RESTON : Defenders of the faith (fülszöveg)
A best-selling historian recounts sixteen years that shook the world—the epic clash between Europe and the Ottoman Turks that ended the Renaissance and brought Islam to the gates of Vienna
In the best-selling Warriors of God and Dogs of God, James Reston, Jr., limned two epochal conflicts between Islam and Christendom. Here he examines the ultimate battle in that centuries-long war, which found Europe at its most vulnerable and Islam on the attack. This drama was propelled by two astonishing young sovereigns, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the Turkish sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. Though they represented two colliding worlds, they were remarkably similar. Each was a poet and cultured cosmopolitan, each was the most powerful man on his continent, each was called "Defender of the Faith," and each faced strident religious rebellion in his domain. Charles was beset by the "heresy" of Martin Luther and his fervid adherents, even while tensions between him and the pope threatened to boil over, and the upstart French king Francis I harried Charles's realm by land and sea. Suleyman was hardly more comfortable on his throne. He had earned his crown by avoiding the grim Ottoman tradition of royal fratricide. Shi'ites in the east were fighting of the Sunni Turks' cruel repression of their "heresy." The ferocity and skill of Suleyman's Janissaries had expanded the Ottoman Empire to its greatest extent ever, but these slave soldiers became rebellions when foreign wars did not engage them.
With Europe newly hobbled and the Turks suffused with restless vigor, the stage was set for a drama that played out in skirmishes and epic sieges from Hungary to Rhodes and ultimately to Vienna itself, which both sides thought the Turks could win. It that happened, it was generally agreed that Europe would become Muslim as far west as the Rhine.
During these same years, Europe was roiled by constant internal tumult that saw, among other spectacles, the Diet of Worms, the Sack of Rome, and an actual wrestling match between the English and French monarchs in which Henry VIII's pride was badly hurt. Would—could—this unruly continent be united to repulse a fearsome enemy?
Reston populates this saga with a wealth of characters both larger than life and convincing: volatile and eloquent Martin Luther; the former slave, Ibrahim Pasha, Suleyman's best friend and second in command; the dissolute Pope Leo X; the lusty and ambitious Francis I; the bluff, insecure Henry VIII; and many more. Their fractious, sometimes rollicking interplay, along with Reston's eye for telling detail, lend this meticulously researched history a novel's worth of suspense and brio.
|
|
|
|
| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
