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Pillage   Listen
verb
Pillage  v. i.  (past & past part. pillaged; pres. part. pillaging)  To strip of money or goods by open violence; to plunder; to spoil; to lay waste; as, to pillage the camp of an enemy. "Mummius... took, pillaged, and burnt their city."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pillage" Quotes from Famous Books



... hunted after by him in the by-ways of Tarascon. At last they had decided to meet him face to face. At the outset surprise nailed him to the spot. But when he saw the outlaws fall upon the luggage, tear off the tarpaulin covering, and actually commence the pillage of the ship, then the hero awoke. Whipping out his hunting-sword, "To arms! to arms!" he roared to the passengers; and away he flew, the foremost of all, upon the buccaneers. "Ques aco? What's the stir? What's the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... the National Gallery, which represents a Madonna in the clouds with St John the Baptist appearing to St Jerome, is a good example of Parmigianino. It is said that he was engrossed with this picture during the siege of Rome in 1527. The soldiers entered the studio intent on pillage, but surprising the master at his work, respected ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... ships first appeared off the Irish coasts about the year 800. From that time for two centuries Ireland was to a large extent cut off from intercourse with the rest of Europe. The aim of the northern hordes, as it seems, was not mere pillage, but the extinction of Christianity. Ecclesiastical institutions were everywhere attacked, and often destroyed. And these institutions were centres of scholarship. Heretofore Ireland had been the special home of learning, and had attracted to itself large numbers of foreign ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... He felt that had he himself not had means his own bands would have also taken to pillage. The men who took to the hills regarded themselves as at war with Rome. Rome sent her soldiers against them, and slew every man captured. She hunted them like wild beasts, and as wild beasts they had to live at her expense. Beric was not in advance of the spirit of his time. It ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... these mills, the greatest advantage to the city came from the Castle Mill. Notwithstanding its name, this was not the property of the Castle of Oxford, though it stood within arrow-shot of its towers, and was thus protected from pillage in time of war. It stands under the remaining tower, the water tower, of the castle still, and on exactly the same site, and on the branch of the Thames which from the most ancient days has been the waterway by which barges and merchandise came from the country ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... fell out that one evening my regiment bivouacked in a park belonging to a handsome chateau where a countess lived, a young and pretty woman she was. Of course, I meant to lodge in the house, and I hurried there to put a stop to pillage of any sort. I came into the salon just as my quartermaster was pointing his carbine at the countess, his brutal way of asking for what she certainly could not give the ugly scoundrel. I struck up his carbine with my sword, the bullet went through a ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... depredation are already at their height; and not only the masters of frames, who are obnoxious on account of their occupation, but persons in no degree connected with the malecontents or their oppressors, are liable to insult and pillage. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... band of ruffians who demanded my wheat. And when I did say, 'Nay,' they did beat me, take the wheat and cast me into the chaff to die. And it hath since come to me that these ruffians are none other than servants of Annas, High Priest, who go about to pillage and destroy. Is it not so?" and turning to one side he lay hold of another man's arm. "Here is ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... bankruptcy, intolerable taxation, nor one hour's security against the renewal exterminating civil war. Session after session have you been compelled to enact laws of unexampled rigour and novelty to repress the horrible excesses of the mass of your people: and the fury of murder and pillage and desolation have so outrun all legislative exertions that you have been at length driven to the hard necessity of breaking down the pale of municipal law, and putting your courage under the ban of military government—and ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... These Borneo Dyaks are bred from infancy to prey on their fellow-creatures. To be strangers and defenceless is to court pillage and massacre at their hands. I think no more of shooting them than of smashing a clay pigeon. Killing a mad dog is perhaps ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... without a very important reason, the thought of new potatoes at a ruined farm some way back, or cherries in the orchard, generally seems a sufficiently important reason to send one's servant back on an errand of pillage. Thus it was that, unknown to me, my servant spent part of the next three days big-game ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett

... famous in the history of France, found me still on the plains of my native Brittany. I could not leave the province till late in the year, and did not reach Paris till after the pillage of the Maison Reveillon, the opening of the States-General, the constitution of the Tiers-Etat in the National Assembly, the oath of the Jeu-de-Paume, the royal council of the 23rd of June, and the junction of the clergy and nobility in the Tiers-Etat. The court, now yielding, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... a holy sentiment of respect for the sacred city; they all felt that they had before them, not the city of one people, but the city of the whole human race; they all lowered the swords they had raised! Yes, to massacre the Parisians, to treat Paris like a place taken by assault, to deliver up to pillage one quarter of the town, to outrage the second Eternal City, to assassinate civilization in her very sanctuary, to shoot down old men, children, and women, in this illustrious spot, this home of the world; that which Wellington forbade his half-naked Highlanders, and Schwartzenberg ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... great, the applause of the multitude, and thereby acquire riches for themselves; for they approach Theology, not that they may perform a sacred duty, but make a fortune: nor to promote the interests of the church, but to pillage it: seeking, as Paul says, not the things which are of Jesus Christ, but what may be their own: not the treasure of their Lord, but the enrichment of themselves and their followers. Nor does this evil belong to those of humbler birth and fortunes only, it possesses ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... take away the savage inhabitants, or their slaves or the goods which the savages had taken belonging to the subjects of either nation, and that they should give no assistance or protection to such raids and pillage. In 1705 it was decided that Negroes in America were "moveables," meubles, corresponding in substance to what is called "personal property" in the English law.[6] This decision was on the Coutume de Paris, the law ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... is satisfied with the pasture of an acre or two; one wood suffices for several elephants. Man alone supports himself by the pillage of the whole earth and sea. What? Has Nature indeed given us so insatiable a stomach, while she has given us so insignificant bodies? No; it is not the hunger of our stomachs, but insatiable ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... was a dull, sleepy North Carolina Town, with as little animation of any kind as a Breton Pillage. The only business was the handling of the tar, turpentine, rosin, and peanuts produced in the surrounding country, a business never lively enough to excite more than a lazy ripple in the sluggish ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... novelists. 'Every now and then,' he says, referring to the extreme of this type, 'I read a book with perfect comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story; "no promenade, no band of music, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... which he divided between Mr. Heber and Lord Spencer. The collection was part of the benefaction of Dean Honeywood, and it was a shameful betrayal of trust. Our cathedral libraries still retain a host of treasures, notwithstanding all this sort of pillage; and the dim religious light which is shed around lends an air of sanctity to the spot sufficient, one might have thought, to arrest the hand ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... him from Spain numerous pictures of great value, Wellington did not appropriate to himself a single farthing's worth of property. Everywhere he paid his way, even when in the enemy's country. When he had crossed the French frontier, followed by 40,000 Spaniards, who sought to "make fortunes" by pillage and plunder, he first rebuked their officers, and then, finding his efforts to restrain them unavailing, he sent them back into their own country. It is a remarkable fact, that, even in France the peasantry fled from their own countrymen, and carried their valuables within the protection of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... with unabated violence throughout the whole kingdom, arming brother against brother, friend against friend. Churches were sacked and destroyed; vast extents of country were almost depopulated; cities were surrendered to pillage, and atrocities innumerable perpetrated, from which it would seem that even fiends would revolt. France was filled with smouldering ruins; and the wailing cry of widows and of orphans, thus made by the wrath ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... coats, quilted or stuffed with cotton wool. Yet, according to the English proverb, The burnt child dreads the fire; notwithstanding their leathern coats, none of them are hardy enough to attempt this new breach, though much easier to enter than the former, any farther than to pillage certain bales of bastas and other stuffs which have fallen down from a barricade or breast-work, thrown up by the Portuguese for defending the top of the breach from the fire ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... of guilt and shame had stabbed at Lord's mind. He had come, unasked, into an Eden. He didn't belong here. His presence meant pillage, a rifling of a sacred dream. The landing had ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox

... Moscow full of masterpieces? The Kremlin is one of the finest buildings in the world. That did not prevent us giving that admirable city up to pillage. Oh no, my poor petit Dame, do not deceive yourself. Armies may be Russian, German, French, or Spanish, but they are armies—that is, they are beings which form an impersonal 'whole,' a 'whole' that is ferocious and irresponsible. The Germans will bombard the whole of Paris if the possibility ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... favoring Lucie's excessive partiality to religious practices, she had helped her into a convent. Gaston showed himself only when he secured a few days' leave. And so Andree alone remained at home, impeding by her presence the great general pillage that Celeste dreamt of. The maid therefore became a most active worker on behalf of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... demonstration was not expected to be of any importance. However, at about five in the evening, we beheld Heymes, in plain clothes, gallop into the courtyard, on a dragoon's charger, covered with foam. He had just come from the demonstration, and had witnessed that ordinary prologue to revolutions, pillage and massacre—pillage of gunsmiths' shops, and massacre of the officers of the 6th Dragoons, shot down with pistols, without any provocation whatever, at the head ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the sixth of August (he considered that it could and should have been defended) and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew had something to think about entirely apart from general questions. Two days previously he had received news that his father, son, and sister had left for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... that these fierce warriors, who were exactly what the Saxons and Jutes had been four hundred years before—as fierce, as rude, as pagan—suffered any of the inhabitants, except the slaves, to remain. Massacre and pillage—or the fear of both—drove away all the residents. But the City was the headquarters of the Danes. Alfred recovered ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... and drinks which they consume to the point of drunkenness; then they begin to shoot wildly, sometimes from the interior of empty houses, declaring that the inhabitants have fired the shots. It is then that the firing scenes begin, and murder and especially pillage accompanied by acts of cold cruelty set in, acts which respect neither sex nor age. Even where they claim to know the perpetrator of the deeds which they allege, they do not content themselves with executing the culprits summarily, but take advantage of the occasions ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... my sides were shaking in the midst of all my quaking, To hear her talk of Indians when the guns began to roar: She had seen the burning village, and the slaughter and the pillage, When the Mohawks killed her father with their bullets through ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... could not instantly return to quiet toils made odious by slavery. Mad with joy and drink, it broke into small companies, some content to stay in town carousing, others roaming out among the island estates to pillage and burn. Here the governor, in failing to employ prompt measures of police, proved ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... rang out—Le Brusquet's voice—and pushing my way past the mob that had already swarmed in and begun to sack and pillage I ran up the stair. At the head stood Le Brusquet, and huddled in a corner near a door was De Mouchy, with a white, fear-stricken face and chattering teeth, and De Lorgnac's sword ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... attractions are felt and acknowledged by every country in Europe. Many of the elite of each nation may yearly be found there during the months of summer, and, as a natural consequence, many of the worst and vilest follow them, in the hope of pillage. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... to take a town. Having lost everything he possessed, and having passed such a long time without any employment more profitable than that of shooting fish with a bow and arrows, our doughty pirate now desired to make a grand strike, and if he could take a town and pillage it of everything valuable it contained, he would make a very good fortune in a very short time, and might retire, if he chose, from the ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... yet entered by force. To their eternal shame, the victors forgot that they, too, were Russians! During three days not only the houses, but the cloisters, churches, and even the temples of St. Sophia and the Dime, were given over to pillage. The precious images, the sacerdotal ornaments, the books, and the bells,—all were ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... Mincio (Ticino) behind them, when they take to flight and leave the landsknechts in the lurch. As soon as the citizens of Pavia observe this, they promise, on condition that they are exempted from pillage, a month's pay to each individual in the Confederate and Venetian camps. The former thirsted for a contest with the landsknechts, but this desire was yet to cost them much bitter sweat. The clumsy artillery of the besieging army was drawn up in the park, outside of the city, under the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... wheresoever they go," wrote an eye-witness;(281) "but it is beyond my experience or reading to have such a body of English committed and commanded by a stranger, to say no more." On their way to Dover the men carried out a system of pillage as if already in an enemy's country; and as soon as they found their pay was not forthcoming they mutinied.(282) The promises of the French king proved fallacious and Mansfeld was forbidden to land his forces in France. This prohibition, however, was little to him, for he had ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... in warm-blooded vertebrates. Otherwise, one could not see either an ant, with its abdomen or antennae cut off, gorge itself with honey; or a humble-bee, in which the antennae and all the front of the head had been removed, go to find and pillage flowers; or a spider, the foot of which had been broken, feed immediately on this, its own foot, as I myself have seen; or, finally, a caterpillar, wounded at the "tail" end, devour itself, beginning behind, as I have ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... manuscripts in Canada. There have been found two complete Relations, following that of 1672, and continuing the series to 1679. One is the Relation of 1673, and the other comprises a period of six years, from 1673 to 1679. They fortunately escaped the pillage of the Jesuit College at Quebec, Father Casot, the last of the old race of Jesuits, dying at Quebec in 1800, had confided them, with other manuscripts, to the pious hands of the nuns of the Hotel Dieu, in that city, who preserved them for a long time ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... decisive and solemn. "Now, father," said Agricola, "we will act with as much craft and daring as thieves going to pillage a ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... think on that account that you can waste and pillage every thing," he declared rudely. "Besides, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... York. She was a granddaughter of the Rev. James