The Historical Nights' Entertainment: First Series

The author presents a dozen vividly reconstructed episodes from European history, each dramatized as a night of crisis—assassinations, betrayals, intrigues, trials, and escapes—rendered from surviving records and contemporary testimony. Each piece follows recorded facts while sometimes supplying cautious conjecture to resolve gaps; the essays range from the murders of Rizzio and Darnley to the Saint Bartholomew massacre, Antonio Pérez's fall, the Queen's Necklace affair, the drownings under Carrier, a mysterious ducal murder, Casanova's prison escape, and the assassination of Gustavus III. Prefatory notes explain the author's method and identify where speculation supplements the evidence.