Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Slaughter   Listen
noun
Slaughter  n.  The act of killing. Specifically:
(a)
The extensive, violent, bloody, or wanton destruction of life; carnage. "On war and mutual slaughter bent."
(b)
The act of killing cattle or other beasts for market.
Synonyms: Carnage; massacre; butchery; murder; havoc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Slaughter" Quotes from Famous Books



... Albert made him Ban of Szorenyi. He became eventually waivode of Transylvania, and Governor of Hungary. His first grand action was the defeat of the Bashaw Isack; and though himself surprised and routed at St. Imre, he speedily regained his prestige by defeating the Turks, with enormous slaughter, killing their leader, Mezerbeg: and subsequently, at the Battle of the Iron Gates, he destroyed ninety thousand Turks, sent by Amurath to avenge the late disgrace. It was then that the Greeks ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... many minutes, sharp walking now to bring him close to the spot which he intended should become such a scene of treacherous slaughter, and just then he heard from afar off something like the muttering of thunder, as if Heaven itself was proclaiming its vengeance against the man who had come out to slay one of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... aider in his wrongous works. O dear my son, let no word escape thy lips without consulting thy heart; nor stand up between two adversaries, for out of converse with the wicked cometh enmity, and from enmity is bred battle, and from battle ariseth slaughter, when thy testimony shall be required; nay, do thou fly therefrom and be at rest. O dear my son, stand not up against one stronger than thyself; but possess thy soul in patience and and long-suffering and forbearance and pacing the paths of piety, for than this naught is more ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... and the attacking force a body of royal troops sent from Oxford to oust the garrison of the Parliament, which they did this same night, with great slaughter, driving the rebels out of the place, and back on the road to Bristol. Had we guess'd this, much ill luck had been spared us; but we knew nought of it, nor whether friends or foes were getting the better. So (Delia being by this time recover'd a little) we determined to pass the night in the woods, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... the slaughter of the Innocents brought before a jury of this town, he would be acquitted," he said half-seriously. "Judas Iscariot would pass unscathed so long as any portion of his thirty pieces ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... fresh Rainbarrow flints in my flint-box, and could get at him downhill. Yes, I'm a dangerous hand with a pistol now and then!... Hark, what's that? [A horn is heard eastward on the London Road.] Ah, here comes the mail. Now we may learn something. Nothing boldens my nerves like news of slaughter! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... up to this manufacture. As there was no attempt at interference with these proceedings, the disaffected became bolder, and began to assemble at regular periods to engage in rifle practice, pigeon-matches, and the slaughter of turkeys. As intimated in a previous note,[285] Mr. Bidwell was applied to for a legal opinion as to the lawfulness of such gatherings. He advised with great caution, specifying how far he conceived ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... His temple; and to Him was to be "the gathering of the people." Yet, at the same time, He was to be "despised and rejected of men"; He was to be "taken from prison and from judgment," and to be "led as a lamb to the slaughter." Tho He was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," yet "the Gentiles were to come to his light, and kings to the brightness of his rising." In the hour when Christ died, those prophetical riddles were solved: those seeming contradictions were reconciled. ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... wrath of Menelaus, and he cared not to look back on the Argive Helen or the slaughter of his kinsfolk and his people. But the arrow of Philoctetes came hissing through the air, and the barb was fixed in the side of Paris. Hastily he drew it from the wound, but the weapons of Herakles failed not to do their work, and the poison sped through his burning veins. Onwards ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... with as great modestie as cunning: One said there was no sallets in the lines to make the sauory, But called it an honest methode, as wholesome as sweete. [E4] Come, a speech in it I chiefly remember Was AEneas tale to Dido, And then especially where he talkes of Princes slaughter, If it liue in thy memory beginne at this line, Let me see. The rugged Pyrrus, like th'arganian beast: No t'is not so, it begins with Pirrus: O I haue it. The rugged Pirrus, he whose sable armes, Blacke as his purpose did ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare

... continued the slaughter, and the Chippeways were obliged at last to give way. One of the Chippeways seized his frightened child and placed him upon his back. His wife lay dead at his feet; with his child clinging to him, he fought his ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman

