Miguel de Cervantes Quotes
Those blessed ages were fortunate which wanted the dreadful fury of the devilish and murdering pieces of ordnance, to whose inventor I am verily persuaded that they render in hell an eternal reward for his diabolical invention, by which he hath given power to an infamous, base, vile, and dastardly arm to bereave the most valorous knight.
This reflected a commonly held belief that the gun was an ignoble invention.
Miguel de Cervantes, 1547-1616, Spanish Writer, Don Quixote
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His hubris soon backfired as the Indians learned how to tactically cope with firearms. For example they soon learned that they would see the flash of the musket before the ball would discharge, so would lie down and the bullets would pass overhead. The muskets were effective as defensive weapons from behind barricades though not very accurate. Swords and pikes turned out to be more effective in most cases.
Patton, one of the world’s best fighting general was somewhat mentally unbalanced and unlike almost all senior officers who are successful commanders but see war as an unpleasant, brutal necessity, Patton loved war and the fighting part of it. His non battlefield behavior was so erratic and atrocious that Eisenhower and his other superiors almost fired him on several occasions. He died in an automobile crash shortly after the German surrender, so the dilemma of what to do with Patton in peacetime was resolved.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and one of the pinnacles of world literature.
