1483.

The selection of this remarkable person as the principal character
in the romance -- for it will be easily comprehended that the little
love intrigue of Quentin is only employed as the means of bringing
out the story -- afforded considerable facilities to the author.
In Louis XI's time, extraordinary commotions existed throughout
all Europe. England's Civil Wars were ended, rather in appearance
than reality, by the short lived ascendancy of the House of York.
Switzerland was asserting that freedom which was afterwards so
bravely defended. In the Empire and in France, the great vassals
of the crown were endeavouring to emancipate themselves from its
control, while Charles of Burgundy by main force, and Louis more
artfully by indirect means, laboured to subject them to subservience
to their respective sovereignties. Louis, while with one hand
he circumvented and subdued his own rebellious vassals, laboured
secretly with the other to aid and encourage the large trading
towns of Flanders to rebel against the Duke of Burgundy, to which
their wealth and irritability naturally disposed them. In the more
woodland districts of Flanders, the Duke of Gueldres, and William
de la Marck, called from his ferocity the Wild Boar of Ardennes,
were throwing off the habits of knights and gentlemen to practise
the violences and brutalities of common bandits.

[Chapter I gives a further account of the conditions of the period
which Quentin Durward portrays.]

A hundred secret combinations existed in the different provinces
of France and Flanders; numerous private emissaries of the restless
Louis, Bohemians, pilgrims, beggars, or agents disguised as such,