Double et louche (a provocative phrase which could mean double and squinting or equivocal or shady in the sense of disreputable).
War, he stated, is a biological necessity; it is the carrying out among humankind of the natural law, upon which all the laws of Nature rest, the law of the struggle for existence. Nations, he said, m...
Very devout like his great-grandfather St. Louis, though not his equal in intelligence or will, Philip was fascinated by the all-absorbing question of the Beatific Vision: whether the souls of the ble...
To achieve decisive victory, Schlieffen fixed upon a strategy derived from Hannibal and the Battle of Cannae. The dead general who mesmerized Schlieffen had been dead a very long time. Two thousand ye...
The world remembers the battle ever since by the taxis. A hundred of them were already in the service of the Military Government of Paris. With 500 more, each carrying five soldiers and making the six...
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 ordi...
One corps had run out of wire altogether and was relying on mounted orderlies. The VIth Corps did not possess the key to the cipher used by the XIIIth. Consequently, Samsonov’s orders were issued by w...
Nevertheless Sir John French next day sent Joffre definitive notice that the British Army would not be in condition to take its place in the line for another ten days. Had he asked for ten days’ time...
Man himself was the formulator of the impossible Christian ideal and tried to uphold it, if not live by it, for more than a millennium. Therefore it must represent a need, something more fundamental t...
Each day he grew older and learned something new. Strong
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 t...
Puritanism, he said, was a reaction to the loss of moral fiber that accompanied the Renaissance.
On the same day, the British chiefs were hurrying the BEF southward with such urgency that the soldiers were deprived of the rest they needed far more than they needed distance from the enemy. On that...
Officers from St. Cyr went into battle wearing white-plumed shakos and white gloves; it was considered chic to die in white gloves. An unidentified French sergeant kept a diary: the guns recoil at eac...
Nevertheless, Schlieffen decided, in the event of war, to attack France by way of Belgium.
Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, p...
In the Hundred Years’ War that dragged France and England through the 14th century, both sides would have liked to quit but could not, for fear of losing power and status; hate and mistrust fed by the...
At Coucy’s level, men and women hawked and hunted and carried a favorite falcon, hooded, on the wrist wherever they went, indoors or out—to church, to the assizes, to meals. On occasion, huge pastries...
Armed forces were no longer primarily feudal levies serving under a vassal’s obligation who went home after forty days; they were recruited bodies who served for pay.
Adams, not yet replaced, repeated that the arrogant English were treating Amsterdam exactly as they had Boston. With that fatal gift for the unlearned lesson, the produced the same result - unity agai...