Caldwell, of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, the Revolutionary patriot. The tragical fate of her grandmother has passed into history. When the British forces reached Connecticut Farms, on the 7th of June, 1780, and began to burn and pillage the place, Mrs. Caldwell, who was then living there, retired with her two children—one an infant in her arms—to a back room in the house. Here, while engaged in prayer, she was shot through the window. Two bullets struck her in the breast and she fell ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... about the lovely art of sound!... But to have the handling of such divine powers, and to turn them to such uses!... A flaming, consuming meteor! An Isolde, who is a Jewish prostitute. Bestial and mournful lust. The frenzy of murder, pillage, incest, and untrammeled instincts which is stirring in the depths of German decadence.... And, on the other hand, the spasm of a voluptuous and melancholy suicide, the death-rattle which sounds through your French decadence.... On the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... enemy's country contribute to the support of his army and toward defraying all the charges of the war. Thus he obtains a part of what is due to him, and the enemy's subjects, by consenting to pay the sum demanded, have their property secured from pillage ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... orders were read to the troops, announcing to them that they were soon to land on the coast of North Carolina, and reminding them that they were there, not to pillage or destroy private property, but to subdue the rebellion, and to maintain the ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... very irritating to Villiers to know that whilst he just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his father were being subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, or sold for pitiful sums by the Commissioners appointed by the Parliament to break up and annihilate many of the old properties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately seat on which the first duke had lavished ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... down their merchandise from their frigates) gained us liberty and quiet to stay in this town some hour and half: we had not only refreshed ourselves, but our company and Cimaroons had gotten some good pillage, which our Captain allowed and gave them (being not the thing he looked for) so that it were not too cumbersome or heavy in respect of our travel, or ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols

... [Sidenote: London called Augusta.] & drew towards London, an ancient citie, which now of late hath bin called Augusta. Herewith diuiding his armie into sundrie parts, he set vpon the troops of his enimies as they were abroad to forrey the countrie, pestered with burdens of their spoiles and pillage, and speedilie putting them to flight, as they were leading away those prisoners which they had taken, with their booties of cattell, he bereft them of their preie, the which the poore Britains that were tributaries had lost. To be briefe, restoring the whole, except a small portion ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed

... back from the position he had taken. Their arms proved successful in a first battle; but Lewis having withdrawn his troops immediately after the victory, Ladislas deceived the Holy Father by a pretended peace, gained possession of Rome, and gave it up to pillage. The horrors of this invasion, and of the sack that followed it, surpassed in atrocity almost all those which had previously afflicted the capital of the Christian world. A number of palaces and houses were destroyed, the basilicas were despoiled of their treasures and desecrated by ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... of the noisy tumults which in general characterize the proceedings of excited and angry crowds. Truly, those pitiable gatherings had their own peculiarities of misery. During the progress of the pillage, individuals of every age, sex, and condition—so far as condition can be applied to the lower classes—might be seen behind ditches, in remote nooks—in porches of houses, and many on the open highways and streets, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... the city, exhorting its defenders to be of good courage and cheering the wounded by his ministrations; while, as if to counteract his influence for good, the more heartless spirits were tempted to robbery and pillage—a shameless addition to the general suffering promptly checked by a gallows in ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... thieves, for any article sent forward or left behind for consumption in spots only indicated to those concerned—after the manner of the ca^ches of the French Canadian trappers on the American prairies. To 'spring' a plant is to discover and pillage it." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... are most amusing, and full of interesting observations.[11] After describing "Musquito-hunting" with her husband, she writes:—"In return, I endeavoured to effect a treaty of peace for the baboons, who are apt to come down from the mountain in little troops to pillage our garden of the fruit with which the trees are loaded. I told him he would be worse than Don Carlos if he refused the children of the sun and the soil the use of what had descended from ouran-outang to ouran-outang; but, alas! I could not succeed. He had pledged himself to the gardener,[12] ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... the Saracens, masters of the peninsula, poured over the Pyrenees, and entered the Septimania. They had come not to conquer and pillage, but to conquer and occupy. They had brought with them accordingly their wives and children. They took Narbonne, Carcassone and Nimes, besieged Toulouse, and almost totally destroyed Bordeaux. Thrusting ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... converts it to his own uses, is sacrilegious; but all things belong to the gods, so that whatever thing any one touches belongs to