Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 The family had moved to Bamberg eight months earlier, and Frantz had already accompanied his father to several executions in the city and nearby villages. He was testing his son on the most difficult and honorable form of execution, death by the sword. #2 The local dog slayer, or knacker, had assembled a few stray canines and brought them in his ramshackle wooden cages to the executioner's residence in the heart of the city. Schmidt paid his subordinate a small tip for the favor and took the animals to the courtyard behind the house. #3 The insecurity of life was evident from the very beginning. The first two years of a child's life were the most dangerous, as frequent outbreaks of smallpox, typhus, and dysentery proved particularly fatal to younger victims. #4 The German states of the 1500s were divided up among more than 300 member states, which ranged in size from small baronial castles to vast territorial principalities. The emperor and his annual representative assembly, the Reichstag, provided a common focus of allegiance and symbolic authority, but they were powerless to prevent or resolve the feuds and wars that regularly broke out among member states

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