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POLITICAL GEOMETRY
quer the Far East and the Pacific. And both of these betrayals of the Christian, Western cause for selfish ends have a remarkable precedent and model in an arrangement concluded with the Grand Turk by a pope. Anxious to preserve the political independence of the territory of the Holy See, Alexander VI, supreme sliepherd of the Christian flock, vicar of Christ on earth, and the very tongue of the Holy Ghost, joined hands, in 1494, with the sultan Bayazid II, to defeat the imperial ambitions of Charles VIII of France. Half a century later, Suleiinan the Magnificent became allied with the French king, Francis 1, against the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V; and the subsequent Moslem advance into castern Europe (a forerunner of the one in the time of Louis XIV) even enjoyed the tacit approval of Pope Paul III.
In the French mandala of alliances, when the power of Turkey began to decline, that of rising Russia took its place, as the natural ally at the back of the immediate ncighbor to the cast. Napoleon in 1805 and 1810 accordingly made friends with the emperor of Russia, in order to check Prussia and Austria (the Russian armies having previously fought for ycars side by side with the Austrians, in Switzerland and along the Riviera, in their comnion campaign against the French Revolution and Republic). Napoleon also resurrected Poland, as a second ally for himself at the back of Germany, by restoring those portions that had fallen to the share of Austria and Prussia in the partitions of Poland between those powers and Russia at the close of the eighteenth century. And following the same absolutely dependable logic of the mandala, France again won the cooperation of Russia in her policy of encirclement just before the first World War-a classic pincer movement on the chessboard of the powers that would compellier immcdiate neighbor to fight a war on two fronts. France at the same time supported Serbia against Austria, as the ally at Austria's rear,21 and then Romania,
31 Russia, too, supported Serbia against Austria-another pincer movement.
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |