Provides an account of the assassination in 1584 of Prince William of Orange, and the shockwaves it sent through an age. This book explores an eclectic mix of history's tipping points. It presents the historical ramifications of just such an instance, the first assassination of a head of state with a hand-held gun.

Queen Elizabeth I, William's close Protestant ally, was devastated by his death and thrown into panic; in the aftermath of William's death, legislation was enacted in the English parliament making it an offence to bring a pistol anywhere near a royal palace. Elizabeth's terror was not misplaced - as Jardine observes, this assassination was the first in a long and bloody line including those of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 and is all too relevant today.