Cover image: Duel between Jacques le Gris (1330-1386) and Jean de Carrouges – engraving in ” Les rues de Paris “.

Text by Ilias Anagnostakis.

Carrouge was a unique case. Born in 1337 in Carrouge, a small village in Normandy, he was the son of a minor noble and was trained accordingly.
He began weight training and using heavy armor as early as the age of twelve, and by sixteen he could endure five hours(!) of combat conditions, march 30 kilometers and fight immediately afterward, eat heavily when needed but also eat sparingly “when it wasn’t necessary,” and expertly wield ten different weapons (sword, dagger, falchion—a type of large machete, axe, mace, war hammer, poleaxe, cavalry lance, two-handed sword, and short spear).

He quickly began proving his worth in intense battles against the English during the Hundred Years’ War, in campaigns in Scotland, and in countless other conflicts of all kinds.

In 1386, he participated in the duel depicted in the film ”The Last Duel” to clear the dishonor of the (alleged?) rape of his wife, Marguerite de Thibouville, by Knight Jacques de Gris. He emerged victorious, crushing his opponent in a duel that lasted an hour and a half(!).

In 1391, he was sent on a secret mission to Hungary along with the legendary Marshal Boucicaut to assess the situation there, as rumors about the expanding presence of the Turks in the Balkans were growing steadily.

On August 8, 1392, during a hunt in Le Mans, he was an eyewitness to the first schizophrenic episode suffered by the unfortunate French King Charles VI. When he heard a “voice” behind him (in reality, it was the sound of his lance, which slipped from a follower’s hand due to heatstroke and fell on another follower’s helmet), he attacked his… brother(!) with a large mace, believing he was the target of an assassination attempt.
His brother managed to escape, but six(!) royal followers aged 12–14 and one knight were not so lucky, their skulls crushed by the deranged monarch.
Charles, in the midst of a psychotic episode, rode for hours chasing his brother, until he collapsed from exhaustion and was finally restrained by the royal bodyguards—among them De Carrouge. The king fell into a coma and awoke three days later(!), this time in perfect health.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning for the ill-fated Charles. Many more schizophrenic episodes would follow (at least 11(!)):

In 1393, he couldn’t remember his own name or who the King of France was.
In 1395, he could recall every single one of his lords but not who his wife or children were.
In 1398, he ran frantically through the palace for hours, and the windows had to be bricked up to prevent him from jumping out.
In 1401, he believed he was Saint George.
In 1405, he refused to bathe or change his undergarments for five(!) months.
In 1409, he howled like a mad wolf for days.
And in 1415 (on the eve of the crucial Battle of Agincourt), he believed he was made of glass and wore a leather breastplate to avoid “shattering.”
When he had to meet nobles, he wore additional iron rods to prevent his body from “breaking upon contact.”

After 1417, “his condition was abysmal” until his death in 1422 at the age of 53.
Of course, he did have occasional lucid periods (such as when he received the Greek Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in 1399), but overall, his health was in steep decline.

As for Carrouge, an extraordinary “all-weather” warrior and worthy comrade of the “Medieval Tank” Marshal Boucicaut, he met his fate at the ferocious Battle of Nicopolis against the Ottoman Turks in northern Bulgaria on September 25, 1396.

Carrouge was among the 700 Franco-Burgundian knights who, along with 3,300 armored followers and men-at-arms, launched a furious charge against 20,000 Turks stationed atop a hill on the morning of September 25.
Despite being 59(!) years old, the indomitable De Carrouge, undeterred by the 30 kilos of armor, the uphill terrain, the heat, or the thousands of arrows that “darkened the Sun” (Froissart, 448–9), stormed up the hill madly, wielding a giant mace and a large falchion, following a dozen sixteen-year-old French knights “who carved a path through the Turkish hordes, screaming like demons,” slaying every Turk in their way.

Carrouge belonged to the group of Franco-Burgundians who advanced farther than anyone else into the Turkish formation, forming a wedge around the royal standard-bearer, Admiral De Vienne.
At around 10:00 a.m., after three and a half(!) hours of fierce fighting, the exhausted French—mostly now on foot—found themselves trapped in a small ravine, where they were hit by a sweeping assault from all sides by 15,000 Turkish cavalry (spahis) under Bayezid, who had kept them in reserve for exactly this scenario.

The veteran De Carrouge, like all his comrades-in-arms, knew the end had come, but he did not go down without a fight.
His body, with his skull shattered, was found a little later at the end of the battle, surrounded by fifteen(!) dismembered Turkish corpses.

This was Jean de Carrouge.

Ridley Scott’s film The Last Duel, which was released in cinemas on October 15, 2021, was based on the duel that took place in 1386 between knights Jean de Carrouge (played by Matt Damon) and Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver) in Paris, in the presence of the French King Charles VI “the Mad,” the royal court, and a large crowd.

Sources:

Froissart’s Chronicles, «Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the adjoining countries by Froissart, Jean», 14th century

“An Account of the Duel between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques le Gris in the Chronicle of the Monk of St. Denis”, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, Translated by Steven Muhlberger.

Stéphane William Gondoin, “Château de Carrouges — The keys to history ”, Norman Heritage, no. 100, January-February-March 2017, pp. 56-63.