Feast of the Holy Innocents

The Feast of the Holy Innocents, observed on December 28, became a date of stark juxtaposition in 1386: the French court mourned the death of its infant heir, while the judicial duel between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris was set for the following day. The feast’s commemoration of Herod’s slaughter of infants made the prince’s death seem to some like a bad omen, but it did not halt the court’s festivities or the scheduled combat.

The Feast and the Prince’s Death

The dauphin, christened Charles, had been born on September 25, 1386, and christened on October 17. Sickly from infancy, he weakened while his mother, Isabeau, worried over him in the king’s absence and the court physicians watched without being able to help. By the time Charles VI returned to Paris in early December, the child’s condition had further deteriorated.

The prince died on December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents. His death was mourned at court and across the city and kingdom. That night, great lords carried his richly dressed body by torchlight in a funeral procession to the royal sepulchre at Saint-Denis. Because the feast recalled Herod’s killing of infants, the coincidence of the date with the death of the heir appeared to some observers to be an ill omen.

Mourning Beside the Coming Duel

The loss did not prevent Charles VI or his court from keeping the holidays as planned. New Year’s Day was a major feast, and the king and court marked it with parties, banquets, dances, and other entertainments. The duel, long awaited and scheduled for December 29, became the high point of the celebrations. The contrast was striking: the royal household had just buried its future king, yet public festivity and a judicial fight to the death proceeded on the court’s calendar.

The duel’s religious framing sharpened the coincidence without showing that the feast determined its timing. In the combat ceremony, priests placed a crucifix and a prayer book on an altar, and the combatants swore that the judgment would ultimately be God’s. The king, who presided as judge on behalf of the Parlement of Paris, had also postponed the duel so he could attend after returning from Flanders. The feast thus fell immediately before a contest whose legal and ceremonial language likewise invoked divine judgment.

Two Infants, Two Fates

Around the same period, Marguerite de Carrouges gave birth to a boy named Robert. The precise date is unknown: the evidence places it after the Parlement’s inquiry began on July 9 and before November 27, the duel’s original scheduled date. The account estimates that the birth most likely occurred between early September and mid-October, putting it close to the dauphin’s birth on September 25. The two boys may therefore have been nearly the same age, though one was the royal heir and the other was the child of the woman whose testimony placed the duel in motion.

Significance in the Narrative

The Feast of the Holy Innocents anchors the episode in a precise and unsettling chronology. On December 28, the court’s future king was mourned in a procession to Saint-Denis; on December 29, the court gathered for a contest whose outcome would determine Jacques Le Gris’s fate and bear upon Marguerite’s. The date’s association with the death of innocents lends the juxtaposition ominous resonance, while the continued festivities show that the court’s public calendar absorbed grief without displacing the spectacle already arranged.