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QUENTIN DURWARD
(1823)
by Sir Walter Scott Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. Review for http://www.barnesandnoble.com Reviewer's Rating: * * * * FOUR STARS (Recommended) Title of Review: A Novel of France's 15th Century crafty King Louis XI Sir Walter Scott, father of the historical novel, never perfectly resolved the difference between history and fiction. Indeed, he once said that history was half fiction. We read his tales primarily for their plots and characters, not for minute historical accuracy. But his two novels of Duke Charles of Burgundy, namely QUENTIN DURWARD and ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN, can inspire us to reach for real history books of the same era. QUENTIN DURWARD's pivotal year is 1468 in France. We learn of the recent inventions of printing, spectacles and playing cards. Louis XI is King of France, Mephistopheles in morals, cynicism and politics. But wildly superstitious withal: he made the Virgin Mary a countess and a colonel in his Scotch guards. Twenty year old Quentin Durward leaves Scotland after the rival Ogilvies wipe out most of his highland family in Glen of the Midges. He finds fortune in his uncle's company of Scottish Archers who guard King Louis XI of France. To this he is helped by a disguised King Louis. Louis assigns Quentin (whose horoscope parallels his own) to escort 16 year old Countess Isabelle to a new refuge with the Prince Bishop of Liege. Isabelle had sought refuge with the King of France when the King's vassal, Charles the Bold of Burgundy had tried to force her to marry his Italian corps commander Campo Basso (who, like Charles, will reappear in ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN). Louis XI, an evil, superstitious worldly-wise monarch is just the man France needs in the year 1468. The English have been driven out. But the feudal barons want to disintegrate France. Louis strives to weaken them. Towards Charles, Louis XI's strategy includes inciting rebellion in Charles's rich cities of Flanders. Lurking in the background and named 300 or more times in the novel is William de la Marck, the "Wild Boar of Ardennes," a nobleman gone wrong who leads mercenary freebooters and terrorizes the low countries. Louis tries to arrange that the Wild Boar kidnap Countess Isabelle en route to Liege. But Quentin learns what is afoot and prevents that. The novel ends with Louis in the power of his enemy Charles and forced to join in the assault of Liege, whose Bishop the Wild Boar has assassinated. Louis had agreed reluctantly that whichever person killed la Marck would win the hand of the fair Isabelle. Quentin Durward came close, but broke off single combat to save a Flemish maiden who had befriended Isabelle. Meanwhile his uncle finished off the Wild Boar. Quentin's uncle then conceded the hand of Isabelle to his nephew, preventing Isabelle from joining an Ursuline convent. -OOO- Also recommended: Sir Walter Scott: ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN, IVANHOE, THE TALISMAN, THE BETROTHAL. Jane Oliver: THE BLUE HEAVEN BENDS OVER ALL: A NOVEL OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. -OOO- 01/02/2007 Black Mountain, North Carolina =-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. Reviewed for http://www.amazon.com Rating: * * * * Review Title: A DUKE TRAPS A KING, THEN LETS HIM SLIP AWAY Sir Walter Scott's novel QUENTIN DURWARD, written in 1823, made his reputation in France. Nobody had ever written historical fiction about that country as Scott did. It would not be long before the Dumases Father and Son would go and do likewise in their novels. The year is 1468, but events that take place years later, such as the killing of the Prince Bishop of Liege, are also compressed into that year. The nominal hero of the book is 20 year old Quentin Durward, a poor Scotsman of noble birth, forced to seek his fortune outside Britain after his family was slaughtered by rival Highlanders. He falls in love with the beautiful, vastly wealthy Countess Isabelle, age 16. She is an orphan and liege of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, the richest ruler in Europe, who yearns to be an independent King and no longer feudal subject to King Louis XI of France. Isabelle and a ditzy aunt have fled to Louis for protection. He sends them on to their relative the Bishop of Liege, in the charge of the latest addition to his Scottish Archers/Bodyguard, Quentin Durward, whose uncle is a veteran in that same unit. King Louis, to make trouble for Duke Charles, stirs up rebellion in Liege and other Flemish possessions of the latter and schemes to have the Countess Isabelle kidnapped and married en route by William de la Marck, a dissolute nobleman nicknamed The Wild Boar of Ardennes. Quentin overhears his assigned Gypsy guide to Liege negotiating the ambush with a follower of the Boar, takes a different route and saves Isabelle. Stupidly, however, Louis XI, probably the cleverest King France ever had, places himself in the hands of Duke Charles and, to save his life or at least prevent abdication and retirement to a monastery, agrees to serve under Charles in putting down a rebellion in Liege. The Wild Boar of Ardennes had provided the muscle and led the rich burghers to rebel against their bishop whom he slew, despite the bishop's earlier personal kindnesses. In a burst of chivalry, King Louis compromises the fate of the disobedient Countess Isabelle. Rather than marry a nominee of her feudal lord Duke Charles, Isabelle's hand and/or property (if she refuses to marry, she becomes an Ursuline nun), will go to whatever knight or lord kills William de la Marck during the planned storming of Liege. Although Quentin Durward engages and greatly weakens the Wild Boar in single combat, his guardsman uncle actually takes home the bacon, as it were. But uncle bestows the Countess on his nephew instead and they wed and have many beautiful sons and daughters. The real hero of this novel is Duke Charles of Burgundy, a kind of hot-tempered Achilles. We see him at the height of his powers, when he has King