Durward


by

Sir Walter Scott, Bart.







AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION


The scene of this romance is laid in the fifteenth century, when
the feudal system, which had been the sinews and nerves of national
defence, and the spirit of chivalry, by which, as by a vivifying soul,
that system was animated, began to be innovated upon and abandoned
by those grosser characters who centred their sum of happiness in
procuring the personal objects on which they had fixed their own
exclusive attachment. The same egotism had indeed displayed itself
even in more primitive ages; but it was now for the first time openly
avowed as a professed principle of action. The spirit of chivalry
had in it this point of excellence, that, however overstrained and
fantastic many of its doctrines may appear to us, they were all
founded on generosity and self denial, of which, if the earth were
deprived, it would be difficult to conceive the existence of virtue
among the human race.

Among those who were the first to ridicule and abandon the self
denying principles in which the young knight was instructed and to
which he was so carefully trained up, Louis XI of France was the
chief. That sovereign was of a character so purely selfish -- so
guiltless of entertaining any purpose unconnected with his ambition,
covetousness, and desire of selfish enjoyment -- that he almost
seems an incarnation of the devil himself, permitted to do his
utmost to corrupt our ideas of honour in its very source. Nor is it
to be forgotten that Louis possessed to a great extent that caustic
wit which can turn into ridicule all that a man does for any other
person's advantage but his own, and was, therefore, peculiarly
qualified to play the part of a cold hearted and sneering fiend.

The cruelties, the perjuries, the suspicions of this prince, were
rendered more detestable, rather than amended, by the gross and
debasing superstition which he constantly practised. The devotion
to the heavenly saints, of which he made such a parade, was upon the
miserable principle of some petty deputy in office, who endeavours
to hide or atone for the malversations of which he is conscious
by liberal gifts to those whose duty it is to observe his conduct,
and endeavours to support a system of fraud by an attempt to corrupt
the incorruptible. In no other light can we regard his creating the
Virgin Mary a countess and colonel of his guards, or the cunning
that admitted to one or two peculiar forms of oath the force of a
binding obligation which he denied to all other, strictly preserving
the secret, which mode of swearing he really accounted obligatory,
as one of the most valuable of state mysteries.

To a total want of scruple, or, it would appear, of any sense
whatever of moral obligation, Louis XI added great natural firmness
and sagacity of character, with a system of policy so highly refined,
considering the times he lived in, that he sometimes overreached
himself by giving way to its dictates.

Probably there is no portrait so dark as to be without its softer
shades. He understood the interests of France, and faithfully
pursued them so long as he could identify them with his own. He
carried the country safe through the dangerous crisis of the war
termed "for the public good;" in thus disuniting and dispersing this
grand and dangerous alliance of the great crown vassals of France
against the Sovereign, a king of a less cautious and temporizing
character, and of a more bold and less crafty disposition than
Louis XI, would, in all probability, have failed. Louis had also
some personal accomplishments not inconsistent with his public
character. He was cheerful and witty in society; and none was better
able to sustain and extol the superiority of the coarse and selfish
reasons by which he endeavoured to supply those nobler motives for
exertion which his predecessors had derived from the high spirit
of chivalry.

In fact, that system was now becoming ancient, and had, even while
in its perfection, something so overstrained and fantastic in
its principles, as rendered it peculiarly the object of ridicule,
whenever, like other old fashions, it began to fall out of repute;
and the weapons of raillery could be employed against it, without
exciting the disgust and horror with which they would have
been rejected at an early period, as a species of blasphemy. The
principles of chivalry were cast aside, and their aid supplied by
baser stimulants. Instead of the high spirit which pressed every
man forward in the defence of his country, Louis XI substituted the
exertions of the ever ready mercenary soldier, and persuaded his
subjects, among whom the mercantile class began to make a figure,
that it was better to leave to mercenaries the risks and labours
of war, and to supply the Crown with the means of paying them,
than to peril themselves in defence of their own substance. The
merchants were easily persuaded by this reasoning. The hour did not
arrive in the days of Louis XI when the landed gentry and nobles
could be in like manner excluded from the ranks of war; but the wily
monarch commenced that system, which, acted upon by his successors,
at length threw the whole military defence of the state into the
hands of the Crown.

He was equally forward in altering the principles which were wont
to regulate the intercourse of the sexes. The doctrines of chivalry
had established, in theory at least, a system in which Beauty was
the governing and remunerating divinity -- Valour, her slave, who
caught his courage from her eye and gave his life for her slightest
service. It is true, the system here, as in other branches, was stretched
to fantastic extravagance, and cases of scandal not unfrequently
arose. Still, they were generally such as those mentioned by Burke,
where frailty was deprived of half its guilt, by being purified from
all its grossness. In Louis XI's practice, it was far otherwise.
He was a low voluptuary, seeking pleasure without sentiment, and
despising the sex from whom he desired to obtain it. ... By selecting
his favourites and ministers from among the dregs of the people,
Louis showed the slight regard which he paid to eminent station
and high birth; and although this might be not only excusable but
meritorious, where the monarch's fiat promoted obscure talent, or
called forth modest worth, it was very different when the King made
his favourite associates of such men as the chief of his
police, Tristan l'Hermite. .

