# Quote — Ian Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV

> The key problem in assessing the scale of the battle is this tendency of chroniclers to exaggerate numbers. Armies are enlarged to biblical proportions as well-educated, cloistered writers wrote their dramatic accounts in the only language of battle they knew: a mixture of Old Testament stories, classical history and earlier chronicles. In general, unless they could talk up a skirmish to sound like the great battles of the past, it would hardly merit inclusion in a book.

- Author: [Ian Mortimer](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mortimer.md)
- Book: [The Fears of Henry IV](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mortimer/the-fears-of-henry-iv.md)
- Page: 373
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ian_Mortimer#The_Fears_of_Henry_IV:_The_Life_of_England's_Self-made_King_(2007)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mortimer/the-fears-of-henry-iv/the-key-problem

## More from this book

> Modern scholars now see Richard as essentially narcissistic, convinced of his own perfection, and yet deeply insecure. We might elaborate on this slightly and see that he was exceptionally self-conscious: so much so that his own identity, royal percentage, ideas, rivalries and feelings formed not only the core but the limit of his entire world.

p. 136 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mortimer/the-fears-of-henry-iv/modern-scholars-now.md)

> The question of whether or not Henry was a great king in the fifteenth century, or subsequently, is a distraction. A man’s character may be obscured as much by the acclamation of greatness as by neglect.

p. 3 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mortimer/the-fears-of-henry-iv/the-question-of-whether.md)

> It is not surprising that Lucia Visconti fell for him [Henry IV]. Considering his crusading, his pilgrimage and his jousting, it is not going too far to say that he had made himself into an exemplary knight, combining the spiritual and chivalric values of his age more completely perhaps than any other Englishman of the late fourteenth century.

p. 115 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ian-mortimer/the-fears-of-henry-iv/it-is-not.md)