Barbara W. Tuchman Quote

The Pastoureaux spread the fear of insurrection that freezes the blood of the privileged in any era when the mob appears. Excommunicated by Pope John XXII, they were finally suppressed when he forbade anyone to provision them on pain of death and sanctioned the use of force against them. That was sufficient, and the Pastoureaux ended like every outbreak of the poor sooner or later in the Middle Ages, with corpses hanging from the trees.

Barbara W. Tuchman

The Pastoureaux spread the fear of insurrection that freezes the blood of the privileged in any era when the mob appears. Excommunicated by Pope John XXII, they were finally suppressed when he forbade anyone to provision them on pain of death and sanctioned the use of force against them. That was sufficient, and the Pastoureaux ended like every outbreak of the poor sooner or later in the Middle Ages, with corpses hanging from the trees.

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About Barbara W. Tuchman

Barbara Wertheim Tuchman (; January 30, 1912 – February 6, 1989) was an American historian, journalist and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August (1962), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971), a biography of General Joseph Stilwell.
Tuchman focused on writing popular history.