"Neal Stephenson - Baroque Cycle 3 - The System of the World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

His uncouth way, or spread his aerie flight

Upborn with indefatigable wings

Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive

The happy IleтАж

MILTON,Paradise Lost

The story thus farтАж

In Boston in October 1713, Daniel Waterhouse, sixty-seven years of age, the Founder and sole Fellow
of a failing college, the Massachusetts Bay Colony of Technologickal Arts, has received a startling visit
from the Alchemist Enoch Root, who has appeared on his doorstep brandishing a summons addressed to
Daniel from Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, thirty.

Two decades earlier, Daniel, along with his friend and colleague Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, knew
Princess Caroline when she was a destitute orphan. Since then she has grown up as a ward of the King
and Queen of Prussia in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, surrounded by books, artists, and Natural
Philosophers, including Leibniz. She has married the Electoral Prince of Hanover, George Augustus,
known popularly as тАЬYoung Hanover BraveтАЭ for his exploits in the recently concluded War of the
Spanish Succession. He is reputed to be as handsome and dashing as Caroline is beautiful and brilliant.

The grandmother of George Augustus is Sophie of Hanover, still shrewd and vigorous at eighty-three.
According to the WhigsтАФone of the two great factions in English politicsтАФSophie should be next in line
to the English throne after the death of Queen Anne, who is forty-eight and in poor health. This would
place Princess Caroline in direct line to become Princess of Wales and later Queen of England. The
WhigsтАЩ bitter rivals, the Tories, while paying lip service to the Hanoverian succession, harbor many
powerful dissidents, called Jacobites, who are determined that the next monarch should instead be James
Stuart: a Catholic who has lived most of his life in France as a guest and puppet of the immensely
powerful Sun King, Louis XIV.

England and an alliance of mostly Protestant countries have just finished fighting a quarter-century-long
world war against France. The second half of it, known as the War of the Spanish Succession, has seen
many battlefield victories for the Allies under the generalship of two brothers in arms: the Duke of
Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy. Nevertheless France has won the war, in large part by
outmaneuvering her opponents politically. Consequently, a grandson of Louis XIV now sits on the throne
of the Spanish Empire, which among other things is the source of most of the worldтАЩs gold and silver. If
the English Jacobites succeed in placing James Stuart on the English throne, FranceтАЩs victory will be total.

In anticipation of the death of Queen Anne, Whiggish courtiers and politicians have been establishing
contacts and forging alliances between London and Hanover. This has had the side-effect of throwing
into high relief a long-simmering dispute between Sir Isaac NewtonтАФthe pre├лminent English scientist, the
President of the Royal Society, and Master of the Royal Mint at the Tower of LondonтАФand Leibniz, a
privy councilor and old friend of Sophie, and tutor to Princess Caroline. Ostensibly this conflict is about
which of the two men first invented the calculus, but in truth it has deeper roots. Newton and Leibniz are
both Christians, troubled that many of their fellow Natural Philosophers perceive a conflict between the
mechanistic world-view of science and the tenets of their faith. Both men have developed theories to