"Vassalage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine rivers on the north-west coast of Borneo, their banks being inhabited by Malays, with tribes of Dyaks held in a state of vassalage, as well as by independent Dyaks, the greater number of whom, at this time, were addicted to piracy at sea, as well as to plunder and rapine on shore; indeed, the whole coast presented one scene of constant warfare. Nearly every tribe possessed war prahus, in ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... raged on a great scale between Russia and the Sultan. And, until the time arrived for throwing off their vassalage, it was necessary that Oubacha should contribute his usual contingent of martial aid. Nay, it had unfortunately become prudent that he should contribute much more than his usual aid. Human experience gives ample ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... became aware,—first that he could not carry out such a threat, and then that he would lack even the firmness to make it. There was something in her face, something even in her dress, something in her whole manner to himself, which softened him and reduced him to vassalage directly he saw her. Then he determined to throw himself on her compassion and to implore her to put an end to all this misery by making herself happy. But as he drew near home he found himself unable to do even this. How is a father to beseech his widowed ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the points of a slave. They look into him shrewdly, as an old jockey does into a horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot distance, among a thousand freemen. They have a nice eye to detect shades of vassalage. They saw in the aristocratic popinjay strut of a counterfeit Democrat an itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They beheld it in 'the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made him the very tool for their purpose. The little creature has struck at the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... as a whole, was dominated by feudalism. This feudalism differed somewhat from the French feudalism, for it represented a sort of overlordship of absentee feudal chiefs, which, leaving the people more to themselves, made vassalage less irksome. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... suggested to us the invasion of their territory, and the robbery of their banks and jewelry-stores. We may profit by the suggestion, so far as the invasion goes—for that will enable us to restore them to their normal condition of vassalage, and teach them that cap in hand is the proper attitude of a servant ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... gnarled and twisted growth of good and bad from the time of the Great Charles to the time of the Great Frederick. Between these times she had her various rulers, ecclesiastical and secular, in various forms of vassalage to the empire; but for nearly four centuries her sovereignty was in the hands of the margraves, who reigned in a constantly increasing splendor till the last sold her outright to the King of Prussia in 1791, and went to live in England on the proceeds. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... impulse, for he was at heart his father's son, he held the hilt of his drawn sword in token of vassalage for Baby ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... the regions bordering on the English colonies, where, as has been told, a great branch of that people who called themselves the Lenni-lenape, and whom we called the Delawares, dwelt in a sort of vassalage to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... of Laws, xxx, 3) justly derives the origin of vassalage. At first, the prince gave to his nobles arms and provision: as avarice advanced, money, and then lands, were required, which from benefices became at length hereditary possessions, and were called fiefs. Hence the establishment ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... the park of Windsor, where he walked for a long while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he seemed to understand for the first time how fair was his England. For all England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man alive, his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in grain and metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men (his chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows would ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... meaning of the French alliance was revealed in the Treaty of St. Ildefonso, which required Spain to furnish troops, ships, and subsidies for the war against England, a state of vassalage which was made harder by Napoleon. The results are well known. After being forced by him to cede Trinidad to us at the Peace of Amiens, she sacrificed her navy at Trafalgar, saw her colonies and commerce decay and her finances shrivel for lack of the golden streams ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... observers could perceive that, though the representatives of the nation were as a body zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion, and though they were prepared to endure every thing rather than see their country again reduced to vassalage, they were anxious and dispirited. All were thinking of the state of the coin; all were saying that something must be done; and all acknowledged that they did not know what could be done. "I am afraid," said a member who expressed what ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... period, in a state of the most abject vassalage; two classes alone possessing all rank and dignity, and for the most part all the riches of the country. These were the Druids and the warriors. The former composed an order consisting of three classes, Druids, Prophets, and Bards; all of whom were subject to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... shining hurly-burly, murmuring and eulogistic, the Baroness espies me, smiles and signs to me to go to her. So I go, and in the presence of all she pays me some compliment or other on my service at the front. She is dressed in black velvet and wears her white hair like a diadem. Twenty-five