Gallo-Roman bishop Sidonius Apollinaris wrote a letter to his uncle describing his meeting with the Visigothic King Theodoric II, sometime in the 450s. Sidonius describes him as a temperate and Christian ruler, giving a picture of the life of a Post-Roman Germanic king. A thread:
Before daybreak, the king prayed with a small group of priests, before devoting his mornings to the administration of his kingdom and meetings with foreign diplomats.
He hunted for pleasure, a servant carrying his bow for him. Theodoric was such an expert archer that he would ask his companions what to shoot, never missing the target they selected.
During meals, the king avoided drunkenness and ceremony, engaging in serious conversation with his nobles and guests.
Theodoric enjoyed playing board games, probably similar to backgammon, and did so well. Although he was gracious in defeat, Sidonius mentions letting him win so the king would favor his petitions.
He spent his evenings listening to petitioners. He disliked wild parties and loud music, preferring music which would "charm the ear with virtue." When he slept, guards watched the royal treasury throughout the night.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
I feel like I haven't done a good book thread in a while. A thread with excerpts from The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783 by John Brewer:
The English state was remarkably centralized as far back as Anglo-Saxon times, with a national system of law and strong monarchy. Opposition was channeled through a single parliament, and therefore took on a national character as well.
Contrast this with the far more decentralized France, where the great political conflict was between the monarchy and regional elites and where the estates-general was unable to become a unified political force.
A thread with excerpts from Napoleon's Other War: Bandits, Rebels and their Pursuers in the Age of Revolutions by Michael Broers:
Banditry-cum-guerilla warfare was endemic to Corsica, where local notables waged blood feuds and maintained networks of armed men. As a young man, Napoleon and his family had far more exposure to this kind of war than to "conventional" fighting of artillery and big battalions.
Napoleon and the various factions of revolutionary radicals had their differences, but they paled in comparison to the gulf between them and the peasant counter-revolutionaries, who they viewed as backwards hicks whipped into banditry by their priests.
Machiavelli (in Discourses on Livy) on how difficult it is to change political institutions that have outlived their purpose. They can't be changed through normal politics (they *are* the normal politics) and someone willing to bypass them rarely has the public good in mind.
A major challenge to a state moving from authoritarianism to republican government -- all of the hacks who "were prevailing under the tyrannical state" feel obligated to it, while those who prosper under freedom simply believe they are getting what they deserve.
If the people of a republic turn to one man to defend them against the rich and powerful, "it will always happen that he will make himself tyrant of the city." He will eliminate the elite first and then turn on the people once there is no one else to stop him.
Richard Pipes describes the Kievan Rus as initially resembling "the East India or Hudson's Bay companies, founded to make money but compelled by the absence of any administration in the area of their operations to assume quasi-governmental responsibilities."
Mongol influence has etched itself into the Russian language. It is the origin of numerous Russian words relating to administration or brutality, from money (деньги) to shackles (кандалы).
Russian had somewhat distinct terms for private and public lordship, and Muscovite Tsars adopted the former to describe their rule.
The NDS, the former Afghan government's intelligence agency, was actually quite good at infiltrating the Taliban, running agents inside Pakistan, and compiling evidence that the Taliban was backed by the ISI as part of a deliberate plot to destabilize Afghanistan.
The US dismissed this as an excuse to cover for the Afghan government's weakness and corruption.
"The American diplomat will be in your valley tomorrow if you want to kidnap them."
Thread with excerpts from Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam by Mark Moyar:
Local support for the Viet Cong was not motivated by nationalism or communism (which even many party members had a weak understanding of) but by village level grievances, especially support for land reform and lower rents and interest rates.
The areas where support for the VC was weakest, on the other hand, where those populated by ethnic minorities or by well organized religious groups like Roman Catholics or the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai Buddhists.