Preferring Hell to Heaven: Machiavelli August 25, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
We all dream every night – a simple physiological fact – and yet most of these dreams are forgotten by the individual and even those that are remembered rarely enter history. However, on occasion a dream slips through into record, either because it changes the world or because it represents a life. ‘Machiavelli’s dream’ is […]
The Myth of Unbloody Zagonora February 26, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
One of the least bloody periods in the history of warfare came in early fifteenth-century Italy. The Italian city states had become a good deal less violent than a century before, and warfare was farmed out to mercenary captains, who proved themselves both greedy and all too often endearingly effete. These mercenary captains were in […]
