First let me apologize for translation errors. Between online translators and, well, my knowledge of French--which is, frankly, tres terrible. Tres, tres terrible.
"...[And] Publius Servilius Casca Longus, as is well-known, was able in the marketplace just one hour before meeting with the conspirators to buy the dagger he would use to attack Caesar.
"Cicero is rumored to have observed, 'It was not the daggers that killed mighty Caesar, it was men'."
"In 1218, Simon de Monfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, had his skull smashed from a stone hurled by a mangonel, or traction trebuchet, at the Battle of Toulouse.
"An Occitan historian suggested the earl was not given a head's up about the weapons inside the city during his siege.
"Perhaps, according to the Chanson de la Croisade Albigeoise, it was not the stone nor trebuchet that killed de Monfort, but the 'ladies and girls and women' of Toulouse who launched the stone."
"On June 28th, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand or Austria was fatally shot in the neck by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, who wielded a pocket-sized FN Model 1910 loaded with a .380 ACP cartridge designed by the Colt's Manufacturing Company.
"A Sarajevo commentator may or may not have noted how the Archduke's death was not the result of a bullet wound but rather of the man who fired the shot.
"Princip was given a 20-year-sentence because of his youth. He died in prison at 23 from tuberculosis. Of course, it was not the tb that killed him, it was the prison sentence."
I apologize for getting wrong what may be gotten wrong, or something to that effect. But at the very least, apparently, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
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