, and glinting armor. And there are amazingly dramatic twists and turns in the action until the suspenseful, bloody, bone-crushing end to the Almighty-sponsored proceedings.

Jager’s medievalism for the masses does a commendable job of filling in the gaping spaces around what is a precariously narrow focus for a legitimate book-length study. Also helpful are the many visual supplements—maps, photographs, paintings whose images relate in some way to the book’s contents. Jager excels at fashioning both a micro- and macrocosmic view of medieval life in France. He leaves nothing unexplained, and clearly wants to appeal to both serious scholars and the average lay reader. You not only get a sense of the broader historical context of this final “trial by combat”—the harsh everyday realities of constant public unrest, contentiousness, war, and death in medieval France—but Jager also allows for plenty of medievalist-geek minutiae, i.e., a lengthy passage on the components of medieval battle armor and weaponry, or a look at the seating hierarchies at a big social sporting event such as this hyper-violent bout (big shots get box seats, peasants get the nosebleeds, same as today).

And although Jager does tend toward over-explanation, and milks this subject matter for a little more than it’s actually worth, this book could nevertheless serve as a great primer for the budding Young Medievalist, or aspiring Dungeonmaster; or it could be an acceptable (but slightly advanced) beach read.