Quentin Durward | Page 2

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