Chapter XXIV: Quentin Durward

The true 'Scott Country' is limited strictly to Scotland, England, and Wales. So long as he remained upon the soil of his own native kingdom, Sir Walter wrote of what he had seen and for the most part traversed only familiar ground. In Scotland, he was equally at home in the Lowlands or Highlands. He visited England often enough to know well the inspiring mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, the hills and valleys of Northumberland, the broad expanse of Yorkshire, with its delightful scenery and many historical associations, the moorlands of Derby, the charming roads and pleasant villages of Nottingham, Leicester, Warwick, and Oxford, and the highways and by-ways of the ever-fascinating London. With the history, the legends and the poetry of his own country he was as familiar as a child would be with the environment of his own home. They were a part of the mental equipment that had been developing steadily from the time he was three years old.

When he stepped out of this familiar region, for the first time, there came a remarkable change, and in January, 1823, when he began the composition of 'Quentin Durward,' we find him floundering about in a sea of gazetteers, atlases, histories, and geographies. On the 23d of that month he wrote to Constable:--'It is a vile place, this village of Plessis les Tours, that can baffle {338} both you and me. It is a place famous in history ... yet I have not found it in any map, provincial or general, which I have consulted.... Instead of description holding the place of sense, I must try to make such sense as I can find, hold the place of description.'

Fortunately he had the assistance of his friend Skene, who about this time returned from a tour in France, and placed at the disposal of the author a great variety of sketches of landscapes and ancient buildings, besides a journal full of accurate notes; for the novelist's artist-friend knew from long companionship exactly what would be most appreciated.

Though a stranger in a strange land, Scott was not entirely alone, for he took with him into the unknown country three good Scotchmen, namely, Quentin Durward, whom he made an archer in the Scots Guard of King Louis XI; the picturesque and interesting Le Balafré, Quentin's uncle, already a guardsman; and Lord Crawford, the aged commander of the guard, a Scotch nobleman, whose great ability and experience had won the esteem and confidence even of the suspicious King. This was surely a stroke of genius. The old Scotch friends of the novelist could not help following with interest the thrilling adventures of their countrymen in a foreign land, while, on the other hand, the tale raised up a host of new admirers in France and throughout the Continent. The Frenchmen saw with amazement King Louis XI and Charles the Bold suddenly come to life and, under the skilful direction of the Scottish Wizard, walk about again amidst some of the most stirring scenes of European history. Not in all their literature had the French people seen such striking {339} portraiture of these famous men nor such vivid pictures of the ancient manners of their own people.

A line, nearly straight, drawn diagonally across the map of France and Belgium, representing a distance of perhaps three hundred and fifty miles, will fairly suggest the geography of 'Quentin Durward.' Its southwestern extremity would be Tours, about one hundred and forty-five miles from Paris. It would pass through Péronne, in the north of France directly east of Amiens; then dropping slightly to the south, and across the border of Belgium would reach its northeastern termination in the city of Liège.

The town of Tours was much favoured in the fifteenth century by the frequent visits of Charles VII, Louis XI, and Charles VIII, in consequence of which it then reached its highest state of prosperity. It was long famed for its silk industry, founded by Louis XI. Two miles west of the town, on a low marshy plain between the rivers Loire and Cher, and close by a hamlet of a few scattered cottages, is the famous Castle of Plessis les Tours, where the action of the story begins. Only a fragment of the original structure now remains, as part of a modern château.

The old castle looked more like a prison than a king's palace, and seemed well adapted to be the den of the 'universal spider,' as Louis came to be called, from which he could weave his dangerous web in every direction and ensnare the feet of those whom he selected for his prey. It was in this dismal place that Louis XI shut himself in the last days of his life, weak from illness and pain and almost insane from distrust. Here he died, in 1483, to the great joy of the kingdom.

