It is not, in the long run, the battles and sieges that signify, but the permanent effect on the human race of the changes they help to bring about.

...and to this day the rare traveller who knows the language and customs even of the worst of the tribes is safer amongst them than in the neighbouring Cossack settlements.

All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.

Perhaps that is the greatest crime of conquest--that a civilization is denied the right to evolve beyond its own embarrassment.

And ever since the Conquest have been fools.

Money brings honor, friends, conquest, and realms