In Paris, the last officially sanctioned judicial duel in French history took place between Guy de Chabot, Count of Jarnac, and François de Vivonne, Seigneur de la Châtaigneraie. King Henry II presided over the combat, which ended when Jarnac struck a crippling blow to La Châtaigneraie's leg, leading to his death. The duel was fought to resolve a slander dispute, and the unexpected outcome humiliated the king's favored champion.

The Jarnac-Châtaigneraie duel gave French the phrase "coup de Jarnac" for a sneaky or unexpected blow, entering literary language and poetry as a metaphor for concealed danger. The event influenced French poetic and dramatic traditions around honor combat, appearing in works by Alexandre Dumas and inspiring Romantic poets who used the duel as a symbol of the gap between chivalric ideal and brutal reality.