... own merits or demerits, might have got off more lightly, but Jared Stiles, as a possible protege of Andrew P. Hill, was marked for slaughter. This new heresy and all its supporters must ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... in the German Reichstag, women with authority behind them, when the Kaiser began to lay his plans for the war, the results might have been very different. I do not believe women with boys of their own would ever sit down and wilfully plan slaughter, and if there had been women there when the Kaiser and his brutal war-lords discussed the way in which they would plunge all Europe into bloodshed, I believe one of those deep-bosomed, motherly, blue-eyed German women would have stood upon her feet and said: "William—forget it!" But the German women ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... successor, with the two armies disbanded, but still whetted for slaughter, to expel the French by the mere threat of their ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... through and through in that sentimentality. To me chivalry means all that is narrow, cruel, and rapacious in man. The philandering knights were sensual boobies, the simpering dames soulless wantons. Life meant simply the rule of the strong, the slaughter of the weak. Servitude was its law and robbery its methods. Have you ever traveled in out-of-the-way places ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... been actively engaged in inspection of the Company's holdings from Kamchatka to Sitka: reforming abuses, establishing schools and libraries, conceiving measures to protect the fur-bearing animals from reckless slaughter both by the promuschleniki and marauding foreigners; punishing and banishing the worst offenders against the Company's laws; encouraging the faithful, and sharing hardships with them that sent memories of ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... seem too well founded to be open to the slightest question. Yet there are those who, oblivious of the fact that neglect of this principle has been always responsible for protracted wars, for useless slaughter, and costly failures, still insist on the omniscience of statesmen; who regard the protest of the soldier as the mere outcome of injured vanity, and believe that politics must suffer unless the politician controls strategy as well as the finances. Colonel Henderson's pages ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... things in with yours all the time. The disorder gets on my nerves some days till I want to scream. There are times when I think I shall be obliged to rise up in my wrath like old Samson, and smite her 'hip and thigh with a great slaughter.' ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... couple pass across the room, the cynosure of all eyes. Luderic Hetherington, the rising and gifted night-watchman at the Lone Star slaughter house, and Mabel Grubb, the daughter of the millionaire owner of the Humped-backed Camel saloon, are standing under the oleanders ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... cried Ebearhard, springing up with a laugh, "you were misnamed in your infancy. You should have been called Herod, practically justifying a slaughter of us innocents." ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... old enjoyment of the streets of London. In looking back upon his mood of that earlier day, he saw himself as an incredibly ignorant and careless man; marvelled at the lightness of heart which had enabled him to find amusement in rambling over this vast slaughter-strewn field of battle. Picturesque, forsooth! Where was its picturesqueness for that struggling, soon-to-be-defeated tradesman, with his tipsy wife, and band of children who looked to him for bread? "And I myself am crushing the man—as surely as if I had my hand on his gullet ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... In the midst of slaughter and devastation, throughout all the East, the harem is a sanctuary. Ruffians, covered with the blood of a husband, shrink back with veneration from the secret apartment of ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... tillers of the soil. In Hungary, where the nation was not so completely crushed in the Thirty Years' War, and Protestanism survived, the wholesale executions in 1686, ordered by the Tribunal known as the "Slaughter-house of Eperies," illustrated the traditional policy of the Monarchy towards the spirit of national independence. Two powers alone were allowed to subsist in the Austrian dominions, the power of the Crown and the power of the Priesthood; ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... of the Passover arrived and found Jesus with His followers in Jerusalem and in the Temple. What memories the scene awakened in His mind. He could see the same scenes in which He had participated seventeen years before. Once more He saw the pitiful slaughter of the innocent lambs, and witnessed the flow of the sacrificed blood over the altars and the stones of the floor of the courts. Once more He saw the senseless mummery of the priestly ceremonies, which seemed more pitiful than ever to His developed mind. He knew that His vision ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... congratulations and high estimation from Shams al-Din to his son, Abu al-Shamat. Know, O my son, that news hath reached me of the slaughter of thy men and the plunder of thy monies and goods; so I send thee herewith fifty loads of Egyptian stuffs, together with a suit of clothes and a robe of sables and a basin and ewer of gold. Fear thou no evil, and the goods thou hast lost ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies, madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man's life safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly, sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon wrecked and smoking ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... of brutes? [Music. Fie on these coward thoughts! this trusty sword, That made the Turk and Tartar crouch beneath me, Will stead me well, e'en in this wilderness. [Music. O glory! thou who led'st me fearless on, Where death stalk'd grimly over slaughter'd heaps, Or drank the drowning shrieks of shipwreck'd wretches, Swell high the bosom of thy votary! ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... Their government is monarchical, their kings or chiefs being called Andias, Anrias, and Dias, all independent of each other and almost continually engaged in war, more for the purpose of plunder than slaughter or conquest. On the Portuguese going among them, no arms were found in their possession except a few guns they had procured from the Moors and Hollanders, which they knew not how to use, and were even fearful of handling. They have excellent ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... temperament into the apathy of a hopeless fatalism. It seems to have gone into the blood, tainting every mental activity in its source by a half-mystical, insensate, fascinating assertion of purity and holiness. The Government of Holy Russia, arrogating to itself the supreme power to torment and slaughter the bodies of its subjects like a God-sent scourge, has been most cruel to those whom it allowed to live under the shadow of its dispensation. The worst crime against humanity of that system we behold now crouching at bay behind vast heaps of mangled corpses is the ruthless destruction ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... Romans, tells us himself that on a single occasion, the capture of the Aduatuci, he sold 53,000 prisoners on the spot.[310] And of course every war, whether great or small, while it diminished the free population by slaughter, pestilence, or capture, added to the number of slaves. Cicero himself, after his campaign in Cilicia and the capture of the hill stronghold Pindonissus, did of course as all other commanders did; we catch a glimpse of the process in a letter to Atticus: ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... Hindu gentlemen who have no objection to eat beef and may often have done so in England, though in India they may abstain out of deference to the prejudices of their relatives, especially the women. And Hindus of all castes are beginning to sell worn-out cattle to the butchers for slaughter without scruple—an offence which fifty years ago would have entailed permanent expulsion from caste. The reverence for the cow is thus not an absolutely essential dogma of Hinduism, though it is the nearest approach to one. As a definition or test of Hinduism it is, however, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... escape, the attack had been made on the gate: this had given way to the strength and impetuosity of the assailants: and the great hall with its flights of stair-case and ranges of galleries, rising tier above tier, was now filled with slaughter and confusion. The uproar and clamour increased: like death-notes every sound and every echo smote the heart of Edward Walladmor: every life, that was lost, was lost for him: and to linger any longer was to endanger his father's castle ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey

... pestilence-stricken Rome. Those who, during the most fatal days of the Gothic blockade, dropped famished on the pavement before the little temple, as they endeavoured to pass it on their onward way, presented a dread reality of death, to embody the madman's visions of battle and slaughter. As these victims of famine lay expiring in the street, they heard above them his raving voice cursing them for Christians, triumphing over them as defeated enemies destroyed by his hand, exhorting his imaginary adherents to ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... slaughter of the two tiny princes had reached Nibelheim, and great was the wrath of the little men and little women who dwelt in the dark ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor

... these animals. They did not look wild! The so-called wildest of wild creatures appeared tamer than sheep he had followed on a farm. It would be little less than murder to kill them. Gale regretted the need of slaughter. Nevertheless, he could not resist the desire to show himself and see how tame they ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... seemed for the first time to occur to them that I was not as the rest of the poor souls that were doomed to death, and that it behoved them to treat me rather as a lamb that is doomed for the slaughter than as a great overgrown Bullock to be knocked down by the Butcher's Pole-axe. So they put me away from the rest of my companions, and bestowed me in a sorry little chamber, where I had a truckle-bed to myself. Dear old Mother Drum, being still under disgrace, was not suffered to come ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... sooty-petrel on his subsequent voyage round Tasmania; and it will be convenient to quote here the passage in which he refers to the prodigious numbers in which the birds were seen. It may be added that, despite a century of slaughter by mankind, and after the taking of millions of eggs—which are good food—the numbers of the mutton-birds are still incalculably great.* (* The author may refer to a paper of his own, "The Mutton Birds of Bass Strait," in the Field, April ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... time of house-lamb and of doe-venison. Now is the time of Christmas come, and the voice of the turkey is heard in our land! This is the period of their annual massacre—a new slaughter of the innocents! The Norwich coaches are now laden with mortals; that, while alive, shared with their equally intelligent townsmen, fruges consumere nati, the riches ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... men tremble at punishment, all men fear death; remember that you are like unto them, and do not kill, nor cause slaughter. ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown

... shouted joyfully as they witnessed this marvelous feat and rushed forward to assist in the slaughter; but the boy motioned them all back. He did not wish any more bloodshed than was necessary, and knew that the heaps of unconscious Turks around him ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum

... course of events during the early winter of 1862-63 had resulted in a grievous loss of morale in the Army of the Potomac. The useless slaughter of Marye's Heights was, after a few weeks, succeeded by that most huge of all strategic jokes, the Mud March; and Gen. Burnside retired from a position he had never sought, to the satisfaction, and, be it said to his ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... went in procession to the church of Minerva, when high mass was celebrated. The pope also granted a jubilee to all Christendom, and one reason assigned was, that they should thank God for the slaughter of the enemies of the church, lately executed in France. Two days later, the cardinal of Lorraine headed another great procession of cardinals, clergy, and ambassadors, to the chapel of St. Lewis, where he himself celebrated ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury

... launching of great boats and small, and all were full of noble men of arms, and there was much slaughter of gentle knights; but King Arthur was so courageous none might let him to land; and his knights fiercely followed him, and put back ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... and water in the cutter, and to make the craft herself as safe as possible. This was likely to prove a somewhat hazardous task, as the canoes were now close to the beach and pressing rapidly in on all sides. I felt greatly averse to further slaughter; but in this case I scarcely saw how it was to be averted, the natives being so pertinacious in their attacks. It was quite evident that we must either kill or be killed. I therefore most reluctantly gave the order for the discharge of the six nine-pounders which the battery mounted right ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... named for a sweet Virginia lass, the explorers sailed, or were towed, seventeen miles up the river, where they camped at the mouth of a bold, running river to which they gave the name of Slaughter River. The stream is now known as the Arrow; the appropriateness of the title conferred on the stream by Lewis and Clark appears from the story which they tell of their experience just below "Slaughter River," ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... Eight daring and determined brigands went on board one of these vessels: they hid their arms among the bales of goods. The ship was scarcely out at sea when they seized them, and a horrible scene of slaughter ensued. All who endeavoured to resist them were butchered, even the pilot was thrown overboard; at length, finding no more resistance, they plundered the passengers of the money they had upon them, took every article of value they could find, and, loaded with their booty, they ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... Huguenot leader, the queen-mother, with the aid of the Guises, prevailed upon the weak-minded Charles IX to authorize the wholesale assassination of Protestants. The signal was given by the ringing of a Parisian church-bell at two o'clock in the morning of 24 August, 1572, and the slaughter went on throughout the day in the capital and for several weeks in the provinces. Coligny was murdered; even women and children were not spared. It is estimated that in all at least three thousand—perhaps ten ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... and the ditch. Here they thrust their spears between the palisade; but these were wrenched from their hands, and scores fell from the blows of kris, spear, and arrow; until at last their leaders and chiefs, seeing how terrible was the slaughter, and how impossible it was to climb the bamboo fence, called their men off; and they fell back, pursued by exulting cries from the women, who were standing on the platform behind the wall of the palace, watching the conflict, and by the yells of ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... the history of such scenes, beginning with no one definite object: sometimes a slight one—more ample views and wider conceptions of mischief follow; and what has begun in a drunken riot—a casual rencontre—may terminate in the slaughter of a family, or the burning of a village. The finest peasantry—God bless them—are a vif people, and quicker at taking a hint than most others, and have, withal, a natural taste for fighting, that no acquired habits of other nations ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... supply a meal for the ogre potentate. For centuries past the slave trade in the Congo Basin has been conducted largely for the purpose of furnishing human flesh to consumers. Slaves are sold and bought in great numbers for market, and are fattened for slaughter. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Christ (Ps. xxi.), "I am a worm and no man," whereby he shows how deeply he is cast down and despondent in his suffering. Likewise, also, he writes of his people and of the affliction of Christians, in Psalm xlv.: "We are despised, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter." ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... found in immense numbers on all sub-antarctic islands, are now comparatively rare, even to the degree of extinction, in many of their old haunts. This is the result of ruthless slaughter prosecuted especially bY sealers in the early days. At the present time Macquarie Island is more favoured by them than probably any other known locality. The name by which they are popularly known refers to their elephantine proportions ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... they shall go out in the time of anti- Christ, and that they shall make great slaughter of Christian men. And therefore all the Jews that dwell in all lands learn always to speak Hebrew, in hope, that when the other Jews shall go out, that they may understand their speech, and to lead them into Christendom for to destroy the Christian ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown

... all, seems to be a sufficient recommendation for words spoken within the walls of a play-house. The music is full of melody—"quite killing," as a young lady wittily observed, on noticing that the name of the Composer was SLAUGHTER. So Marjorie may be fairly said not only to have deserved success, but (it is satisfactory to be able to add) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various

... regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing, And a field where a thousand ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... quite a match for the brute that assailed him; but with Bob's help, not omitting the big stone, the two "routed the enemy with great slaughter," the bloodhound fleeing away ignominiously with his tail between his legs, and Rover raising a paean of victory in the shape of a defiant bark as ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... knife, retreating at the same moment from, without the reach of its capacious jaws, as it whirled round upon the extraordinary pivot which his companion had so successfully placed in its tail. The battle lasted about half an hour, terminating in the slaughter of the alligator, and the triumph of his conquerors, who were not long in cutting him into pieces and loading their canoes with his flesh, which they immediately carried to the shore and retailed to their countrymen. The success of the plan depended entirely ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... mountainous territory of the Uxians, who refused him a passage unless he paid the usual tribute which they were in the habit of extorting even from the Persian kings. But Alexander routed them with great slaughter. He then advanced rapidly to Persepolis, whose magnificent ruins still attest its ancient splendour. It was the real capital of the Persian kings, though they generally resided at Susa during the winter, ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... massacre indeed," Malcolm said. "I have read of a good many surprises and slaughters in our Scottish history, but never of such complete destruction as that only one man out of 900 should escape. And was the slaughter ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... and that he had, moreover, just discovered that one of his boots pinched his foot. Accordingly we proceeded straight from the bridge, not meeting the wall again until we were beyond the abattoir. These abattoirs are slaughter-houses, that Napoleon caused to be built near the walls, in some places within, and in others without them, according to the different localities. There are five or six of them, that of Montmartre being the most considerable. They are ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... prosper, and this slaughter pen Shall be a monument of Southern chivalry Before the world;—thus proving to all men Slave power begets ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... Then followed silence, broken only by rumours furtively conveyed by a former associate, one Pascal Pelletier—an angel-faced, long-haired, hysteric creature, inspired by an impassioned enthusiasm for infernal machines and wholesale slaughter in theory, and, in practice, by a gentle doglike devotion to Mrs. Iglesias and young Dominic. He would arrive depressed and shadowy in the shadowy twilights. But, once in the presence of the beings whom he loved, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... abuse of these opportunities has been infrequent. There have been in the history of modern British imperialism sporadic instances of injustice, like the forced labour of Kanakas in the Pacific. But there have been no Congo outrages, no Putumayo atrocities, no Pequena slave scandals, no merciless slaughter like that of the ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... him, bound him with ropes, carried him out into a field, laid him on a pile of damp wood, and as this would not take fire quick enough, had pushed trusses of straw underneath all round him, and burnt him alive. From the Quartier La Vilette in Paris, one heard every day of similar slaughter of innocent persons who the people fancied were Prussian spies. Under such circumstances, a trifle might become fatal. One evening at the end of August I had been hearing L'Africaine at the grand opera, and at the same time ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... turned a corner, thinking the scoundrel must have gone up that street; then bolted through a public square; over a bridge; under an arch; finally back into the main street; yelling like a panther, and resolved to slaughter the first human being I should overtake. The crowd followed my lead, turning as I turned, shrieking as I shrieked, and—all at once it came to me that I was the man whose hide was to ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... among the stock of different proprietors. Here the leopards are particularly daring, and cases have frequently occurred where they have effected their entrance to a cattle-shed by scratching a hole through the thatched roof. They then commit a wholesale slaughter among sheep and cattle. Sometimes, however, they catch a "Tartar." The native cattle are small, but very active, and the cows are particularly savage when the calf ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... attacking force does not seem to have been commanded by Joshua. The ark stayed at Gilgal, The contempt for the resistance likely to be met makes the panic which ensued the more remarkable. What turned the hearts of the confident assailants to water? There was no serious fighting, or the slaughter would have been more than thirty-six. 'There went up ... about three thousand and they'—did what? fought and conquered? Alas, no, but 'they fled before the men of Ai,' rushing in wild terror down the steep pass which they had so confidently breasted ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the chief butcher enter the bathing house alone, while his followers waited at the gate: upon which I went to a slaughter-house, poured over my back the blood of a sheep, dabbed it with plaisters of cotton, and leaning on a crutch, as if in agony of pain, repaired to the bath. At first the butchers refused me admittance, saying their chief was within; but on my entreating their compassion ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... grown wiser and kinder, For man is evolving a soul: From wars of an age that was blinder, We rise to a peace-girdled goal. Where once men would murder in treason And slaughter each other in hordes, They now meet together and reason, With thoughts for their weapons, ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... [Samaria] or Askelon able to oppose the violence with which they were attacked; and when they had burnt these to the ground; they entirely demolished Anthedon and Gaza; many also of the villages that were about every one of those cities were plundered, and an immense slaughter was made of the men who ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... supply of good, wholesome food, and a jug of water; and while heartily partaking of these necessities, (of which he stood in great need,) he could not help comparing his situation with that of an animal being fattened for slaughter! ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... rest, with his teeth actually chattering from apprehension, boasted of what he would do, in case we were attacked; and, to hear his language, one would suppose that he had done nothing all his life but fight and slaughter Turcomans. The chaoush, who overheard his boastings, and who was jealous of being considered the only man of courage of the party, said aloud, 'No one can speak of the Turcomans until they have seen them—and none but an "eater of lions" (at the same ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... to talk again of the clouds, but I could not follow what she said. That was my hour of impotence. Madame, I have seen battles and slaughter and found no meaning in them. But that isolated tragedy boxed up in the little house between the squalid town and the lugubrious desert—it sucked the strength from my bones. She continued to speak; the cultivated sweetness of her voice came and went in my ears like a maddening ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... killing one hundred men a day in Andersonville, in July, August and September. Probably at the beginning of the war they would have felt uneasy at slaying one man per day by such means, but as retribution came not, and as their appetite for slaughter grew with feeding, and as their sympathy with human misery atrophied from long suppression, they ventured upon ever widening ranges of destructiveness. Had the war lasted another year, and they ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... also a Mr. See lately come into the country, living at the Point, who sometimes held forth in the little school-house on a Sunday, less to the edification of his hearers than to the unmerciful slaughter ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... those walls, repaired and fortified by the care and at the charges of the citizens of London,(1676) and still more to the stout hearts behind them, the town was able to stand a long and dreary siege, with all its attendant horrors of slaughter and starvation, and at last, after heroic resistance and patient suffering for 105 days, to come off victorious. There is one name more especially honoured in connection with the famous siege, that of George Walker, who, although a clergyman and advanced in ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... hasn't much of a chance. Strategy nowadays consists in arranging for the mutual slaughter of infantry by the opposing guns, each general trusting that his guns will do the greater slaughter. And half gunnery is luck. The day before yesterday we had a little afternoon shoot at where we thought the German trenches might be. The Germans ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... because I knew that the attacking force could only be a part of Hood's army, and that, if any assistance were rendered by either of the other armies, the Army of the Tennessee would be jealous. Nobly did they do their work that day, and terrible was the slaughter done to our enemy, though at sad cost to ourselves, as shown by the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... patriot army. Their expectations, however, were disappointed, as the Roman general deemed it more prudent to evacuate an untenable post, than to risk the dominion of the entire island on the event of a battle fought under adverse circumstances. At the same time the slaughter of the inhabitants justifies the inference that they were foreigners rather than natives, some being traders from Gaul, but the majority either Roman colonists or the followers and hangers-on of the stationary camp. Indeed, it ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen

... happy in following out their native instincts of destruction, precisely in the spirit of Homer's heroes, only with some considerable change of mode. One touch of Nature makes not only the whole world, but all time, akin. Set men face to face, with weapons in their hands, and they are as ready to slaughter one another now, after playing at peace and good-will for so many years, as in the rudest ages, that never heard of peace-societies, and thought no wine so delicious as what they quaffed from an enemy's skull. Indeed, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... smiting! Heave not thy hammer, Angry, aginst us; Plague not thy people. Take from our treasure Richest Of ransom. Silver we send thee, Jewels and javelins, Goodliest garments, All our possessions, Priceless, we proffer. Sheep will we slaughter, Steeds will we sacrifice; Bright blood shall bathe O tree of Thunder, Life-floods shall lave thee, Strong wood of wonder. Mighty, have mercy, Smile as no more, Spare us and save us, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... possible every acre of soil capable of producing food. During the war the attention of agriculturists was very forcibly called to the enormous waste involved in our so-called animal industry. The first measure of food economy adopted in Germany at the beginning of the war was the slaughter of a large part of livestock. The same measure was adopted in Scandinavian countries and in all parts of central Europe. This was absolutely necessary, as Lusk and numerous other authorities have shown, for the reason that to produce one pound of water-free ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... blood did wade; Oxford the foe invade, And cruel slaughter made, Still as they ran up. Suffolk his axe did ply; Beaumont and Willoughby Bare them right doughtily, Ferrers ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... Brooke and Ramsden were both out crawling about somewhere, and the only damage was to their dinner. Every mortar, whose position was known, was given a name and marked on a map, so as to simplify quick retaliation. Captain Burnett spent much time at the telephone demanding the slaughter of "Bear," "Bat," "Pharaoh," "Philis," "Philistine," ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... them curiously. Some years later an expedition composed of exasperated crews of lake schooners, exasperated fishermen, exasperated mainland settlers, sailed westward through the straits bound for these islands, armed to the teeth and determined upon vengence and slaughter. False lights, stolen nets, and stolen wives were their grievances; and no aid coming from the general government, then as now sorely perplexed over the Mormon problem, they took justice into their own hands and sailed bravely out, with the stars and stripes floating ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... many other and larger bands of Danes in Mercia and Anglia, and that had he massacred the band at Exeter—and this he could not have done without the loss of many men, as assuredly the Danes would have fought desperately for their lives—the news of their slaughter would have brought upon him fresh ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... yield without a struggle. He sinned, and repented, and promised amendment often and often; but still he went away again, "like an ox to the slaughter; like a fool to the correction of ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson

... deed, even before the sweat of the clutching hand grew dry; And darkness frown'd upon the seller of the like of God, Where, as though earth lifted her breast to throw him from her, and heaven refus'd him, He hung in the air, self-slaughter'd. ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... Andrew, do not jest! Alas! I have often since last night caught myself wishing for that fiend's death. But what you suggest is impossible! The laws of this country do not permit of murder! It is only in our beautiful France that wholesale slaughter is done lawfully, in the name of Liberty and ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... their wonderful curative properties. The proprietor, Mr. Stanford, and his good wife, made us comfortable, and were as accommodating as we have always found them. After a good supper we proceeded to our rooms and got ready for the next day's slaughter. Well into the night the wind whistled and blew. It finally went down. Then the temperature began to fall. The thermometer went to 29 degrees before morning. Wherever there was a thin surface of ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... a terrible slaughter, comes and goes like an earthquake or a tornado, and stuns rather than debases; but this long, steady succession of horrible executions and frightful scenes changed the very nature of the inhabitants, and they became a prey to a spirit demoniacal rather than human. The prayers and tears ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... Desmond, brother to the earl of Desmond, who was at the head of the rebellion, he left the government of that city to Raleigh[4], whose company being not long after disbanded upon the reduction of that earl, the slaughter of his brother, and the submission of Barry, he returned to England. The Lord Deputy Grey having resigned the sword in Ireland towards the end of August, 1582, the dispute between him and Raleigh, upon reasons ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... Perth, seeing this slaughter, made a signal to Cameron of Lochiel to stop the impetuosity of his men; and sent his aid-de-camp, or, as he was then called, his gentleman, for that purpose. No sooner had the Duke done this, than he sprang himself upon ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... mused. "But if we did not there would be a fearful fight and possibly slaughter. I wish I knew just how ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill

... beings to fight for the amusement of spectators was introduced; and twelve years later the capture of several elephants in the first Punic war proved the means of introducing the chase, or rather the slaughter, of wild beasts into the Roman circus. The taste for these spectacles increased of course with its indulgence, and their magnificence with the wealth of the city and the increasing facility and inducement to practice bribery which was offered by the increased extent of provinces subject ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... decorated. He built many additions to existing churches, and also the church of St Augustin, in which he united the structural values of stone and steel. His most popular achievement was, however, the building of the central market in Paris. Victor Baltard also built the slaughter houses and the cattle market of La Villette. He died in Paris on the 13th of January 1874, after a life of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... knew them once but miss them now. In a somewhat kindred manner, the startling magnificence of the sketch in the Apocalypse, of death on the pale horse, is a product of pure imagination meditating on the wholesale slaughter which was to deluge the earth when God's avenging judgments fell upon the enemies of the Christians. But to consider this murderous warrior on his white charger as literally death, would be as erroneous as to imagine the bare armed executioner and the guillotine to be themselves the death ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... o'clock[16] and raged furiously along the whole line, but principally at Hougoumont, a large Metairie on the right of our position, which was occupied by our troops, and from which all the efforts of the enemy could not dislodge them. The slaughter was terrible in this quarter. From twelve o'clock till evening several desperate charges of cavalry and infantry were made on the rest of our line. Both sides fought with the utmost courage and obstinacy, and were prodigal of life in the extreme. But ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... over this field of horrors were largely beyond control. Grant knew the enemy had been reenforced. He could reasonably assume from the evidence before him of the terrific slaughter in the open field that his own army was in peril. The transports were in sight ready to move his army to a place of safety where he might re-form his ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... business for the plantations of New Caledonia), that one is almost persuaded that recruiting is not thoroughly popular among the islanders; else why this bristling string of attacks and bloodcurdling slaughter? The captain lays it all to "Exeter Hall influence." But for the meddling philanthropists, the native fathers and mothers would be fond of seeing their children carted into exile and now and then the grave, instead of weeping about it and trying to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... hemlocks among which he spent his days, always plotting to kill something. Many of the arms, if they could speak, what tales of war, the chase, and love adventure they could tell! The Pennsylvania woodsman was filled with the romance of slaughter, a heritage of mingled Continental origins, Huguenot, Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss, Waldensian, Levantine, with the strains of Ulster Scot, Alsatian, Palatine, Hollander and Moravian, cooling cross currents ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker

... is wool from the pelts[10] as they come from the slaughter-houses of large packing plants. These pelts are thrown into vats of water and left to soak for twenty-four hours to loosen the dirt which has become matted into the wool. From these vats the pelts are taken to scrubbing machines from which the wool issues perfectly clean and white. The pelts ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... what the Schwytz Cantoners are driving at in their resolution to make it a capital offence in any one to embrace our Religion, and who they are that have instigated them to proceedings of such a hostile spirit to the Orthodox Faith, no one can avoid knowing who has not yet forgotten that foul slaughter of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, well-beloved friends, as you always have been, be still, by God's help, brave; do not yield your rights and federate privileges, nay, Liberty of Conscience and Religion itself, to be trampled on ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... waged against the Albigenses, which lasted for a period of about sixty years. Armies were concentrated upon Languedoc, and after great slaughter the heretics ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... dealers were brought into their sovereign's presence. They were so terribly alarmed, not being either so innocent or so ignorant as August was that they were trembling as though they were being led to the slaughter, and they were so utterly astonished too at a child having come all the way from Tyrol in the stove, as a gentleman of the court had just told them this child had done, that they could not tell what to say or where to look, and presented a very ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... Pelion's top Dash'd Ossa. There with huge unwieldy bulk Oppress'd, their dreadful corses lay, and soak'd Their parent earth with blood; their parent earth The warm blood vivify'd, and caus'd assume An human form,—a monumental type Of fierce progenitors. Heaven they despise, Violent, of slaughter greedy; and their race From ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... his centre. The Prince of Holstein Beck had, with eleven Hanoverian battalions, passed the Nebel opposite to Oberglau, when he was charged and utterly routed by the Irish brigade which held that village. The Irish drove the Hanoverians back with heavy slaughter, broke completely through the line of the allies, and nearly achieved a success as brilliant as that which the same brigade afterward gained ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... most estimable and conscientious might be blinded by the sentiment that they dignified by the title of loyalty. The deceased had already been engaged in a struggle with one of the Archfield family, who had been acquitted of his actual slaughter; but considering the strangeness of the hour at which the two cousins were avowedly at or near Portchester, the condition of the clothes, stripped of papers, but not of valuables, and the connection of the principal witness with the pretended Prince of Wales, he could ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... foreign ships on the high seas, and boarded foreign pier-heads, but boarded their own merchantmen at the mouth of the Thames, and boarded the very fire-sides along its banks; when Englishmen were knocked down and dragged into the navy, like cattle into the slaughter-house, with every mortal provocation to a mad desperation against the service that thus ran their unwilling heads into the muzzles of the enemy's cannon. This was the time, and these the men that Collingwood ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... purpose, for they were so nimble it was almost impossible to hit them, and their feathers were like armor impenetrable to steel. One of them, perched on a neighboring cliff, screamed out, "Is it thus, Trojans, you treat us innocent birds, first slaughter our cattle, and then make war on ourselves?" She then predicted dire sufferings to them in their future course, and having vented her wrath flew away. The Trojans made haste to leave the country, and next found themselves ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... the opium trade. From what motive then, do we uphold a traffic, which is the curse of China, the curse of India, and a calamity to Great Britain? Such a war may be fruitful in trophies of military glory, if such can be gained by the slaughter of the most pacific people in the world; but to expect that it will promote the reputation, the prosperity, or the happiness of this country, would be to look for national wickedness to draw down the Divine blessing. The descriptive catalogue of the "Ten thousand Chinese things," ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... more trenchant of the Psalms, a long psalm that had much in it about enemies and slaughter. It had a very strong meaning for him, for he put himself in the place of the writer. The enemies mentioned were, in the first place, sins—by which he denoted the more open forms of evil; and, in the second place, wicked men who might interfere with him; and under the head ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... many exceptions to the general rule of natural affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle than that in America—women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... of Antiueri in Sclauonia, in the which hilles the Venetians haue a towne called Antiueri, and the Turkes haue another against it called Marcheuetti, the which two townes continually skirmish together with much slaughter. At the end of these hils endeth the Countrey of Sclauonia, and Albania beginneth. These hilles are ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... escape of the Indians to the south of the Rio Negro, where in such a vast unknown country they would be safe, is prevented by a treaty with the Tehuelches to this effect;—that Rosas pays them so much to slaughter every Indian who passes to the south of the river, but if they fail in so doing, they themselves are to be exterminated. The war is waged chiefly against the Indians near the Cordillera; for many of the tribes on this ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... intelligence that there had been more noise and smoke than slaughter; the cannons being planted at such distances, that it was impossible they could do much execution. Numerous bulletins are distributed; some violently in favour of Bustamante and federalism, full of abuse and dread of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... shoulders and a face remarkable for its cunning, cruel expression. His olive-brown complexion, slanting eyes, high cheek-bones, and sharp-filed teeth are all signs of his coming from the great unknown interior. His business here is to slaughter the cattle of the town. He does this deftly by thrusting a long-bladed knife into the neck of the animal at the base of the brain, until it severs the medulla, whereupon the animal collapses without any visible sign of suffering. It is then skinned and the intestines thrown into the water where ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... their Sovereign, and reduce him to terms, without plundering and occasionally murdering the innocent of all ages and both sexes, and that they may have to raise the same means in a similar contest to-morrow. They are satisfied, therefore, if they can save their own tenants from pillage and slaughter. They find, moreover, that the sufferings of others enable them to get cultivators and useful tenants of all kinds upon their own estates, on more easy terms, and to induce the smaller allodial or khalsa proprietors around, to yield up their lands to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... after a little, I know. I go to the card catalogue like a lamb to the slaughter, poke my head into Knowledge—somewhere—and am lost, but the light of it on the spirit does not fade away. It leaves a glow there. It plays on the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... with the Levites singing before him, "Praise the Lord, for His mercy endureth for ever!" So the battle should be his without fighting; for the three banded nations fought among themselves, and made such a slaughter of one another, that the Jews had nothing to do but to gather the spoil, which was in such heaps, that they spent three days in collecting it. And again, when Jehoshaphat went out with Jehoram, King of Israel, against the Moabites, with Jehoshaphat's tributary, the ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... thousand Veterans practised in War's game, Tried men, at Killicrankie were array'd Against an equal host that wore the Plaid, Shepherds and herdsmen. Like a whirlwind came The Highlanders; the slaughter spread like flame, And Garry, thundering down his mountain road, Was stopp'd, and could not breathe beneath the load Of the dead bodies. 'Twas a day of shame For them whom precept and the pedantry Of cold mechanic battle do enslave. Oh! for a single ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... wanted to show its independence of me. And at last both of us began to lose ground. And then you looked for somebody to put the blame on. A new victim! For you are weak, and you can never carry your own burdens of guilt and debt. And so you picked me for a scapegoat and doomed me to slaughter. But when you cut my thews, you didn't realise that you were also crippling yourself, for by this time our years of common life had made twins of us. You were a shoot sprung from my stem, and you wanted to cut yourself loose ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... army, commanded by Marceau and Westermann, surprised the town at night. In spite of the active bravery of La Roche-Jaquelin, and the energy he displayed when the danger was so apparent, a fearful slaughter ensued. Street by street, and square by square, the Vendeeans disputed every inch of ground, till the corpses of the slain lay in heaps in the narrow ways; every house was a fortress,—every lane a pass desperately defended. ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... Decalogus, or the Ten Commandments backwards, a wizard, and a picture of the devil. All contemners of God, all blasphemers, all disobedient; whoredom, pride, theft, murder, etc., are now almost ripe for the slaughter; neither is the devil idle, with Turk and Pope, heresies and other erroneous sects. Every man draws the Christian liberty only to carnal excess, as if now they had free liberty and power to do what they list; therefore the kingdom of the devil ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... miles round was alive with fugitives and their pursuers. Women, children, and old men, as well as soldiers, joined in that panic flight; and shrieks, and shouts, and groans told only too plainly of the slaughter and terror of the pursuit. To slaughter the victors added robbery and outrage. Far and wide they scoured the country in quest of victims and booty; houses were burned, villages were desolated, fields were laid bare, nor till night mercifully fell over the land did that scene of terror ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... and as he saw the people crowding in at the gate, he said to us, "See how anxious these traitors are to feast on our flesh! But GOD will disappoint their hopes." He ordered the two priests who had given him the information to retire to their houses that they might escape the intended slaughter. Every one being arrived in the great court, he commanded the chiefs and priests to draw near, to whom he made a calm remonstrance on the treachery of their conduct towards us, which was explained by Donna Marina. He asked them why they had plotted to destroy us, and what ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... spell. They became like human beings. Rushing out into the street, they hurled themselves against the door of our house, as Pamphila expected the young gentleman would do. You came up—just a little intoxicated, eh?—and committed the horrible crime of bag-slaughter." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... there. The authority cited above declares that bodies floated in the blood, and arms and hands were tossed by sanguine waves. An Arabian author says, "Seventy thousand were killed in the Mosque of Omar." God alone knows the truth. Only once before in human history can be found a record of such slaughter, and that was when Titus conquered the ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell

... is therefore so much the greater, because thereto is added blindness of Mind, and hardness of Heart in a wicked way. They are turned up to the way of Death, but must not see to what place they are going: They must go as the Ox to the slaughter, and as the Fool to the Correction of the Stocks, {48a} till a Dart strikes through their Liver, not knowing that it is for their life. This, I say, makes their Judgement double, they are given up of God, for a while to sport themselves with that which will assuredly make them mourn at last, ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... artillery soon breached the great gate, and an assault was ordered, but being met by a murderous fire from the convent walls, it was repulsed with great slaughter; and the succeeding attempts on the part of the Turkish regulars faring no better, a battalion of Egyptians was put in the front and driven in at the point of the bayonet by the Turkish troops behind them. The convent was a hollow square of solidly built buildings, the inner and outer ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... big it should batter, Their trenches should burst and blow up, Their forces allied it should scatter, It's worse than an Armstrong or Krupp. Chain-shot for swift slaughter's not in it, For spreading it's better than grape, They'll all be smashed up in a minute, Scarce ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... reverberation of the revolver reports had been felt like an earthquake-shock in all the capitals of Europe; and in a failing light the last wicket had fallen at Kensingtowe. So it happened that, while the Emperors of Central Europe were whispering that the Day had come and the slaughter of the youth of Christendom might begin, there was a gathering in Radley's room of those insignificant people whose little doings you have watched at Kensingtowe. They were assembled to drink tea and discuss the match. There were Radley as host; Pennybet, to ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... are paid out of the proceeds of a tax derived from the slaughter of cattle, and the tax is known to Moorish butchers by a term signifying "floos ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... not do! He had no right to lead the people to certain slaughter, and he tore up his ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... Nabob Fyzoola Khan, "with some of his people, was present at the decisive battle of St. George," where Hafiz Rhamet, the great leader of the Rohillas, and many others of their principal chiefs were slain; but, escaping from the slaughter, Fyzoola Khan "made his retreat good towards the mountains, with all his treasure." He there collected the scattered remains of his countrymen; and as he was the eldest surviving son of Ali Mohammed Khan, as, too, the most powerful obstacle to his pretensions ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... slaughter done by Dermot MacMurragh and his Norman allies, up and down Ossory. Fierce in their despair, vengeful in their cunning, these refugees had run wild like their dogs. The huge untamed brutes were stronger than collies and wiser than wolves, and ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... or two before our arrival: some thirty men had been ringing one of the enormous bells, when it broke loose from its rotten fastenings and crashed down into the midst of the ringers, killing several. Sad reminders of this slaughter were shown us; it was clearly ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... Impossible: Yet, haply, of thy race In future days, if malice should abound, Some one intent on mischief, or inspired With devilish machination, might devise Like instrument to plague the sons of men For sin, on war and mutual slaughter bent. Forthwith from council to the work they flew; None arguing stood; innumerable hands Were ready; in a moment up they turned Wide the celestial soil, and saw beneath The originals of nature in their ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... woods. At dawn the next day he was awakened by the blood-curdling cry of the Indians. The men sprang to arms, but in the night the Indians had completely surrounded them, and the fight was hopeless. For four hours the slaughter lasted; then the white men fled, leaving half their number dead upon ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... feature in Napoleon's character was unnecessary cruelty; of this the campaign in Moscow, (of which Labaume's narrative is a true though highly-coloured picture), the slaughter of the Turks in Egypt, the poisoning of his invalids, and the death of every one who stood in his way, are sufficient and notorious proofs. St Cloud was in general the scene of his debaucheries. The following anecdote was related by Count Rumford to a gentleman ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... used in the operation is an oblong piece of human bone (os ilium), about an inch and a half broad and two inches long. A time of war and slaughter was a harvest for the tattooers to get a supply of instruments. The one end is cut like a small-toothed comb, and the other is fastened to a piece of cane, and looks like a little serrated adze. They dip it into a mixture of candle-nut ashes and water, and, tapping it with a little mallet, it ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... reach of the colonel could not prevent that glutton's longing for. And sure this image of the lamb is not improperly adduced on this occasion; for what was the colonel's desire but to lead this poor lamb, as it were, to the slaughter, in order to purchase a feast of a few days by her final destruction, and to tear her away from the arms of one where she was sure of being fondled and caressed all the days ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... a moment's hesitation, "let us all join in the slaughter. Just remember, boy, that it's no more cruel to kill your young than ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... flattery of the "strange woman," so graphically described by Solomon in Prov. vii., "With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life" (vers. 21-23). "She hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... hopelessly divided on questions of principle, the Whig party was led to the slaughter. Carrying in 1840 every State but seven for Harrison, failing to elect Mr. Clay in 1844 only by the loss of New York, triumphantly installing Taylor in 1848, the Whigs were astounded to find that their candidate had been successful ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... patriotism. The spear with which Dunois had cleared his country of the British invaders; the sword with which the first Bourbon king had routed Egmont's cavalry at Ivry, were torn down from the walls to arm the vilest of mankind for rapine and slaughter. They stormed the Hotel de Ville, and got possession of the municipal chest, containing three millions of francs; and now, more and more intoxicated with their triumph, and with the evidence which all ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... and stirring appeals, but by an effect of personal magnetism, by the expression through voice and gesture and presence of an individuality, a temperament, call it what you will, that may be and is often utterly commonplace but is always inevitably irresistible. He could slaughter an opponent, or butcher a measure, or crumple up a theory with unrivalled adroitness and despatch; but he could not dominate a crowd to the extent of persuading it to feel with his heart, think with his brain, and accept his utterances as the expression not only of their common reason ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... Stanton's opposition to the Peninsula strategy and campaign. So ends this horrible sacrifice; between fifty and sixty thousand killed or dead by diseases. The victims of this holocaust have fallen for their country's cause, but the responsibility for the slaughter is to be equally divided between McClellan, Lincoln, Seward and Blair. Even Sylla had not on his soul so much blood as has the above quatuor. When, after the victory over the allied Samnites and others, at the Colline gate of Rome, Sylla ordered the ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... precise notes, sufficient to suggest the increasing horror. The narrative grows quicker; the reader is aware of the pulse and the impetus of action, the imperious summons of duty; the young sergeant is in charge of men, and has to execute terrible tasks. But ever across the tumult and the slaughter, there are moments of recollection and of compassion; and, in the evening of a day of battle, what infinite tranquillity among the dead! At this period there are no more notes of landscape effects; the description is of the war, technical; ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... madame would for a while yield no further, left us, and went back to the world. Then news came of great events that could not fail to move us. The King of France and the King of Navarre had met at Tours, and embracing in the sight of an immense multitude, had repulsed the League with slaughter in the suburb of St. Symphorien. Fast on this followed the tidings of their march northwards with an overwhelming army of fifty-thousand men of both religions, bent, rumour had it, on ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... row across the field. Probably the obscurity caused by the smoke, as well as the slight slope of the ground towards us, accounted for this piled up appearance, for it was something which could not possibly occur. But the slaughter had been fearful. Here and there you could see a squad of men running off out of range; now and then a man lying down, probably wounded or stunned, would rise and try to run, soon to tumble from the shots we sent after him. After the action I went all over the field of battle, visiting every part ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney

... warm themselves with wood taken from the houses of the cathedral clergy, affix their theses to the cathedral doors, beat the priests who carry the Holy Sacrament to the dying, and, to crown all other insults, turn churches into slaughter-houses and sewers. ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... columns of the colonists soon snowed signs of disorder. The Seventeenth Regiment fixed bayonets and with great gallantry charged the enemy in front of them, driving them back with considerable slaughter; and so far did they advance that they were separated from the other battalions, and cutting their way through the American force the regiment pursued its march to Maidenhead. The Fortieth and Fifty-fifth fought stoutly, but were ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... capturing Bassein, the Birmese attempted the reconquest of Martaban, but were repulsed with great slaughter, by a very small force, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... it is the custom to kill all, or nearly all, of the children soon after they are born.' This is the only region we ever heard of where so frightful and unnatural a custom exists. Female children are, or used to be, destroyed in many countries; but the indiscriminate slaughter of all children is decidedly uncommon. These islanders have another device which is supported by an argument not entirely devoid of strength. 'In a battle the victorious party, if they can surprise their enemies ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... shot had apparently no effect upon her, but the result of her broadside on our ship was simply terrible. One of her shells dismounted an eight-inch gun, and either killed or wounded every one of the gun's crew, while the slaughter at the other guns was fearful. There were comparatively few wounded, the fragments of the huge shells she threw killing outright as a general thing. Our clean and handsome gun-deck was in an instant changed into a slaughter-pen, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot



Words linked to "Slaughter" :   butcher, whipping, butchering, thrashing, Battle of Little Bighorn, walloping, defeat, mow down, drubbing, slaughterer, debacle, slaying, butchery, trouncing, killing, Battle of the Little Bighorn, battue, Little Bighorn, murder, carnage, Alamo, bloodshed



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com