Lord Chesterfield saw clearly the symptoms of the coming Revolution in France. Only two other men in Europe foresaw that immense event: Goldsmith and Arthur Young. Note Gibbon's complacent attitude in re France to illustrate the general lack of vision on the subject.
Voltaire's summing up of the consequences of Turgot's fall may be expressed in Sir Edward Grey's phrase: "Death, disaster and damnation."
If Louis XVI had been wiser and more capable, would he have averted the French Revolution? I think not. It is to be doubted whether even a strong king, after so many years of tyranny which had generated such hatred of the ancient regime, could have checked the flow of forces making for the Revolution. Apart from the effect of the old tyranny, new ideas of democracy were arising. Witness the contemporary failure of a great benevolent despot in Joseph II.
There was no idea of nationality in the foreign policy of the younger Pitt.
Hilaire Belloc's description of the guillotining of the Dantonists forms a picture among the most thrilling, enthralling and agonising that I know.
Fox stands out as one of the most brilliant failures and one of the most ineffective geniuses in history.
Before war broke out in 1870 the world believed in the military superiority of France. Only that grim trio, Bismarck, Moltke and Roon, knew the contrary.
William the First, grandfather of the present Kaiser, was an absurdly overestimated character. He owed all his success to his great Ministers.
Treitschke writes: "The territories drained by great rivers are usually centres of civilisation.... Our Rhine remains the king of all rivers, but what great thing has ever happened on the Danube?" Paul's comment on this:
"I know of only three great events on the Danube. One, the capture of Vienna by the Turks; two, the Battle of Blenheim; three, the Battle of Ulm."