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Every year he had added new walls and ditches to his fortress. The towers were covered with iron as a protection against arrows. Eighteen hundred heavy planks bristling with nails were placed outside the ditches to impede the approach of cavalry. Four hundred crossbowmen manned the towers and the villainous Tristan l'Hermite had full authority to seize and hang any innocent stranger whom he might choose to suspect.

As I write, I have before me two pictures:--one a contemporary print of the ancient castle, the other a portrait of the King. The former, a group of low, irregular buildings, with slanting roofs and small barred windows, having a chapel attached to one end, contains nothing whatever to suggest a royal palace. The latter shows the face of a sly, cunning, unscrupulous plotter, full of cruelty, baseness, vulgarity, and hypocrisy, yet terribly in earnest and revealing the features that mark an irresistible will. I can almost fancy a resemblance between the two pictures. The mean unpretentiousness of the castle and its lack of symmetry suggest the unprepossessing appearance of the King, whose whole aspect was vulgar, his clothing purposely plain and often untidy and his manners completely devoid of dignity and common courtesy. Its numerous defences, including turrets, battlements, ditches, and drawbridges, suggest the constant fear of treachery in which the King lived, never daring to regard his most intimate companions with aught but jealous suspicion. The real strength of the fortress, in spite of its ugliness and apparent insignificance are typical of the tremendous power of this monarch, who pursued his purposes without regard to truth, decency, honour, or human rights, reducing the {341} people to a state of abject poverty and misery, yet enlarging the borders of France to nearly their present extent, reorganizing the army, centralizing the government, and laying the foundations of the nation in its modern form.

One might almost indulge the whimsical notion that the little chapel to which I have referred, pointing heavenward with an attenuated spire of absurdly slender proportions, symbolizes the King's own feeble efforts to point in the same direction. His piety was manifested by a dozen 'paltry figures of saints stamped in lead' which he wore on the band of his hat. He endeavoured to atone for the most atrocious acts of selfishness and cruelty by gifts of money and outward penance, continuing his wickedness all the while, but apologizing for it in his prayers to the saints. But the crowning act of hypocritical piety, as well as the most absurd, was his attempt to insure his ultimate salvation by the unique expedient of creating the Virgin Mary a countess and an honorary colonel of his guards.

This was the strange, but intensely interesting, character, whom Scott, making free use of the 'Memoirs of Philippe de Comines,' one of the King's most intimate councillors, succeeded in portraying so vividly that the tale of which he is the real hero has won universal recognition as a novel of genuine historical value.

A few miles southeast of Tours is the ruin of a castle still more terrible in its suggestiveness than even Plessis, for here Louis XI perpetrated deeds of secret cruelty, which he shrank from committing within the walls of his own palace. It is the Castle of Loches, for many years a royal residence. It is interesting to Scotchmen from {342} the fact that it was the scene of the royal wedding of King James V to the Princess Magdalene, in whose honour the Palace of Linlithgow was remodelled and greatly embellished.

The castle is now a pile of ruined buildings, standing on the summit of a lofty rock, where it dominates the landscape. Its principal tower is one hundred and twenty feet high, with walls eight feet thick. Its date is said to be the twelfth century. A part of it is now the local jail, and the building has been used as a prison for centuries. Beneath were dungeons under dungeons, dimly lighted by narrow windows, cut through small recesses in the walls, which are here ten or twelve feet thick. In two of these were the iron cages invented by Cardinal John de La Balue. He was a cobbler, some say a tailor, whom Louis elevated to the highest rank and employed in his secret devices. The cage was built of iron bars and was only eight feet square. The Cardinal proved a traitor to his king and the latter's severity kept him in the dungeon cells for eleven years, a part of which time, at least, was spent in one of the cages of his own invention. The governor and gaoler of this dreaded prison was Oliver le Daim, the King's barber and prime minister.

