aders, who exercised a no less
pervasive influence on the mass of their followers, that the Prisoner of
Akka directed His appeals, warnings, and exhortations during the first
years of His incarceration in that city. "Upon Our arrival at this
Prison," He Himself affirms, "We purposed to transmit to the kings the
messages of their Lord, the Mighty, the All-Praised. Though We have
transmitted to them, in several Tablets, that which We were commanded, yet
We do it once again, as a token of God's grace."

To the kings of the earth, both in the East and in the West, both
Christian and Muslim, who had already been collectively admonished and
warned in the Suriy-i-Muluk revealed in Adrianople, and had been so
vehemently summoned by the Bab, in the opening chapter of the
Qayyumu'l-Asma, on the very night of the Declaration of His Mission,
Baha'u'llah, during the darkest days of His confinement in Akka, addressed
some of the noblest passages of His Most Holy Book. In these passages He
called upon them to take fast hold of the "Most Great Law"; proclaimed
Himself to be "the King of Kings" and "the Desire of all Nations";
declared them to be His "vassals" and "emblems of His sovereignty";
disclaimed any intention of laying hands on their kingdoms; bade them
forsake their palaces, and hasten to gain admittance into His Kingdom;
extolled the king who would arise to aid His Cause as "the very eye of
mankind"; and finally arraigned them for the things which had befallen Him
at their hands.

In His Tablet to Queen Victoria He, moreover, invites these kings to hold
fast to "the Lesser Peace," since they had refused "the Most Great Peace";
exhorts them to be reconciled among themselves, to unite and to reduce
their armaments; bids them refrain from laying excessive burdens on their
subjects, who, He informs them, are their "wards" and "treasures";
enunciates the principle that should any one among them take up arms
against another, all should rise against him; and warns them not to deal
with Him as the "King of Islam" and his ministers had dealt.

To the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, the most prominent and
influential monarch of his day in the West, designated by Him as the
"Chief of Sovereigns," and who, to quote His words, had "cast behind his
back" the Tablet revealed for him in Adrianople, He, while a prisoner in
the army barracks, addressed a second Tablet and transmitted it through
the French agent in Akka. In this He annou