One day, reading up on “our” street, I learned that it had been the scene of a bloody assassination in 1407 that changed the course of history. I’m a professor of medieval literature at UCLA, and I was researching a trial by combat that took place in Paris in 1386. I first learned about the courageous sleuth, Sir Guillaume de Tignonville, a decade ago, when my wife and I rented an apartment for a month on the Rue Vieille du Temple while I worked in the Paris archives. His bloody demise plunged France into civil war and led to Henry V’s devastating English invasion that put the “Hundred” in The Hundred Years’ War.Īnd yet the story of how Paris’ chief of police, a precursor to Raymond Chandler’s honorable detective hero who goes down the “mean streets” but “who is neither tarnished, nor afraid,” was lost for centuries. Louis had periodically ruled France during the king’s frequent spells of insanity. What Jacquette had just witnessed-and soon would describe to investigators-was the assassination of the king’s brother, Louis of Orleans. One of the killers looked up and yelled: “Shut up, you damned woman!”
Some of the assailants held torches, lighting the horrific scene. This shoemaker’s wife looked down from her upper-story window and saw a gang of masked thugs slicing up a kneeling man with swords and axes. On a chilly, moonless Parisian night, Jacquette Griffard was putting her baby to bed when she heard shouts in the street: “Kill him!”
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