Barbara W. Tuchman

Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. UK: Oxford University Press, 1975. p.175

Left to face a hungry winter robbed of their hard-earned harvests, the people experienced their own warrior class not as protectors but ravagers.

Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

What counts is not so much the fact as what the public perceives to be the fact.

The system was aided by the Church, whose natural interests allied it more to the great than to the meek.

History is the unfolding of miscalculations.