If history is written by the...

If history is written by the victors, conspiracy theory is typically written by the losers, and there were few greater losers in the revolution than the French church and especially the Jesuits.

- Mike Jay

A Visionary Madness: The Case of James Tilly Matthews and the Influencing Machine

biography history psychology

Other quotes by Mike Jay

James Tilly Matthews was not a prophet. He was a gifted, perhaps fragile individual who suffered intensely, and for little if any reward.

- Mike Jay

The French army had crowned a campaign of extraordinary successes by defeating the Austrians at Jemappes and pressing on to occupy a large swathe of Belgium and threaten Holland. For Britain, this changed everything: a French republic that spread across the North Sea coast meant the entire coastline facing Britain would be in Republican hands.

- Mike Jay

We think of 1789 as the date of the French Revolution, and the storming of the Bastille as its defining event. Yet as late as halfway through 1792, most of the familiar images of the revolution had yet to occur. Louis XVI was still king, and the Assembly was negotiating a new constitutional arrangement for the monarchy, not so different from Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688.

- Mike Jay

It was Matthews, of course, for whom the verdict was the greatest disaster. Not only had he failed to escape from Bedlam, but the anomalies of the case made it highly unlikely that he would have the chance to appeal again. His family and friends had assembled an impeccable case, most of which had been ignored.

- Mike Jay

The Bedlam that greeted James Tilly Matthews, then, was not so much a baroque spectacle of depravity as an exhausted and run-down public institution, its building falling apart and its professional image tarnished.

- Mike Jay

Up to this point, it was rare for the mad to be distinguished from the poor, the homeless, the indigent, beggars, vagabonds, petty criminals and others who were unable to fit into society or take care of themselves. It was rare, too, that they were locked up.

- Mike Jay

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