First published: 1823

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plot: 1468

Locale: France and Flanders

The Story:

When Quentin Durward, a young Scottish gentleman, approaches the ford of a small river near the castle of Plessisles-Tours, in France, he finds the river in flood. Two people watch him from the opposite bank. They are King Louis XI in his common disguise of Maître Pierre, a merchant, and Tristan l’Hermite, marshal of France. Quentin enters the flood and nearly drowns. Arriving on the other side and mistaking the king and his companion for a burgher and a butcher, he threatens the two with a drubbing because they did not warn him of the deep ford. Amused by Quentin’s spirit and daring, Maître Pierre takes him to breakfast at a nearby inn to make amends. At the inn, Quentin meets a beautiful young peasant, Jacqueline, who actually is Isabelle, the countess of Croye. Quentin tries to learn why the merchant Maître Pierre acts so much like a noble. He sees many other things as well that arouse his curiosity but for which he finds no explanation.

Shortly afterward, Quentin meets Ludovic Lesly, known as Le Balafré, his maternal uncle, who is a member of King Louis’s Scottish Archers. Le Balafré is exceedingly surprised to learn that Quentin can read and write, something that no other Durward or Lesly before him has been able to do.

Later, Quentin discovers the body of a man hanging from a tree. When he cuts the body down, he is seized by two officers of Tristan l’Hermite. They are about to hang Quentin for his deed when he asks of the crowd that has gathered if there is a good Christian among them who will inform Le Balafré of what is taking place. A Scottish Archer hears him and cuts his bonds. While Quentin and the man prepare to defend themselves from the mob, Le Balafré rides up with some of his men and takes command of the situation, haughtily insisting that Quentin is a member of the Scottish Archers and beyond the reach of the marshal’s men. Quentin has not joined the guards as yet, but the lie saves his life. Le Balafré takes Quentin to see Lord Crawford, the commander of the guards, to enroll him. When the Scottish Archers are summoned to the royal presence, Quentin is amazed to see that Maître Pierre is King Louis.

Count Philip de Crèvecœur arrives at the castle to demand an audience with the king in the name of his master, the duke of Burgundy. When the king admits Crèvecœur, the messenger presents a list of wrongs and oppressions committed on the frontier for which the duke of Burgundy demands redress. The duke also requests that Louis cease his secret and underhanded dealings in the towns of Ghent, Liège, and Malines. Further, he requests that the king send back to Burgundy, under safeguard, the person of Isabelle, the countess of Croye; Isabelle is the duke’s ward, and the duke accuses the king of harboring her in secret. Dissatisfied with the king’s replies to these demands, Crèvecœur throws his gauntlet to the floor of the hall. Several of the king’s attendants rush to pick it up and to accept the challenge it represents, but the king orders the bishop of Auxerre to lift the gauntlet and to remonstrate with Crèvecœur for thus declaring war between Burgundy and France. The king and his courtiers then leave to hunt wild boar.

During the hunt, Quentin Durward saves the king’s life by spearing a wild boar after Louis has slipped and fallen before the infuriated beast. The king decides to reward Quentin with a special mission: He is ordered to stand guard in the room where the king is to entertain Crèvecœur and others; at a sign from the king, Quentin is to shoot the Burgundian. When the time comes, however, the king changes his mind and does not give the signal. The king then makes Quentin the personal bodyguard of Isabelle and her aunt, Lady Hameline, as they travel to seek the protection of the bishop of Liège.

En route to Liège, the party is assaulted by the Count de Dunois and the duke of Orleans. Quentin defends himself with great courage and receives timely help from Lord Crawford, who arrives with a body of Scottish Archers and takes both men prisoner. The party’s guide on the second half of the journey is Hayraddin Maugrabin, a Bohemian; his brother was the man whom Quentin had cut down earlier. Nothing untoward occurs until the small party reaches Flanders. There Quentin discovers, by following Hayraddin, that a plot has been hatched to attack his party and carry off the women to William de la Marck, known as the Wild Boar of Ardennes. Quentin frustrates these plans by guiding the party up the left bank of the Maes instead of the right. They proceed safely to Liège, where Quentin gives the women over to the protection of the bishop at his castle of Schonwaldt. Four days later, William de la Marck attacks the castle and captures it during the night. Lady Hameline escapes. In the bishop’s throne room in the castle, William de la Marck murders the churchman in front of his own episcopal throne. Aroused by the brutality of William, Quentin steps to the side of Carl Eberson, William’s son, and places his dagger at the boy’s throat; he threatens to kill the lad if William does not cease his butchery. In the ensuing confusion, Quentin finds Isabelle and takes her safely from the castle disguised as the daughter of the syndic of Liège. They are pursued by William’s men but are rescued by a party under Count de Crèvecœur, who conducts them safely to the court of the duke of Burgundy at Peroune.

