“Peachy,” Viktoria Luise murmured, a word favored lately by the young; the Kaiser saw that two Rough Riders had just switched horses at a dead run. He had often felt he was built for philosophical inquiry, sport, and artistic pursuit, not diplomatic frenzy. His famous temper only flared up, he thought, when he wasn’t allowed to do what he wanted, which was to enjoy life like a poem. He heard the crowd gasp while he was dictating a new message to a contact in London, and he realized he had missed something, but he had no idea what it was.

A messenger boy from the Admiralty appeared. Great Britain was unsure what it was going to do.

“Miserable shopkeeper rabble,” he hissed in English, which caused several of his children to look down the row toward him. He told them to look at the show and to ignore him. This was an outing he would not spoil. He wanted them to see Indians.

He drummed his fingers upon his oak armrest, into which palmettes had been carved. What the world needed, the Kaiser frequently said in those dark days, was to calm down. On the other hand, perhaps he could turn India against Britain. With the stub of a pencil he’d found in his hunting jacket, he wrote a telegram in English for the Tsar. “I am exerting my utmost influence to induce the Austrians to deal straightly to arrive at a satisfactory understanding with you.” He looked back at the Tsar’s cognomen and signed this message “Willie.”

He sat back with satisfaction, only to note that the field before him was completely empty. “Sind die Inder schon gekommen?” he asked, and then, when he received no answer, “Have I missed the Indians? The Onondagas? I rather hope not.”

He had not missed the Indians. He had missed the Arabs and the South American gauchos. Another telegram had crossed wires with one he’d just sent: the Tsar had tried to cancel the mobilization, but it had been impossible; the Russian army was on full alert.

Wilhelm crushed the news in his right hand. The full chill of disaster sat on his shoulders. A great dreadnought had launched, its engines had engaged, and there was no one left to throw down the anchor. A phrase came to him in English, one good enough to be his own, he thought— looking down the barrel of history—and, with his mind emptying into despair, he regarded the racetrack, which now flooded with Cossacks.

He did not breathe. Or blink. Cossacks? There, gaudy and preening like show pheasants, in beige-and-silk-girdled zhupans, flowing sharovary flouncing as the wind rushed up their legs, shod in high Morocco boots, wearing fur caps that showed off their oseledets, and ululating their wild rebellious cry of “Yi! Yi! Yiyiyi!,” was a platoon of Cossacks. Wilhelm wondered: Wasn’t this a Wild West show? What did Cossacks have to do with the Wild West?