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787ab5a
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Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian Army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the French and British in the Crimea, although the Turks in 1877 had outfought it at the siege of Plevna and only succumbed later to overwhelming numbers, although the Japanese had outfought it in Manchuria, a myth of its invincibility prevailed.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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85548c4
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In France they were called ecorcheurs (skinners) and routiers (highwaymen), in Italy condottieri from the condotta or contract that fixed the terms of their employment as mercenaries.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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84ee7be
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Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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baecc8c
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Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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2d31f66
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The poorest man in his cottage may bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter--but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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535dbaa
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So lethal was the disease that cases were known of persons going to bed well and dying before they woke, of doctors catching the illness at a bedside and dying before the patient.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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1ef0e36
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The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on. There was no looking back, Joffre told the soldiers on the eve. Afterward there was no turning back. The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a tra..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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6126915
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What is it about this book--essentially a military history of the first month of the First World War--which gives it its stamp and has created its enormous reputation? Four qualities stand out: a wealth of vivid detail which keeps the reader immersed in events, almost as an eyewitness; a prose style which is transparently clear, intelligent, controlled and witty; a cool detachment of moral judgment--Mrs. Tuchman is never preachy or reproach..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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eefa4a8
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Without a country, you are the basket of humanity.
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distortion
nationalism
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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d03b080
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Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly.
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humility
status-quo
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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1a1d8ac
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One by one, members of the Commons, speaking in turn at a lectern in the center of the chamber, added their charges and complaints. The King's councillors, they said, had grown rich at the cost of impoverishing the nation; they had deceived the King and wasted his revenues, causing the repeated demands for fresh subsidies. The people were too poor and feeble to endure further taxation. Let Parliament discuss instead how the King might maint..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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a8d6ca2
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The overpowering unimportance of this MAKES ME SPEECHLESS. - Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas Reed
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focus
self-discipline
silence
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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85ee0ea
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The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost.
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leadership
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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8271ee7
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Thereafter the red edges of war spread over another half of the world. Turkey's neighbors, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy, and Greece, were eventually drawn in. Thereafter, with her exit to the Mediterranean closed, Russia was left dependent on Archangel, icebound half the year, and on Vladivostok, 8,000 miles from the battlefront. With the Black Sea closed, her exports dropped by 98 per cent and her imports by 95 per cent. The cutting off of Rus..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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7e98ff1
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To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions, and Michel duly paid for his clairvoyance.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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3fa612a
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The follies that produced the loss of American virtue following Vietnam begin with continuous overreacting, in the invention of endangered national security, the invention of vital interest, the invention of a commitment which rapidly assumed a life of its own .
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polarization
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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95dd889
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They were twelve days in which world history wavered between two courses and the Germans came so close to victory that they reached out and touched it between the Aisne and the Marne.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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8d43bb4
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If it was not intended as a veto, then it must have been intended for commanders to interpret as they saw fit, which brings the matter to that melting point of warfare--the temperament of the individual commander. When the moment of live ammunition approaches, the moment to which all his professional training has been directed, when the lives of men under him, the issue of the combat, even the fate of a campaign may depend upon his decision..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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e31a83a
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An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust. In creating a climate for pessimism, the Black Death was the equivalent of the First World War, although it took fifty years for the psychological effects to develop.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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29070a2
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Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done." This in essence was to be the Burke thesis: that principle does not have to be demonstrated when the demonstration is inexpedient."
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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d3f6839
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also usually employed one or more resident physicians, barbers, priests, painters, musicians, minstrels, secretaries and copyists, an astrologer, a jester, and a dwarf, besides pages and squires.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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b1e0de3
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That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis. If the Jews were unholy, then killing and looting them was holy work.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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a38e1ac
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Not a passing phenomenon nor an external force, the companies had become a way of life, a part of society itself, used and joined by its rulers even as they struggled to throw them off. They ate at society from within like Erysichthon, the "tearer up of earth," who, having destroyed the trees in the sacred grove of Demeter, was cursed by the goddess with an insatiable appetite and finally devoured himself attempting to satisfy his hunger. D..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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dab593c
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The wave of insurrection passed, leaving little change in the condition of the working class. Inertia in the scales of history weighs more heavily than change. Four hundred years were to elapse before the descendants of the Maillotins seized the Bastille.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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b11809f
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It is worth noting the qualities this historian ascribes to them: they were fearless, high-principled, deeply versed in ancient and modern political thought, astute and pragmatic, unafraid of experiment, and--this is significant--"convinced of man's power to improve his condition through the use of intelligence."
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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579562f
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the symbolism of the Garter, a circlet to bind the Knight-Companions mutually, and all of them jointly to the King as head of the Order.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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5e1fdf8
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In many guilds artisans struck for higher pay and shorter hours. In an age when social conditions were regarded as fixed, such action was revolutionary.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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6b5c48d
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Penalties were established for refusal to work, for leaving a place of employment to seek higher pay, and for the offer of higher pay by employers. Proclaimed when Parliament was not sitting, the ordinance was reissued in 1351 as the Statute of Laborers.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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992c2b9
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Marco Polo dictated his Travels in French,
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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cae51ef
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Can the military art be learned in the games and hunts in which you pass your youth?" The"
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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83a3f88
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Medieval technology could raise marvels of architecture 200 feet in the air, it could conceive the mechanics of a loom capable of weaving patterned cloth, and of a gearshaft capable of harnessing the insubstantial air to turn a heavy millstone, but it failed to conceive the fore-and-aft rig and swinging boom capable of adapting sails to the direction of the wind. By such accident of the human mind, war, trade, and history are shaped.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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066c872
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These private wars were fought by the knights with furious gusto and a single strategy, which consisted in trying to ruin the enemy by killing or maiming as many of his peasants and destroying as many crops, vineyards, tools, barns, and other possessions as possible, thereby reducing his sources of revenue. As a result, the chief victim of the belligerents was their respective peasantry.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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d5080d0
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Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of Michelet, "no epoch was more naturally mad."
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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d58eb40
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principle, formulated for the occasion, that "a woman does not succeed to the throne of France." Thus was born the momentous Salic "Law" that was to create a permanent bar to the succession of women where none had existed before."
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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0edf4fc
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Bull of September 1348 in which he said that Christians who imputed the pestilence to the Jews had been "seduced by that liar, the Devil," and that the charge of well-poisoning and ensuing massacres were a "horrible thing." He pointed out that "by a mysterious decree of God" the plague was afflicting all peoples, including Jews; that it raged in places where no Jews lived, and that elsewhere they were victims like everyone else; therefore t..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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5491aa6
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Melancholy, amorous and barbaric," these tales exalted adulterous love as the only true kind, while in the real life of the same society adultery was a crime, not to mention a sin. If found out, it dishonored the lady and shamed the husband, a fellow knight. It was understood that he had the right to kill both unfaithful wife and lover. Nothing fits in this canon. The gay, the elevating, the ennobling pursuit is founded upon sin and invites..
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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6e97e2c
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History never repeats itself," said Voltaire; "man always does." Thucydides,"
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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a520920
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In the woe of the century no factor caused more trouble than the persistent lag between the growth of the state and the means of state financing. While centralized government was developing, taxation was still encased in the concept that taxes represented an emergency measure requiring consent.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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96b6d3d
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A terrible worm in an iron cocoon," as he was called in an anonymous poem, the knight rode on a saddle rising in a high ridge above the horse's backbone with his feet resting in very long stirrups so that he was virtually standing up and able to deliver tremendous swinging blows from side to side with any one of his armory of weapons."
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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c677b29
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Medieval justice was scrupulous about holding proper trials and careful not to sentence without proof of guilt, but it achieved proof by confession rather than evidence, and confession was routinely obtained by torture.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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2c7d719
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That conflict between the reach for the divine and the lure of earthly things was to be the central problem of the Middle Ages.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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7352456
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the plague was not the kind of calamity that inspired mutual help. Its loathsomeness and deadliness did not herd people together in mutual distress, but only prompted their desire to escape each other.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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fb42262
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Women were considered the snare of the Devil, while at the same time the cult of the Virgin made one woman the central object of love and adoration.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |
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4ca4766
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Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M.; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M.; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime.
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Barbara W. Tuchman |