The king arrives at the castle of the duke of Burgundy, asserting the royal prerogative of visiting any of his vassals. Disregarding the laws of hospitality, the duke imprisons Louis and then holds a council to debate the difficulties between France and Burgundy. Hayraddin appears claiming to be a herald from William de la Marck, who has married the Lady Hameline. Toison d’Or, the duke’s herald, however, unmasks Hayraddin, who has given himself away with his lack of knowledge of the science of heraldry. The duke releases Hayraddin and sets his fierce boar hounds on the Bohemian, but then he orders the dogs called off before they can tear Hayraddin to shreds. The duke then orders that Hayraddin be hanged with the proper ceremony.

The king and the duke also debate the disposal of Isabelle’s fortune and her hand in marriage, but she has fallen in love with Quentin and says that she prefers the cloister to any of their suggested alliances. The duke solves the problem, at least to his satisfaction, by declaring that Isabelle’s hand will be given to the man who brings him the head of William de la Marck.

The king and the duke join forces to assault Liège. Their combined forces besiege the city but are forced to go into bivouac at nightfall. That night, William makes a foray but is driven back into the city. The next day, the forces of the king and the duke attack once more, make breaches in the wall, and pour into the city. Quentin comes face-to-face with William de la Marck, who rushes at him with all the fury of the wild boar for which he is named. Le Balafré stands by and roars out for fair play, indicating that this should be a duel of champions. At that moment, Quentin sees a woman being forcibly dragged along by a French soldier. When he turns to rescue her, Le Balafré attacks William and kills him.

Le Balafré is announced as the man who killed William de la Marck, but he gives most of the credit to Quentin’s valiant behavior and defers to his nephew. While it is agreed that Quentin is responsible for William’s death, there is still the problem of Quentin’s lineage, which the duke questions. Lord Crawford, indignant, recites Quentin’s pedigree and thereby proves his gentility. Without more ado, Quentin and Countess Isabelle are betrothed.

Critical Evaluation:

Quentin Durward appeared when Sir Walter Scott’s career as a novelist was nearly a decade old. Although Scott was still signing his novels “By the Author of Waverley,” his authorship was by no means unknown. The “Wizard of the North” touched the familiar formulas of his fiction with an undeniable magic. With Waverley: Or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since (1814), Scott had invented the historical novel, a new genre. This fictional treatment of the last of the Stuart uprisings in 1745, manifesting genuine insight into events “sixty years since,” had been solidly founded on his knowledge of Scotland, its history, and its people. The author had perceived in the Jacobite-Hanoverian conflict the clash of two cultures at the very moment when the former was passing away forever and the other was just coming into being. He had made figures from history a part of his fiction, through them creating the tensions in which his fictitious characters were caught. This first novel established the pattern and theme for the serious historical novel, not only Scott’s “Waverley novels” but also the works of later writers such as James Fenimore Cooper.

Abounding in wealth and fame, his energies given also to public service, business, an estate in Scotland, an active social life, and other kinds of writing, Scott worked too hard and wrote too fast—one novel a year, sometimes two. With his tenth novel, Ivanhoe (1819), he sagaciously determined that his English reading public, after so many Scottish novels, would welcome a foray into English history. Ivanhoe became the talk of London, and his career gained new impetus. By 1823, however, his publisher, conscious of Scott’s waning popularity, advised him to turn to other kinds of writing. The author, however, boldly moved into the foreign territory of fifteenth century France and once again created a literary sensation—the reception of his new novel in Paris rivaled that of Ivanhoe in London. After Quentin Durward, Scott was recognized as a great writer both at home and abroad.

Quentin Durward stands as a milestone in Scott’s career rather than as a significant novel. His own remarks on the work contain casual apologies for his license with historical facts; some critics charge him with the worse fault of allowing superficial knowledge to make of Quentin Durward a mere costume romance rather than a serious historical novel. Others rate it simply as a good tale of adventure.

Nevertheless, Quentin Durward provides a good example of the conflict at the heart of Scott’s best historical novels—the thematic clash between the old order and the new. The order that is passing away is the age of chivalry, with its feudal system and its chivalric code. The age that is coming into being takes its traits from the leader who, rather than the titular hero, is the central character of the novel—King Louis XI of France. Louis is the antithesis of the chivalric ideal. Honor is but a word to him; he studies the craft of dissimulation. His unceremonious manners express contempt rather than knightly humility. He exercises the virtues of generosity and courtesy only with ulterior motives. Crafty and false, committed to his own self-interest, he is a complete Machiavellian.