Nor were Louis's sayings and actions in private or public of a kind
which could redeem such gross offences against the character of a
man of honour. His word, generally accounted the most sacred test
of a man's character, and the least impeachment of which is a capital
offence by the code of honour, was forfeited without scruple on
the slightest occasion, and often accompanied by the perpetration
of the most enormous crimes ... It is more than probable that, in
thus renouncing almost openly the ties of religion, honour, and
morality, by which mankind at large feel themselves influenced, Louis
sought to obtain great advantages in his negotiations with parties
who might esteem themselves bound, while he himself enjoyed liberty.
He started from the goal, he might suppose, like the racer who
has got rid of the weights with which his competitors are still
encumbered, and expects to succeed of course. But Providence
seems always to unite the existence of peculiar danger with some
circumstance which may put those exposed to the peril upon their
guard. The constant suspicion attached to any public person who
becomes badly eminent for breach of faith is to him what the rattle
is to the poisonous serpent: and men come at last to calculate
not so much on what their antagonist says as upon that which he
is likely to do; a degree of mistrust which tends to counteract
the intrigues of such a character, more than his freedom from
the scruples of conscientious men can afford him advantage. .

Indeed, although the reign of Louis had been as successful in
a political point of view as he himself could have desired, the
spectacle of his deathbed might of itself be a warning piece against
the seduction of his example. Jealous of every one, but chiefly of
his own son, he immured himself in his Castle of Plessis, intrusting
his person exclusively to the doubtful faith of his Scottish
mercenaries. He never stirred from his chamber; he admitted no one
into it, and wearied heaven and every saint with prayers, not for
forgiveness of his sins, but for the prolongation of his life. With
a poverty of spirit totally inconsistent with his shrewd worldly
sagacity, he importuned his physicians until they insulted
as well as plundered him. .

It was not the least singular circumstance of this course, that
bodily health and terrestrial felicity seemed to be his only object.
Making any mention of his sins when talking on the state of his
health, was strictly prohibited; and when at his command a priest
recited a prayer to Saint Eutropius in which he recommended the
King's welfare both in body and soul, Louis caused the two last
words to be omitted, saying it was not prudent to importune the
blessed saint by too many requests at once. Perhaps he thought by
being silent on his crimes he might suffer them to pass out of the
recollection of the celestial patrons, whose aid he invoked for
his body.

So great were the well merited tortures of this tyrant's deathbed,
that Philip de Comines enters into a regular comparison between
them and the numerous cruelties inflicted on others by his order;
and considering both, comes to express an opinion that the worldly
pangs and agony suffered by Louis were such as might compensate the
crimes he had committed, and that, after a reasonable quarantine
in purgatory, he might in mercy he found duly qualified for the
superior regions ... The instructive but appalling scene of this
tyrant's sufferings was at length closed by death, 30th August,
1483.

The selection of this remarkable person as the principal character
in the romance -- for it will be easily comprehended that the little
love intrigue of Quentin is only employed as the means of bringing
out the story -- afforded considerable facilities to the author.
In Louis XI's time, extraordinary commotions existed throughout
all Europe. England's Civil Wars were ended, rather in appearance
than reality, by the short lived ascendancy of the House of York.
Switzerland was asserting that freedom which was afterwards so
bravely defended. In the Empire and in France, the great vassals
of the crown were endeavouring to emancipate themselves from its
control, while Charles of Burgundy by main force, and Louis more
artfully by indirect means, laboured to subject them to subservience
to their respective sovereignties. Louis, while with one hand
he circumvented and subdued his own rebellious vassals, laboured
secretly with the other to aid and encourage the large trading
towns of Flanders to rebel against the Duke of Burgundy, to which
their wealth and irritability naturally disposed them. In the more
woodland districts of Flanders, the Duke of Gueldres, and William
de la Marck, called from his ferocity the Wild Boar of Ardennes,
were throwing off the habits of knights and gentlemen to practise
the violences and brutalities of common bandits.

[Chapter I gives a further account of the conditions of the period
which Quentin Durward portrays.]

A hundred secret combinations existed in the different provinces
of France and Flanders; numerous private emissaries of the restless
Louis, Bohemians, pilgrims, beggars, or agents disguised as such,
were everywhere spreading the discontent which it was his policy
to maintain in the dominions of Burgundy.

Amidst so great an abundance of materials,