…the fate that has overtaken those kings, ministers and
ecclesiastics, in the East as well as in the West, who have, at various stages
of Bahá’u’lláh’s ministry, either deliberately persecuted His Cause, or have
neglected to heed the warnings He had uttered, or have failed in their manifest
duty to respond to His summons or to accord Him and His message the treatment
they deserved, particular attention…
Napoleon III, the foremost monarch of his day in the West,
excessively ambitious, inordinately proud, tricky and superficial, who is
reported to have contemptuously flung down the Tablet sent to him by
Bahá’u’lláh, who was tested by Him and found wanting, and whose downfall was
explicitly predicted in a subsequent Tablet, was ignominiously defeated in the
Battle of Sedan (1870), marking the greatest military capitulation recorded in
modern history; lost his kingdom and spent the remaining years of his life in
exile. His hopes were utterly blasted, his only son, the Prince Imperial, was
killed in the Zulu War, his much vaunted empire collapsed, a civil war ensued
more ferocious than the Franco-German war itself, and William I, the Prussian
king, was hailed emperor of a unified Germany in the Palace of Versailles.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)