If Louis is the chief representative of the new age, no one is a genuine survivor of the old, despite noblemen who cling to a narrow concept of honor or imitate medieval splendor. Although Louis’s principal rival, Charles of Burgundy, is his direct opposite, Charles is an inadequate symbol of chivalry. When Quentin says that he can win more honor under Charles’s banner than under those of the king, Le Balafré counters with a description more accurate: “The Duke of Burgundy is a hot-brained, impetuous, pudding-headed, iron-ribbed dare-all.” The decay of chivalry is epitomized in the hopelessness of Quentin’s search for a leader who will keep his honor bright and is confirmed by his ultimate conclusion that none of these great leaders is any better than any other. During the dramatic episode at Charles’s court, when the king, ironically, is prisoner of his own vassal, the court historian, Des Comines, reminds Louis—who knows better than anyone else—that strict interpretation of the feudal law is becoming outdated, while opportunity and power drive men to compromise and alter the old codes of chivalry.

Quentin Durward is the standard-bearer of the old order. Desiring to follow a man who will never avoid a battle and will keep a generous state, with tournaments and feasting and dancing with ladies, he lives on ideas of brave deeds and advancement. Quentin’s ideals, however, are impossible from the start. His rootlessness is symptomatic of the dying culture he reveres. His only real ties are with the mercenary band of Scottish Archers. Their weatherbeaten leader, Lord Crawford, one of the last leaders of a brave band of Scottish lords and knights, as well as Quentin’s kinsman, the hideously scarred, almost bestial Le Balafré, serve as evidence that the glorious past is irrevocably past.

Although Quentin is introduced as a simple and naïve youth, he is not a rare example of perfect chivalry. Equipped only with a rude mountain chivalry, he has his fair share of shrewdness and cunning. Far more politic than his experienced kinsman Le Balafré, this simple youth counsels Isabelle on the ways of telling half-truths with a skill that would credit Louis himself. Although it offends his dignity as a gentleman to accept money from a rich plebeian—ironically, King Louis disguised—Quentin immediately discerns that the simple maid of the little turret is far more attractive after she is revealed as Isabelle, the countess of Croye, a highborn heir. Presented by the king with an unpleasant crisis—an order to be prepared to kill the noble Crèvecœur from ambush—in which it would be “destruction in refusing, while his honor told him there would be disgrace in complying,” Quentin chooses compliance.

As an emblem of the future, Quentin is neither as contemptible as his wily king nor as foolish as his older comrades deem him. The venerable Lord Crawford defends him well when he argues: “Quentin Durward is as much a gentleman as the king, only as the Spaniard says, not so rich. He is as noble as myself, and I am chief of my name.” The youthful squire successfully endures the perilous journey, the chivalric testing of a man, bravely and skillfully evading the snares of the wicked, from the literal traps in and around Louis’s castle to the treacherous ambush planned by the king and the more horrible fate threatening him during the sack of Schonwaldt. Therefore, only partially valid is Crèvecœur’s ironic description of Quentin’s trials as a pleasant journey full of heroic adventure and high hope. Crèvecœur’s capitulation at the end is more just: “But why should I grudge this youth his preferment? Since, after all, it is sense, firmness, and gallantry which have put him in possession of Wealth, Rank, and Beauty!”

In the characterization of both Quentin and Louis, Scott dramatizes the ambiguities that afflict a time of transition. Although Louis lacks any real sense of moral obligation, he nevertheless understands the interests of France and faithfully pursues them. Detested as too cautious and crafty, he nevertheless exhibits a coolness before the wrath of Charles that far outshines the brave deeds of arms that Quentin values. If Quentin too passively drifts into the service of Louis, he can summon courage enough to defy the king and principle enough to support the king in adversity—even at the cost of telling a little falsehood and the risk of sacrificing his life.

In this novel, as in others, Scott vividly depicts the various ways in which people cope with a world of changing values, where, as Crèvecœur’s speech jocularly implies, sense and firmness have replaced gallantry, and wealth and rank have toppled beauty in the scale of things. It is this view of reality that seems most characteristic of the author: He is, like Quentin, most certainly a Romantic, idealizing the glories of a legendary time; but he understands the practical demands of a present reality and the value of a Louis or of a shrewd and brave youth such as Quentin Durward.

Further Reading