Quotes from Robert K. Massie

In 1900, sending a contingent of German troops to China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, he shouted to the departing soldiers, "There will be no quarter, no prisoners will be taken! As a thousand years ago, the Huns under King Attila gained for themselves a name which still stands for terror in tradition and story, so may the name of German be impressed by you for a thousand years on China.

Every Tuesday by decree of the empress, men would attend dressed as women and women would dance dressed as men.

Tirpitz's admiration extended to English education and the English language. He spoke English, read English newspapers and English novels, and enrolled his two daughters at Cheltenham Ladies' College.

I don't want the books [...] to be too far away; they, also, have become friends. I even feel this way about books I don't own. In libraries, I find myself visiting the books I used before. I regard those rows of memoirs and letters as voices from the past, bound into books, and I like to make sure they are all there, alive and well. If they have collected dust, I take out the small towel I carry in my briefcase and wipe them off. -from 2012 NYT Book Review Essay

quoted Wordsworth: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven." From Paris, the French Socialist Minister of Munitions, Albert Thomas, telegraphed

At that point, a different admiral—a Nelson at Copenhagen, or a Cunningham at Mers el-Kébir—might simply have ignored Italian neutrality and gone in after the German ships.

She was magnanimous to former opponents, never retaliating against supporters of her former husband or other adversaries, personal or official.

When Troubridge came to the Mediterranean to take over the armored cruisers and serve as deputy to Admiral Milne, his relationship with the Commander-in-Chief was correct but not warm.

You should know our mania for building is stronger than ever," Catherine wrote to Grimm in 1779. "It is a diabolical thing. It consumes money and the more you build, the more you want to build. It's a sickness like being addicted to alcohol.

After this meeting and before sailing on August 2, Troubridge had called his captains together and warned them that "they must not be surprised if they saw me with the squadron run away.

For Catherine, the lesson was that more than intelligence and goodwill were needed to break down the traditions, prejudices, and ignorance of both the owners and the serfs. She

probably would not have listened. Prince

Russia, after all, has existed for a thousand years; the Soviet era lasted only seventy-four. The Romanov dynasty, which included such towering figures as Peter and Catherine the Great, had ruled for more than three centuries. It came to an end in brutal murders in a Siberian cellar, but many Russians never knew this had happened. Or how. Or why.

rather fight than suffer the slightest alteration of their faith or infringement of their privileges. Religion was the overriding national issue; a threat to the Catholic faith reminded every Pole that he was a patriot. When the 1766 Diet met, it firmly refused to respond to any dissident grievance. Catherine

In his work habits, Nicholas was solitary. Unlike most monarchs and chiefs of state—unlike even his own wife—he had no private secretary. He preferred to do things for himself. On his desk he kept a large calendar of his daily appointments, scrupulously entered in his own hand. When official papers arrived, he opened them, read them, signed them and put them in envelopes himself.

In the evening after supper, Nicholas often sat in the family drawing room reading aloud while his wife and daughters sewed or embroidered. His choice, said Anna Vyrubova, who spent many of these cozy evenings with the Imperial family, might be Tolstoy, Turgenev or his own favorite, Gogol. On the other hand, to please the ladies, it might be a fashionable English novel. Nicholas read equally well in Russian, English and French and he could manage in German and Danish.

Sophia remembered visiting one of these unfortunates, an older sister of her mother's, who owned sixteen pug dogs, all of whom slept, ate, and performed their natural functions in the same room as their mistress. "A large number of parrots besides lived in the same room," Sophia wrote. "One can imagine the fragrance which reigned there.

Her silver brocade wedding gown was of the most shimmering cloth I have ever seen, encrusted with glittering embroidery of silver roses. It had a wide skirt, a seventeen inch waist, and a tight bodice with short sleeves. [She wore] superb jewels:

General History of Germany

She was fourteen and he was thirty-two, and this was the first and only meeting of these two remarkable monarchs. Both would eventually be accorded the title "the Great." And between them, for decades, they would dominate the history of central and eastern Europe.

Many [British politicians] do not know much more of continental conditions than we do of the condition in Peru or Siam. They are also rather naive in their artless egoism. They find difficulty believing in really evil intentions in others; they are very calm, very phlegmatic, very optimistic. The country exudes wealth, comfort, content and confidence in its own power and future. The people simply cannot believe that things could ever go really wrong, either at home or abroad.

Peter, who broke his enemies on the rack and hanged them in Red Square, who had his son tortured to death, is Peter the Great. But Nicholas, whose hand was lighter than that of any tsar before him, is "Bloody Nicholas". In human terms, this is irony rich and dramatic, the more so because Nicholas knew what he was called.

Books were her refuge. Having set herself to learn the Russian language, she read every Russian book she could find. But French was the language she preferred, and she read French books indiscriminately, picking up whatever her ladies-in-waiting happened to be reading. She always kept a book in her room and carried another in her pocket.

It is one of the supreme ironies of history that the blessed birth of an only son should have proved the mortal blow. Even as the saluting cannons boomed and the flags waved, Fate had prepared a terrible story. Along with the lost battles and sunken ships, the bombs, the revolutionaries and their plots, the strikes and revolts, Imperial Russia was toppled by a tiny defect in the body of a little boy.