Eoin Purcell
A line to unsettle you on a bank holiday Monday:
. . . she delighted in the sensitive dreamer’s nature of her second son, Maximilian, who was to dream himself to death before a firing squad in Mexico.
I picked up rather nice edition of this in hardback when I was in the US a while ago but I have only started reading it recently. A few great lines already and the historian’s biases are fairly open an clear. It is well worth reading.
– GBS data here
– LibraryThing data here
– Worldcat data here
Eoin Purcell's Blog 
What a wonderful line….”he dreamed himself to death before a firing squad in Mexico.”
Thanks for the tip.
Maximilian didnt die before a firing squad, it was his steward or impersonator whom the Mexican people confused with the Emperor because of a single portrait. The Emperor didnt know himself, he was used to… distortion mirrors, an easily to sustain assertion as a concession to Muslim prejudices against depiction of the human figure.