Flanders appears as a strategic destination rather than the setting of a narrated battle: Sluys, identified as a Flemish port, was to serve as the assembly point for a vast French invasion force. The plan drew King Charles VI away from Paris while the Parlement was investigating the Carrouges–Le Gris case, then faltered under bad weather. The proposed campaign’s interruption and the king’s return connected Flanders to the timing of the judicial duel without bringing the invasion itself to fruition in the events described.

Geographic and Strategic Role

The account locates Flanders in the French war plan through Sluys, the port to which Charles intended to travel. It does not present the region as a battlefield in this episode. Instead, its importance lies in the projected movement of forces and ships: the Flemish coast was the intended point from which the king would lead a major expedition against England.

This plan followed an earlier French expedition to Scotland. The previous year, Admiral Vienne had led French knights and squires, including Jean de Carrouges, through the border counties, drawing Richard II and his troops northward, away from London. A second French force was meant to attack from the south, completing a two-front strategy, but that southern invasion never began and the original plan was abandoned. Flanders thus belonged to a renewed, enlarged scheme rather than to the execution of that earlier design.

The Proposed Invasion

In 1386, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, proposed that Charles win lasting renown by striking England with a campaign more devastating than any previous one. The young king approved the proposal and prepared to leave Paris for Sluys, where he was to take his place at the head of the invasion force. The projected armada numbered more than a thousand ships, giving the plan a scale that dwarfed the local dispute then occupying the royal court.

Before leaving Paris, Charles attended a solemn mass at Notre-Dame Cathedral and vowed not to return to the city until he had first set foot on English soil as a conqueror. The vow made the expedition a personal undertaking as well as a military plan: the king’s return depended, in his declared intention, on success across the Channel. Yet the account describes preparations and resolve, not a landing in England. The proposed route toward Sluys would soon be overtaken by events.

Flanders and the Parlement’s Case

Throughout July, Charles and the royal court followed the quarrel between Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris. In August, as the Parlement’s inquiry entered its second month, the king’s attention shifted toward the renewed conflict with England. His departure did not end the legal proceedings. The Parlement resumed its work, while Carrouges and Le Gris remained in Paris, free to move within the city but obliged to appear at the Palais de Justice whenever summoned.

The contrast in scale was sharp. A case that had begun as a dispute before a lord’s court in Normandy was now under royal investigation, with a possible duel drawing the interest of the king and court; at the same time, the crown was preparing a fleet of more than a thousand ships. The king’s departure left the inquiry to continue in his absence, but it did not remove his influence over its eventual course. The duel’s scheduled date would later bring him back into the case.

Delay and Abandonment

The invasion was delayed by violent storms. Ships sank, trees were uprooted, and people and animals were struck by lightning. Reports of further extraordinary events elsewhere in France accompanied the bad weather, but the practical consequence was decisive: the king and his uncles called off the invasion until the following year. Flanders remained the intended staging region; the campaign that was supposed to depart from its coast did not proceed on the planned timetable.

By mid-September, Charles and his uncles had left Paris for the Flemish coast to assemble the armada. Charles was at Arras, on the way to Sluys, when news reached him that the Parlement had authorized a duel and set it for late November. The postponed invasion and the still-pending judicial combat now intersected: Charles expected to return in triumph from England, but instead the campaign’s delay left open the possibility that he would be present for the duel.

The King’s Return and the Duel Date

Charles, who was seventeen and eager to witness the combat, feared that bad weather or other delays might keep him away. His uncles—the dukes of Berry, Burgundy, and Bourbon—also wanted to see it and urged him to intervene. Less than a week before the appointed day, he sent a courier to Paris with sealed letters ordering that the duel be postponed until after his return. The Parlement met on November 24, three days before the combat was due to take place, and moved it to December 29.

That change extended the wait for Carrouges, Le Gris, and Marguerite by about a month. Flanders’s significance in the episode is therefore indirect but consequential: the plan to gather a French armada at Sluys drew the king from Paris; the weather that frustrated the expedition altered his expected return; and his desire to attend the duel gave that failed campaign a further effect on the proceedings. The port marks the intended direction of royal ambition, while the duel’s revised date records the consequences of that ambition’s delay.