years of vassalage bow me before her and fill me with silence. And I salute the Gozlans also, in a way which I feel is humble in spite of myself, for they are all-powerful over me, and they make Marie an allowance without which we could not live properly. I am no ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... now fully established in England, and lands descended from father to son, and were divided up among the dependants on condition of the performance of vassalage. In this way the common people were cheerily permitted the use of what atmosphere they needed for breathing purposes, on their solemn promise to return it, and at the close of life, if they had succeeded in winning the royal favor, they ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... possible that Pope should remain a retainer of Mr. Addison; nor likely that after escaping from his vassalage and assuming an independent crown, the sovereign whose allegiance he quitted should view him amicably.(129) They did not do wrong to mislike each other. They but followed the impulse of nature, and the consequence of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... consideration with jealousy, as an upstart. The new monarchic constitution of 1808-12, which has immortalized the names of Frederick William III., and of his ministers, Stein and Hardenberg, altered this system, and abolished the vassalage and feudal service of the peasants in those provinces that lie to the east of the Elbe. The fruits of this wise act of social reform were soon apparent, not only in the increase of prosperity and of the population, but also in that steady and progressive elevation of the national ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... word, the motive of the opposition to the Johnson plan of reconstruction was the firm conviction that its success would wreck the Republican party, and by restoring the Democrats to power bring back Southern supremacy and Northern vassalage. The impeachment, in a word, was the culmination of the struggle between the legislative and the executive departments of the Government over the problem of reconstruction. The legislative department claimed exclusive jurisdiction over reconstruction; the executive claimed that it alone ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... veins, and the fair fame of this country in their keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed him to remain, to the day of his death, a hewer of wood and a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... covetousness. Does he wish to rule over all the countries of the North? Will he eat up all the kail in England? He shall do so, and reduce that country to a desert, before I lay my head in his hands, or show him any other kind of vassalage. Now ye shall tell him these my words,—I will defend Norway with battle-axe and sword as long as life is given me, and will pay scat to no man ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... England soil into rocks. "Stein's main idea," says Vehse, "was, 'the burgher must become noble.' With this view, he tried to call forth a strong feeling of nationality and a new spirit in the people. His first step in introducing his new system of administration was the abolition of vassalage, and the change of the titles of seignorial property. This was done by the edict dated Memel, October 9, 1807, which did away with the monopoly until then claimed by the nobles holding such estates, which were now allowed to be acquired also by burghers and peasants. It moreover abolished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... this well: to avoid immediate ruin he seized on a means of escape which was completely unexpected, but quite decisive—he gave over his kingdom in vassalage to the Pope. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... as Tarku. In the latter century also the Kabardian princes, whose territory consisting of open valleys was less defended by nature against the inroads of enemies, bowed their necks for a time in submission; and Georgia, on the Asiatic slope, took in the person of her king Alexander the oath of vassalage to the Muscovite, obtaining a master where she had asked only for a protector. But occupied during the next two hundred years with affairs at the north, the Russian princes lost their possessions and most of their influence in the Caucasus; and it was not until 1722 ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written ambassage, To witness duty, not to show my wit: Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... dubious hour, That twilight when we first begin to see This dawning earth, to recognise, expect, And in the long probation that ensues, 515 The time of trial, ere we learn to live In reconcilement with our stinted powers; To endure this state of meagre vassalage, Unwilling to forego, confess, submit, Uneasy and unsettled, yoke-fellows 520 To custom, mettlesome, and not yet tamed And humbled down; oh! then we feel, we feel, We know where we have friends. Ye dreamers, then, Forgers of daring ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... that smote you with the spear, and put the stone further than you, and passed you in the leap. And this ring he gave me for a token, if ever you should boast yourself against me. Talk, therefore, no more of lords and vassals. My husband feigned this vassalage that he might ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... gathering of their scattered moral energies and wasted spiritual forces in one fertilizing stream. They are bent on joining incompatible elements in a political synthesis. In the name of national independence and by way of a telling protest against the vassalage which binds Austria to Germany, the Entente nations spurn the notion of any common accord which requires the practice of self-surrender as a base, and are resolved under the strain of circumstance to present such a loosely-joined front to the enemy as will not involve ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... so remote parts, with not a little gain, and great hopes of numerous Christians, since those baptized number seven hundred—among whom are some of the chiefs of the