Quentin Durward

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Quentin Durward

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Quentin Durward, by Sir Walter Scott
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Title: Quentin Durward
Author: Sir Walter Scott
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QUENTIN 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,