them to whom all belongs; whoever, therefore, touches anything is sacrilegious." Again, when he bids men break open temples and pillage the Capitol without fear of the wrath of heaven, he declares that no one can be sacrilegious; because, whatever a man takes away, he takes from one place which belongs to the gods into another place which belongs to the gods. The answer to this is that all places do indeed belong to the gods, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... on nicely up here to our village, With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut aint, We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage, An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark of a saint; But John P. Robinson he Sez this kind o' thing's an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... old fortress. They grew up beneath its sheltering walls like children holding the gown of their good mother, though the castle often proved but a harsh and cruel stepmother, and exacted heavy tribute in return for partial security from pillage and rapine. Thus Newcastle-upon-Tyne arose about the early fortress erected in 1080 by Robert Curthose to guard the passage of the river at the Pons Aelii. The poor little Saxon village of Monkchester ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... give us some assistance in men-at-arms and archers, and that we should then give battle to the rabble. But I found few of my opinion. All were thinking of the safety of their families and goods, and said that were we defeated, as we well might be, seeing how great are their numbers, they would pillage and slay as they chose. Whereas, if we give them no pretence for molesting us, it might be that they would do no harm to private persons, but would content themselves with carrying out their original designs of obtaining a charter ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... soldiers, was too brave to run without first doing his duty. He decided to stand his ground until he was sure the foreigners were coming his way. Perhaps they would grow tired of their cruel sport and leave the little house unharmed. He watched with wide-open eyes the work of pillage. Alas! these men did not seem to tire of their amusement. One after another the houses were entered and robbed. Women were screaming and children crying. Nearly all the village men were away in a distant market town, for none of ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... thousand armed and unarmed peasants, sick with misery and oppression, in the presence of their undefended tyrant. One shot, one blow of a stone, one stroke of a knife—to the end of a shameless pillage. But no hand was raised to do the deed. The roar of voices subsided—he waited for it—and silence was broken only by the crackle of the burning building, the tramp of Montcalm's soldiers in Mountain Street, and the tolling of the cathedral ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... kingdom. But it may defy all outward enemies to prove in any degree destructive in comparison with its lawless and barbarous inmates. We shall soon have no authentic accounts from Paris, as no English are expected to remain after the ambassador, and no French will dare to write, in such times of pillage, what may carry ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... chief as they understood such to be; carefully he fostered their warrior pride; never were they ordered to work at menial offices, to fetch or to carry; only to drill and to fight; his punishments were ferocious, but he gave them liberty in pillage and rape. Eh! but the Eater-of-Men was a mighty chief! and of his name they boasted to ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... This intrusion, and the pillage of my cabinet, were contemporary events. Was there no more connection between them than that which results from time? Was not the purloiner of my treasure and the wanderer the same person? I could not reconcile the former incident with the attributes of man; ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... at Barbara's morning dress I am forced to hear things which sadden me deeply. The chaplain reads the papers aloud to us, and I see that the republic loses daily in power and dignity; the neighboring powers invade it under divers pretexts; their troops pillage and devastate the country, while the Government refuses to interfere.... I dare not think of the future, but my father says we must enjoy the present. All speak in subdued tones of the woes which threaten Poland, and then dance ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... these soon joined themselves various individuals of the half-soldier half-bandit class, so numerous in Spain—men who had served in former wars, and asked no better than again to enact the scenes of bloodshed and pillage which were their element. The popularity and acknowledged skill of Merino as a guerilla-leader, secured to him the services of many of these daring and desperate ruffians, who flocked joyously to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... still very right, provided it be done with moderation." Now, was there any thing more absurd in this passage, than to say, that the Slave-trade might be carried on with moderation; for, if you could not rob or murder a single man with moderation, with what moderation could you pillage and wound a whole nation? In fact, the question of the abolition was simply a question of justice. It was only, whether we should authorize by law, respecting Africa, the commission of crimes, for which, in this ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... rattling into all the houses. We have messages from various people whom we invited to come here for safety, that they would gladly accept our offer, but are unwilling to leave their houses exposed to pillage, and do not dare to pass through the streets. So our numbers have not increased ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... Werner, had, a few years prior to the period we approach, enlisted and organised a considerable force, styled "The Great Company," with which he besieged cities and invaded states, without any object less shameless than that of pillage. His example was soon imitated: numerous "Companies," similarly constituted, devastated the distracted and divided land. They appeared, suddenly raised, as if by magic, before the walls of a city, and demanded immense sums ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... organized massacres of civilians, all these murders and outrages, the violation of women, the killing of children, wanton destruction, burning, looting and pillage, and whole towns destroyed, were acts for which no possible military necessity can be pleaded. They were wilfully committed as part of a deliberately prepared and scientifically organized ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... far as it may have been so, that seems merely due to its great length, to the fact that the absence of commissariat arrangements involved a more thorough method of pillage, and ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... in the parish. The fortified mansion, known as Hawkesley House, in this parish, was the scene of a contest in May, 1645, between King Charles' forces and the Parliamentarians, who held it, the result being its capture, pillage, and destruction by fire. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... this was all. He took no vengeance,—he allowed the Protestants to worship as before,—he took many of them into the public service,—and to Guiton he showed marks of respect. He stretched forth that strong arm of his over the city, and warded off all harm. He kept back greedy soldiers from pillage,—he kept back bigot priests from persecution. Years before this he had said, "The diversity of religions may indeed create a division in the other world, but not in this"; at another time he wrote, "Violent remedies only aggravate spiritual ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... these projects verged on the ludicrous, as that of corraling a band of the criminals and royalist outlaws that infested France and dropping them on the English coast for a wild campaign of murder and pillage. Fifteen hundred of these Chouans were actually landed at Fishguard in February of 1798, but promptly surrendered, and France had to give good English prisoners in exchange for them on the threat that they would be turned loose again on ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... I reply: Either a prince spends that which is his own or his subjects' or else that of others. In the first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect any opportunity for liberality. And to the prince who goes forth with his army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that which belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he would not be followed by soldiers. And of that which is neither yours nor your subjects' you can be a ready giver, as ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... of night fell, the temple made a bonfire that illuminated the scenes of pillage going on all around. The big idols of loathly aspect had been thrown down, broken to pieces, and despoiled of their jewels and the heavy plates of gold that encumbered them. Our soldiers had swarmed out of the building, past a tank to the houses of some priests beyond. Not one ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... mean that large and venerable body which, in English, we call the mob. Now, whoever hath had the honour to be admitted to any degree of intimacy with this mob, must well know that it is one of their established maxims to plunder and pillage their rich neighbours without any reluctance; and that this is held to be neither sin nor shame among them. And so constantly do they abide and act by this maxim, that, in every parish almost in the kingdom, there is a kind of confederacy ever ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... discipline of that army no men contributed more than the members of this university and men such as they. They bore always with them the loftiest principle in the contest and the highest honor in all their personal relations. Disorder in camp, pillage and plunder, found in them stern and unrelenting foes. They fought in a cause too sacred, they wore a robe too white, to be willing to stain or sully it ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... thousands of persons. Even after these atrocities the Jacobin commissioners continued to make use of the blacks in order to enforce their levelling decree; and the year ended amid long drawn out scenes of murder, rape, and pillage. By these infamous means did democracy win its triumph ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... the circumstances of the time, access from without or within was apparently impossible, they could not seriously believe. That any human beings had intended murder, unless it were to cover a scheme of pillage, was incredible; but that no such design had been formed, was evident from the security in which the furniture of the house ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... rulers. The whole history of the country is in fact one gloomy record of internecine wars, barbaric deeds and unstable governments, of adventurers usurping thrones, only to be themselves unseated, and of raids, rapine and pillage. Into this chaos enter from time to time broad rays of sunshine, the efforts of a few enlightened monarchs to evolve order from disorder, and to supply to their people the blessings of peace and civilization. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... officers, while the soldiers were only to frequent wine and beer shops selected in the neighbourhood of the barracks, and were strictly forbidden to enter any others. Any soldier caught in an act of theft or pillage was to be hung, forthwith, and all were enjoined to observe a friendly demeanour ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... Catholics. The burning of heretics was a public amusement, and the court ladies sat out the play. On the queen-mother and on her miserable son lay all the blood of the St. Bartholomew. The country was torn asunder; everywhere was battle, murder, pillage, and such woeful partings as Mr. Millais has represented in his incomparable picture. To the solitary humourous essayist this state of things was hateful. He was a good Catholic in his easy way; he attended divine service regularly; he crossed himself when he yawned. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... of Company B of the Fifth regiment, under command of Capt. Marsh, went to the scene of the revolt, but they were ambushed and about twenty-five of their number, including the captain, killed. The horrible work of murder, pillage and destruction was spread throughout the entire Sioux reservation, and whole families, especially those in isolated portions of the country, were an easy ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... in spite of the fact that ravage and pillage had come very near to them in the night, they returned to the farm in much better spirits than would have been deemed possible ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... that the landscape was not among my principal contemplations at the moment, though my eyes involuntarily turned on the town; where, from the blazes springing up in various quarters, I concluded that a general pillage had begun. That pillage was the order of the day much nearer to me, I could fully conceive, from the opening and shutting of doors, and the general tumult immediately under the leads where I stood. "Situation, gentlemen," said the old general, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... its overthrow and its damnation. For five hundred years we have awaited the Redemption, but we have only seen one wild race come after another, to murder and pillage. Do you see any reason in ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... all be mine As, clambering from the scene of pillage, I roosted safe in yon red pine (Left over from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... Rhine they rode through Hesse with their warriors towards Saxon land, where they later fought. With fire and pillage, too, they harried all the countryside, so that the two kings did learn of it in dire distress. Then came they to the border; the warriors marched along. Siegfried, the strong, gan ask: "Who shall now guard here the troop?" Forsooth never did men ride more ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... of the wild life he had led. He was only twenty-six, and he had already been the commander of a slave ship, and had fought in Mexico at the head of one of those guerilla bands which make politics an excuse for pillage and murder. He divined only too well the impression he had made upon my heart. I met him twice afterward in society. He did not speak to me; he even pretended to avoid me, but standing a little on one side, he watched my every movement ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... the interior of the machine, but there seemed nothing to distinguish it from the thousands of other piratical craft which pillage the public with the aid of the taximeter clock on the port beam! Soon they were at the big Broadway playhouse, where Shirley floundered out first, after the ungallant manner of many sere-and-yellow beaux. He swayed unsteadily, teetering ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... all her centuries on the bosom of the young nation. Moreover, his son Luigi distressed him. Rebellious to all guidance, the young man had become one of the devouring offsprings of conquest, eager to despoil that Italy, that Rome, which his father seemed to have desired solely in order that he might pillage them and batten on them. Orlando had vainly opposed Luigi's departure from the ministry, his participation in the frantic speculations on land and house property to which the mad building of the new ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... the modern K'ai-feng Fu in Honan, was twice besieged: on the first occasion for thirty-three days, when a heavy ransom was exacted and some territory was ceded; on the second occasion for forty days, when it fell, and was given up to pillage. In 1127, the feeble Chinese Emperor was seized and carried off, and by 1129 the whole of China north of the Yang-tsze was in the hands of the Nue-chens. The younger brother of the banished Emperor was proclaimed ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... lips is—Will the Cambria Iron Company rebuild? The wire mill is completely wrecked, but the walls of the rolling mill are still standing. If they do not resume it is a question whether the town will be rebuilt. The Hungarians were beginning to pillage the houses, and the arrival of police was most timely. Word had just been received that all the men employed by Peabody, the Pittsburgh contractor, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... duty to his Sovereign and his command that he retired to his house in the town of Versailles to seek sleep. In the masses of people outside the gates were thieves and men of violence. "What a delightful prospect was opened for pillage in the wonderful palace of Versailles, where the riches of France had been amassed for more than a century!" exclaims the commentator, Michelet. Here follows a dramatic account of what followed, based on the story of Madame de Stael, who witnessed many of the bloody scenes in ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... his ruin. The Kansas-Nebraska bill was passed. What part Atchison took, what part Missouri took, under the direction of the pro-slavery leaders that filled every department of the State government, the 'border-ruffian' forays, the pillage of the government arsenal at Liberty, the embargo of the Missouri river, and the robbing and mobbing of peaceful emigrants from the free States, the violence at the polls, and the fraudulent voting that corrupted all the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and despoiled. Their stings failed to penetrate the thick coat and hide of their persistent foes, while a chance stab on the lips or between the nostrils seemed only to arouse the badgers from leisurely methods of pillage to quick and ruthless slaughter of the adult insects as well as of the immature grubs. But Brock never committed the indiscretion of swallowing a full-grown wasp. With his fore-paws he dexterously struck and crippled the angry sentinels that buzzed about his ears, and, with teeth ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... prove himself a scoundrel!' 