Smiljan, July 10, 1856 The midwife was afraid of storms. That much the family remembered clearly. She was there in the small stone house in Smiljan, in the Lika region of what is now Croatia, on the night of July 9th rolling into the morning of July 10th, 1856, and the lightning outside was fierce enough to rattle the windows and put genuine fear into a woman who had likely attended dozens of births in that village. When the baby finally arrived, right at the stroke of midnight, she looked at the storm and announced her verdict. “He’ll be a…