Charles II (Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson) - Great Fire of London
He’d been driven through these same streets, mouth covered, mourning his London brought low by the plague. The city had been scourged and he had once again fled to safety.
And now, as if Moses’ plagues have come again, he is here to witness this. One by one dwellings catch fire, flames leaping from building to building. London burns.
This time he’ll fight. The soldiers load barrels of gunpowder into the chosen house. A puritan, an old roundhead perhaps, shrieks from his roof top, inviting death. Charles II thinks of his father, thinks of his exile, and lights the fuse.