Sauvage’s case has cast a spotlight on the tricky and controversial legal argument known as “battered woman syndrome”.

Her lawyer Nathalie Tomasini had appealed to the court to “push the limits of self-defence applied to situations of marital violence.”

In French law for an act to be considered self-defence, it must be seen as proportional and in direct response to an act of aggression.

Killing in response to repeated acts of violence suffered over decades, as in Sauvage’s case, did not meet this test.