Geoffrey Parker > Quotes

“Charles watched from a stage as the entire urban elite filed in front of him, bare-headed, with nooses round their necks and wearing only their shirts. They knelt and begged his forgiveness, but for a time the emperor ‘looked into the distance, saying nothing in reply, appearing to reflect on what the people of Ghent had done and whether or not he should pardon them’, until Marie begged him to forgive them ‘in honour and memory of his birth there’. This he graciously granted. He also laid the first stone of a citadel to be erected on the spot chosen by his grandfather Maximilian after an earlier revolt.66”
― Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V

“«las acusaciones de corrupción solían ser un intento de arrebatar un contrato a un rival […]. Los contemporáneos daban por sentado que los funcionarios ganarían dinero con sus cargos; lo que querían saber era si la Corona estaba obteniendo valor por ese dinero».”
― Geoffrey Parker, La Gran Armada: Una nueva historia de la mayor flota jamás vista desde la creación del mundo (No Ficción)

“The literature favoured by the military aristocracy of the fifteenth century was not that of the traditional chivalric background but, rather, one based upon a growing appreciation of the military values of Rome (in particular) and of what these had to offer.”
― Geoffrey Parker, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare