The Imperial Crown

"The Imperial Crown" by Wilhelm Raabe is an account of German history covering the late middle ages (1254-1517). Excerpt: «On the fifty-third day of the siege, one and a half thousand years after the fall of Rome as a republic and nine hundred and seventy-seven years after Odoacer the Barbarian had exiled the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus to the estate that had once belonged to Lucullus in Catania, Constantinople had fallen. God placed two empires and twelve kingdoms in the hands of the son of Murad, Mehmet the Second. What Christendom in its comatose dullness, tearing itself to pieces in wars of religion and feuds between peoples and their princes, had been unable to defend itself against, had now happened. The great bogeyman had finally arrived.»