In these conquests it is not enough to let the defeated nation keep its laws ; it is perhaps more necessary to let it keep its ethos, because a people always knows, loves, and defends its ethos more than its laws.
The French have been driven out of Italy nine times, because, say the historians,1 of their insolence with respect to the women and girls. It is too much for a nation to have to bear the pride of the conqueror, and also his incontinence, and yet again his perhaps more objectionable indiscretion, because it multiplies insults no end.
Leaf through the history of the world by Mr. Pufendorf.