Bedford Public Library

The fall of eagles, C. L. Sulzberger

eng

contains biographical information

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The fall of eagles

C. L. Sulzberger

Europe, 1848: three imperial dynasties rule over territories stretching from Germany south to the Adriatic Sea and east to the Bering Strait on the Pacific Coast. The Houses of Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanov rule over lands more vast than the British Empire at its greatest extent. In their struggle for continental domination and for eternal guarantees for their rule by divine right, they nurture the weeds of reaction that are destined to choke European democracy and become part of the conflagration of 1914. World-renowned diplomatic correspondent and historian C.L. Sulzberger traces the rise and fall of the three dynasties from their emergence as fuedal princelings to their coronation as absolute imperial lords, wielding vain, often foolish, often cruel, reactionary sovereignty over a degraded peasant population.--Jacket flap

The eagle people -- They become all body and no mind -- The waltz toward disaster -- Odd man in and odd woman out -- The Hall of Mirrors -- Three of a kind -- The first signs of danger -- Autocracy without an autocrat -- A small war to stem the tide -- To fall asleep forever...in your arms -- And fired the shot heard round the world -- Precisely how the lamps went out -- We owed this sacrifice to France -- The self-fulfilling prophecy of doom -- Deleted from the nation's thoughts -- The most grisly of all weapons -- An incident of consequence and pathos -- You have been listening to your womenfolk again -- None would have believed a Prussian king capable of such conduct -- A pack of tricks we play on the dead