Parlement’s inquiry into the rape accusation

The Parlement of Paris’s inquiry into the rape accusation brought a local dispute before the kingdom’s highest court and turned an accusation, already rejected by Count Pierre of Alençon, into a matter of national controversy. The enquête gathered testimony and secured the parties’ attendance, but the record did not settle what had happened. Instead, the inquiry’s eventual consequence was to permit Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris to contest the charge through a judicial duel, with Marguerite de Carrouges’s fate bound to its outcome.

From a lord’s hearing to royal jurisdiction

Before the Parlement took up the case, Count Pierre investigated the rumor that Jean de Carrouges was spreading about his favorite, Jacques Le Gris. He questioned two nobles who knew Jean and his affairs: Sir Bernard de La Tour, Jean’s brother-in-law, and Jean Crespin, at whose home the two men had supposedly reconciled and where Le Gris had first met Marguerite. They reported that Jean and Marguerite had made the accusation known in several places and wished to bring their complaint before the count. Count Pierre assembled a court of prelates, knights, council members, and other experienced men to hear them. Though responsible for settling disputes among his vassals, he was also Le Gris’s patron and favorite, a conflict that compromised his impartiality.

Count Pierre’s judgment left Le Gris innocent of the accusation and his alleged accomplice absolved. Jean de Carrouges then appealed to the Parlement, taking the dispute beyond the seigneurial court that had first heard it. The surviving case summary and testimony preserve the inquiry’s documentary basis. Marguerite’s testimony was recorded in court, while Jean’s account was based on hers; the source notes that she dictated it to him. The testimony thus entered the official process through a record shaped by their relationship, rather than as two wholly separate accounts.

Securing attendance and widening the case

The Parlement required both Jean and Le Gris to remain within reach while it examined the appeal. Rather than imprisoning them, it allowed them liberty within the city walls on condition that each swear to return whenever summoned. Flight or failure to appear would be treated as evidence of guilt and could lead to summary conviction and execution. To reinforce those obligations, each man had to name six noble pledges sworn to produce him, even by force if necessary.

The twelve pledges were distinguished men, many with military reputations and their own households, family ties, and followings. Jean’s chief pledge was Count Waleran de Saint-Pol, a close associate of the king and veteran of royal campaigns; among Le Gris’s leading pledges was Philip of Artois, Count of Eu, recently returned from fighting the English in Gascony. Their involvement multiplied the number of people connected to the case. What had begun as a dispute in Normandy was now a subject of debate at the royal court, with influential circles already taking sides before the enquête had run its course.

The inquiry also brought the alleged accomplice, Adam Louvel, back into the proceedings. After the Parlement summoned him, Louvel appeared before Charles VI at Château de Vincennes on July 22. There, in the presence of the king, his uncles, and courtiers, Thomin du Bois, a cousin of Marguerite, accused Louvel of attacking her and threw down his gage of battle. He asked that Louvel’s refusal to fight, if he denied the charge, be treated as an admission of guilt. This second challenge raised the prospect of two duels. Louvel requested time to consult his counsel; the records then show a wider set of arrests and examinations. On August 20, Louvel’s son Guillaume and two other men were taken into custody in connection with the wagers of battle involving Jean and Thomin on one side, and Le Gris and Adam Louvel on the other. The record suggests the two proceedings had been joined.

Evidence, uncertainty, and the duel

The Parlement’s process exposed the limits as well as the reach of its investigation. Adam Louvel was confined in the Conciergerie and ordered to be questioned under torture; Jean Le Coq’s diary also identifies a maidservant said to have been at the Carrouges residence that day among those examined. Neither Louvel nor the maidservant confessed. The inquiry therefore expanded the number of people questioned without producing a confession that resolved the central accusation.

Jean Le Coq had urged Le Gris to claim benefit of clergy and avoid the risk of a duel, but Le Gris refused. The Parlement could thus continue its inquiry with both principals subject to its summonses. At the July 9 encounter, Jean and Le Gris left the Palais for lodgings on opposite sides of Paris to prepare testimony. If the court rejected Jean’s appeal, Count Pierre’s verdict would stand and Le Gris would remain innocent of the charge; if it authorized a duel, that verdict would effectively be set aside and Jean could try to prove his accusation in combat.

The Parlement ultimately authorized the duel in the king’s name. The decision made the proceedings public in a new way: thousands were expected at Saint-Martin’s dueling ground, where the king would preside and Marguerite, as the accuser, would watch under sentence of death if her husband lost. Her black clothing and position at the field made visible the personal stakes that the legal inquiry had not settled. When Jean later asked the crowd whether he had done his duty, ten thousand voices answered together. That public acclamation confirmed his victory in the eyes of the spectators; it did not provide an independent account of the alleged crime. The inquiry’s decisive result was therefore procedural and theatrical: unable to make the disputed past certain, the court transferred judgment to a combat whose outcome would determine the parties’ immediate fates.