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 the 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 devine right, they nurture the weeds of reaction that are destined to choke European democracy and become part of the conflagrationof 1914.