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“The island of Sicily is the largest in the Mediterranean. It has also proved, over the centuries, to be the most unhappy. The stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the gateway between the East and the West, the link between the Latin world and the Greek, at once a stronghold, observation-point and clearing-house, it has been fought over and occupied in turn by all the great powers that have at various times striven to extend their dominion across the Middle Sea. It has belonged to them all—and yet has properly been part of none; for the number and variety of its conquerors, while preventing the development of any strong national individuality of its own, have endowed it with a kaleidoscopic heritage of experience which can never allow it to become completely assimilated. Even today, despite the beauty of its landscape, the fertility of its fields and the perpetual benediction of its climate, there lingers everywhere some dark, brooding quality—some underlying sorrow of which poverty, Church influence, the Mafia and all the other popular modern scapegoats may be the manifestations but are certainly not the cause. It is the sorrow of long, unhappy experience, of opportunity lost and promise unfulfilled; the sorrow, perhaps, of a beautiful woman who has been raped too often and betrayed too often and is no longer fit for love or marriage. Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Germans, Spaniards, French—all have left their mark. Today, a century after being received into her Italian home, Sicily is probably less unhappy than she has been for many centuries; but though no longer lost she still seems lonely, seeking always an identity which she can never entirely find.”

Sicily
Book:The Normans in Sicily : The Magnificent Story of 'the Other Norman Conquest'
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“On the 5th of October, in pouring rain, some 6,000 working women, fishwives, cleaners, marketstall holders, and prostitutes, marched on Versailles. Their ostensible reason was a rumor that at a welcome banquet given for the Flanders Regiment, newly arrived at the palace, the tricolor cockade had been trampled underfoot (...) armed with scythes, pikes, and any other weapons they could lay their hands on, they marched straight to the National Assembly, shouting their slogans and screaming for bread (...) In the early hours of the next day, the king and queen were awakened by furious shouts of, "mort à la femme Autrichienne", death to the Austrian woman.”

Marie Antoinette
Book:France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle
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“The recently arrived Normans were a people very different from the subjects of the Capetian kings. They had quickly shown themselves to be anything but the Viking savages that the French had originally supposed. On the contrary, they had absorbed the Latin culture, language, and religion of their hosts with astonishing speed. They had moreover demonstrated qualities not normally associated with early Medieval France, an extraordinary degree of energy and vigor, combined with a characteristic love of travel and adventure, without which they would have never of left their homes. They administered their lands with great efficiency, they showed a deep knowledge and respect for the law, and they'd already begun to build cathedrals and churches far more beautiful and more technically advanced than those of their French hosts.”

Normans
Book:France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle
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“In 1870, the throne was offered to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Had the Prince rejected the offer at once, there might have been no Franco-Prussian war, and Napoleon III might have ended his days still on the throne. Alas, he accepted. France was appalled, how possibly could she accept being the sausage the middle of a German sandwich.”

Franco Prussian WarNapoleon IiiPrince Leopold
Book:France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle
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“[The Gauls] were carnivores through and through and they loved fighting. Their horsemanship probably outclassed even that of the Romans and, though they lacked the more sophisticated Roman weaponry, their courage and determination combined with the sheer weight of their numbers made them formidable enemies. (...) Their ultimate defeat was probably due to the simple fact that their tribal society prevented them from achieving any degree of political unity.”

Gaul
Book:France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle
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