Louis XI totally in his control, though the cunning King manages to slip out of his grasp. Less than ten years later in ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN, Walter Scott shows the hotheaded Charles the Bold humbled and killed by unlikely Swiss mountaineers after several pitched battles. These two novels depict the decline during the late 15th Century of the Age of Chivalry in Europe, two or three generations before the Reformation. People at that time pored over products of newly invented printing presses using another new invention, reading glasses, which they may also have needed for a new fangled game, playing cards. At the same time Louis XI believes strongly in horoscopes and the ability of quacks to read palms and forecast the future. Walter Scott brings a dazzling age back to life as it declines to its end. -OOO- Black Mountain 01/03/2007 ==-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-= III. REVIEW for http://www.epinions.com TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: France just before the renaissance. The End of Chivalry. by aohcapablanca, Jan 03 '07 Walter Scott's 1823 novel QUENTIN DURWARD at first sold better in France than in Britain. For no one had ever written such fiction about France. But imitators were not slow to follow, including Alexandre Dumas with THE THREE MUSKETEERS, to mention only one. In the year 1468 there is nothing that crafty King Louis XI will not do to prevent the secession of his feudal dependent Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy. To weaken the Duke, King Louis secretly encourages rebellion among Burgundy's Lowlands possessions, especially around the rich city of Liege. He also pays a nobleman gone wrong, William de la Marck, to launch raids against Charles the Bold from his hiding places in the thick forests of the Ardennes. Styled by friend and foe alike The Wild Boar of Ardennes, William leads the discontented burghers of Liege in a successful rising against their lord, the Prince Bishop, Louis of Bourbon, after which the Bishop was executed. Duke Charles the Bold received word that his ecclesiastical relative had been slain only after King Louis XI had imprudently placed himself at Charles's mercy as part of an astrology-based scheme to postpone war between the two. To save his throne the King agrees to join the Duke in a joint attack to relieve Liege, avenge the bishop and kill the Wild Boar. That attack succeeds. As these colossi match strength, a handsome twenty year old impoverished, orphaned Scottish noble finds himself playing roles that change history. He is Quentin Durward, seeking his fortune as a mercenary after all other family members had been slaughtered by a hostile highlands clan. He finds his way to his uncle, a sergeant in the Scottish Archers, mercenary bodyguards of the Kings of France, a body which had helped make Joan of Arc a success decades earlier. Durward saves the King's life during a royal boar hunt. Louis XI at that time has reluctantly given asylum to a beautiful 16 year old orphan, Countess Isabelle, and her chivalry-mad aunt, both subjects of Burgundy. To avoid war with Charles, King Louis entrusts Quentin Durward to escort the ladies to a new protector, the Bishop of Liege. Through intermediaries King Charles hires a gypsy to lead Quentin and the ladies to the bishop of Liege. The gypsy is to arrange that the pilgrim party be ambushed before they reach Liege and Isabelle is to be carried off to a forced wedding with the Boar of Ardennes. Quentin foils the plot, delivers Isabelle to her new protector, gets wind of trouble brewing in Liege but is not able to prevent the uprising which dooms the prince bishop. Isabelle's aunt is betrayed to William de la Marck who marries her for her wealth. Quentin Durward and Countess Isabelle escape from Liege but are taken to the Duke. Quentin is made a key witness in the Duke's trial of the King for suspicion of causing the murder of the Bishop of Liege. Despite reservations, Durward saves his master's life by truthful testimony. He joins the King's small group besieging Liege. Quentin hopes to kill the Wild Boar and, as both King and Duke Charles have agreed, become thereby the knight appointed to win the hand and lands of the wealthy Isabelle. Durward manages a face to face encounter with the Wild Boar and wears him down in a bloody fight. Quentin's Scottish Archer uncle then easily finishes off de la Marck. The uncle brings the Boar's head to the King. Awarded land and hand of Isabelle, who is long since madly in love with Quentin, the uncle in turn gallantly bestows her on his nephew. The couple marry, produce beautiful sons and daughters and history rolls ever onward. Sir Walter Scott had admitted that "history is half fiction." He compresses time deliberately and artistically in QUENTIN DURWARD for taut dramatic effect. The eerie court of Louis XI is populated by historically accurate low-lifes through whom that crafty monarch held down his feudal nobility: including, a barber, two semi-comic executioners and others. Charles the Bold of Burgundy is the kind of hot-headed warrior Prince that Walter Scott paints to perfection, notably Richard I of England, the Lion Heart, in THE TALISMAN and IVANHOE. The decline and tragic end of Duke Charles takes up much of Scott's masterly 1829 novel, ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN. The 15th century was a time of change and Scott casually mentions some of its inventions: playing cards, eye glasses and printed books. The reader becomes a fly on the wall in a re-creation far livelier than any historical museum, play or opera. This is either the way things were or what they ought to have been. Pros: King Louis XI set France on the long road to become the Continent's greatest power. Cons: A leisurely beginning even slower than readers expect from the father of the historical novel. The Bottom Line: Scott makes readers see, smell and taste a long departed France which has expelled the English and is dropping the curtain on the Age of Chivalry. History is not bunk. Overall Product Rating: * * * * (ABOVE AVERAGE) -OOO- Black Mountain, 01/11/2007 |