'Heaven defend me!' exclaimed Enoch. 'Why, Mr. Trevor! are you in your senses?'—'A pitiful scoundrel! A pandar! A glutton! A lascivious hypocrite! With less honesty than a highwayman, for he would not only rob but publicly array himself in the pillage, nay and impudently pretend to do the person whom he plundered ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... of human beings dwelling in the atmosphere of crime and brutality, hungry, cold, and well-nigh hopelessly vicious by virtue of want, association, and environment, and ready for, if not eagerly anticipating any social upheaval which would afford them an opportunity to plunder and pillage. This world presented then, as it ever must, the saddest and most hopeless spectacle in the kaleidoscope of life. There were scores of thousands in this social sewer and new recruits coming daily. The avarice and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... was unknown. Military tactics were nothing more than a collection of peasants' stratagems and a few rules of chivalry. The freebooters, captains, and soldiers of fortune were all acquainted with the tricks of the trade, but they recognised neither friend nor foe; and their one desire was pillage. The nobles affected great concern for honour and praise; in reality they thought of nothing but gain. Alain Chartier said of them: "They cry 'to arms,' but ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... rounds Hach within other sep'rate is it fram'd. To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man Force may be offer'd; to himself I say And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes By devastation, pillage, and the flames, His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites In malice, plund'rers, and all robbers, hence The torment undergo of the first round In different herds. Man can do violence To himself and his own blessings: and for this He in the second round must aye deplore With unavailing ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... the public weal. The first proof of incapacity was elicited by the measures required for the departure of the Spanish troops. The period fixed by the king had already expired, and these obnoxious foreigners were still in the country, living in part on pillage, and each day committing some new excess. Complaints were carried in successive gradation from the government to the council, and from the council to the king. The Spaniards were removed to Zealand; but instead of being embarked at any of its ports, they were ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... late The hook beneath the treacherous bait? Never, O King—of this be sure— Will Raghu's fiery sons endure, Terrific in their vengeful rage, This insult to their hermitage. Thy guilty hands this day have done A deed which all reprove and shun, Unworthly of a noble chief, The pillage loved by coward thief. Stay, if thy heart allow thee, stay And meet me in the deadly fray. Soon shall thou stain the earth with gore, And fall as Khara fell before. The fruits of former deeds o'erpower The sinner in his dying hour: And such a fate on thee, O King, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... are we freed from that dearth of wit Which starved the land, since into schisms split, Wherein th' hast done so much, we must needs guess Wit's last edition is now i' the press. For thou hast drained invention, and he That writes hereafter, doth but pillage thee. But thou hast plots; and will not the Kirk strain At the designs of such a tragic brain? Will they themselves think safe, when they shall see Thy most abominable policy? Will not the Ears assemble, and think't fit Their synod fast and pray against ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... in the dimly lighted shrine, were massacred to a man. The innermost sanctuary was then wrecked, corpses and statues thrown pell-mell into the outer courts or beyond the precincts, fires lit to burn the abominations, and busy hands, always more ready for pillage and destruction than for good work, pulled down the temple, the ruins of which were turned to base uses. The writer, picturing the wild scene, sums up with a touch of exultation: 'Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel'—where note the emphatic prominence of the three names ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the political ignorance and criminal instincts of a part of the population, a sort of organisation whose object it is to provoke in Russia, cost what it may, an inconscient movement of destruction and pillage; for given the state of mind of the masses, any movement at Petrograd will be followed by the most terrible massacres, which will cover with eternal shame the name ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... opened its gates to him. Labienus, one of his principal officers, deserted to Pompey. Caesar showed his contempt by sending his baggage after him. Two legions from Gaul having reached him, he pushed more boldly still to the south. The cities taken were treated as friends; there was no pillage, no violence. Everywhere Caesar won golden ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... equipment of all kinds, including coal belonging or within those territories, to be left in situ and surrendered to the Allies, according to special orders given by the commander-in-chief of the forces of the associated Powers on the different fronts. No new destruction, pillage or requisition to be done by enemy troops in the territories to be evacuated by them and occupied by the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish



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