The events culminating in the murder of the Bishop of Liège were, of course, purely fictitious. Scott did not hesitate to 'violate history,' as he afterward expressed it, to meet the requirements of his story. The actual murder of the Bishop occurred in 1482, fourteen years after the period of the novel and five years after the death of Charles the Bold. William de la Marck, called the 'Wild Boar of Ardennes,' wishing to place the mitre {343} on the head of his own son, entered into a conspiracy with some of the rebellious citizens of Liège, against their Bishop, Louis de Bourbon. The latter was enticed to the edge of the town, where he was met by the fierce and bloodthirsty knight, who murdered him with his own hand and caused the body to be exposed naked in St. Lambert's Place, before the cathedral. Scott's version, never intended to be historically accurate, places the scene of the murder in the fictitious Castle of Schonwaldt, outside the city.

The description of the meeting of Louis XI and Charles the Bold at the town of Péronne and the King's imprisonment in the castle, while somewhat amplified with fictitious details, is in the essential facts quite in accord with history. Péronne is a small town of great antiquity, ninety-four miles northeast of Paris, in the Department of the Somme. Its castle still retains four conical-roofed towers in fairly good repair. On the ground floor are many dark and dismal dungeons. In one of these miserable cells Charles the Simple, in the year 929, ended his days in agony. He was confined in the tower by the treachery of Herbert, Count of Vermandois, and left there to starve to death. Adjoining this room, in what is known as the Tour Herbert, is the chamber said to have been occupied by Louis XI.

Great was the surprise and alarm among the retainers of Louis when that monarch, trusting to an exaggerated notion of his own wit and powers of persuasion, proposed to visit his most formidable adversary, Charles of Burgundy, at the town of Péronne. The latter granted the King's request for a safe-conduct, and Louis set forth in October, 1482, accompanied by a small {344} detachment of his Scots Guard and men-at-arms, and two faithless councillors, the Constable de St. Pol and the Cardinal de La Balue. The Duke met the King outside the town and together they walked in apparent friendliness to the house of the Chamberlain, Charles apologizing for not taking the King to the castle because it was not in fit condition. Some portion of the Duke's army arrived the same day and encamped outside the walls. Learning this, the King became greatly frightened and demanded quarters in the castle--a request which Charles granted with great, but secret, glee. The next day brought forth nothing but ill-feeling and misunderstanding, which was brought to a climax by the news from Liège. It was reported that the emissaries of Louis had stirred up sedition against the Duke, and had killed the Bishop of Liège, and the Lord of Humbercourt. Charles was a man of tremendous passions and this news threw him into a fury which he made little attempt to control. His royal guest became his prisoner, the gates of the town and the castle were closed, and for a time Louis was in danger of his life at the hands of his enraged vassal. Louis, meanwhile, remained calm, making full use of his native shrewdness, keenness of penetration, and unusual cunning. By a liberal use of money, with which he had sagaciously provided himself, the Duke's servants were corrupted wherever he could hope to secure information or assistance. His craftiness, however, proved unnecessary. Charles cooled off after a day or two and realized that he could not well afford to violate his safe-conduct. Meanwhile the news from Liège turned out more favourably. The Bishop had not been slain and the revolt had been less serious than {345} supposed. Charles, however, compelled the King to swear a new treaty, which Louis did by taking from one of his boxes a piece of the 'true cross,' a relic, formerly belonging, so it was said, to Charlemagne, which Louis regarded with great veneration. The oath upon the cross duly made, Louis accompanied his captor on an expedition against the town of Liège, the particulars of which were not essentially different from the version of Scott.

The novel brings out to great advantage the striking contrast between the King and the Duke. Charles was strong, vigorous, clear-sighted, and in the words of Philippe de Comines, 'a great and honourable prince, as much esteemed for a time amongst his neighbours as any prince in Christendom.' The great fault of his character was that expressed in the sobriquet, Charles the Rash; and this was the cause of his downfall. That, however, is a tale which Scott reserved for a later novel.

Though received at first with apparent indifference, 'Quentin Durward' came in time to be regarded as one of the best of the Waverley Novels, dividing the honours, in the minds of the boys, at least, with 'Ivanhoe' and 'The Talisman.'

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