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As to the kings and emperors who not only symbolized in their persons the majesty of earthly dominion but who, for the most part, actually held unchallengeable sway over the multitudes of their subjects, their relation to the Faith of Baha'u'llah constitutes one of the most illuminating episodes in the history of the Heroic and Formative Ages of that Faith. The Divine summons which embraced within its scope so large a number of the crowned heads of both Europe and Asia; theme and language of the Messages that brought them into direct contact with the Source of God's Revelation; the nature of their reaction to so stupendous an impact; and the consequences which ensued and can still be witnessed today are the salient features of a subject upon which I can but inadequately touch, and which will be fully and befittingly treated by future Baha'i historians. (19:1) The Emperor of the French, the most powerful ruler of his day on the European continent, Napoleon III; Pope Pius IX, the supreme head of the highest church in Christendom, and wielder of the scepter of both temporal and spiritual authority; the omnipotent Czar of the vast Russian Empire, Alexander II; the renowned Queen Victoria, whose sovereignty extended over the greatest political combination the world has witnessed; William I, the conqueror of Napoleon III, King of Prussia and the newly acclaimed monarch of a unified Germany; Francis Joseph, the autocratic king-emperor of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the heir of the far-famed Holy Roman Empire; the tyrannical 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, the embodiment of the concentrated power vested in the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the notorious Nasiri'd-Din Shah, the despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of Shi'ih Islam - in a word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and of sovereignty in His day became, one by one, the object of Baha'u'llah's special attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the weight of the force communicated by His appeals and warnings.
(19:2)
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