Walter Scott

Quentin Durward Walter Scott

In imitation of the grand feudatories, each inferior vassal of the crown assumed as muchindependence as his distance from the sovereign power, the extent of his fief, or the strength of hischateau enabled him to maintain; and these petty tyrants, no longer amenable to the exercise of thelaw, perpetrated with impunity the wildest excesses of fantastic oppression and cruelty. In Auvergnealone, a report was made of more than three hundred of these independent nobles, to whom incest, murder, and rapine were the most ordinary and familiar actions. Besides these evils, another, springing out of the long continued wars betwixt the French andEnglish, added no small misery to this distracted kingdom. Numerous bodies of soldiers, collectedinto bands, under officers chosen by themselves, from among the bravest and most successfuladventurers, had been formed in various parts of France out of the refuse of all other countries. These hireling combatants sold their swords for a time to the best bidder; and, when such servicewas not to be had, they made war on their own account, seizing castles and towers, which they usedas the places of their retreat, making prisoners, and ransoming them, exacting tribute from the openvillages and the country around them-and acquiring, by every species of rapine, the appropriateepithets of Tondeurs and Ecorcheurs, that is, Clippers and Flayers