neighboring islands, who have already offered vassalage to the king our sovereign, and asked for ministers of the gospel. If God be pleased to let our arms in Mindanao be free, and if this undertaking that has been begun in Borney be continued, it will be without doubt to the great exaltation ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... revolution. We were persuaded that the people of the South had been wrought up by artful and ambitious leaders to wild alarm that the new Administration would visit outrages upon them and try to turn them into a state of vassalage. Utterly unconscious as we were of any purpose to trespass upon or reduce their fullest constitutional rights, we knew how grossly our intentions were misrepresented to them. We applied the same measure to the distance between ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... races—till you cease to be Joseph and we cease to be Benjamin—till you become Edom and we become Moab—till long centuries shall have erased all kindred ties and bonds of consanguinity, and all men, forgetful of history, shall sink together into vassalage and ancient barbarism. But until then we are one in heart, one in life, and must abide one in fact, or sink together to common ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... derived from his conversation for the last twenty-seven years—a period in which I have doubled my own age—would have been lost. But, independent himself, and the proudest man I ever knew when the faintest shadow of vassalage was sought to be cast upon him, he valued independence in others, and his wide experience taught him that the friend who would not hesitate to stand up firmly against him when he thought him wrong, would be the last to skulk from his side in the hour of danger, and from the ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... facing in the public-land States west of the Mississippi the great question whether the Western people are to be predominately a people of tenants under the degrading tyranny of pecuniary and political vassalage, or free-holders and free men; and there is no exaggerating ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... But how happens it that some of the most distinguished of these christians and philanthropists are themselves slaveholders, and so far abettors of the slave trade as to be actually guilty of selling into a cruel and interminable vassalage the hapless victims of their tender mercies? Again, how is it that none but the free people of color have been chosen to evangelize Africa? Is it because they are under an exclusive moral obligation ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... imports, wine, fruit, coffee, silks, &c. Russia carries on a considerable internal trade with Prussia, Persia, and China, especially, with the latter. Nearly the whole of her maritime commerce is in the hands of foreigners, the Russians seeming rather averse to the sea; and the state of vassalage in the peasants, which binds them to the soil, preventing the formation of seamen. Latterly, however, she has displayed considerable zeal in posecuting maritime discoveries; and as she seems disposed to extend ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... Rodolph II and his still better loved Queen Berthe, and their son Conrad, resisted the Saracen invasion and preserved for a hundred and fifty years the autonomy of their kingdom. Nobles with their serfs and freemen already divided the land, their prerogatives and vassalage long since established by the laws of Gondebaud. The Oberland, or Pays-d'en-Haut, Hoch Gau, or D'Ogo, in the German tongue, a country no longer wild but rich in fertile valleys and wooded mountain sides, was given to a Burgundian lord, under ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... bondage, enslavement, servitude, inthrallment, captivity, bond service, vassalage, thralldom, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... then a minor; and Baldwin, earl of Flanders, whose daughter William had married, was regent of the kingdom. This circumstance rendered the remonstrance of the French council against his design of no effect; indeed the opposition of the council itself was faint; the idea of having a king under vassalage to their crown might have dazzled the more superficial courtiers; whilst those, who thought more deeply, were unwilling to discourage an enterprise, which they believed would probably end in the ruin of the undertaker. The emperor was in his minority, as well as the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of the above, Uesugi Kenshin, was not member of the great Uesugi family which took such an important part in the affairs of the Kwanto. He belonged to the Nagao, which originally stood in a relation of vassalage to the Yamanouchi branch of the Uesugi in Echigo, and his father attained an independent position. Kagetora, as Kenshin was called in his youth, found himself engaged in his twenty-first year in a contest with his elder brother, whom he killed, and, by ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... great state and ceremony to the royal palace. When he came in presence of Ferdinand he knelt and offered to kiss his hand, not merely in homage as his subject, but in gratitude for his liberty. Ferdinand declined the token of vassalage, and raised him graciously from the earth. An interpreter began, in the name of Boabdil, to laud the magnanimity of the Castilian monarch and to promise the most implicit submission. "Enough!" said King Ferdinand, interrupting the interpreter in the midst of his harangue: "there ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... as to prevent and hinder the Instruction of the poor Blackamores, and confine the souls of their miserable Slaves to a Destroying Ignorance, merely for fear of thereby losing the Benefit of their Vassalage; but now he made a motion to the English within two or three Miles of him, that at such a time and place they would send their Negroes once a week unto him: For he would then Catechise them, and Enlighten them, to the utmost of his power ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... Persian custom, of submission. Amyntas, the Macedonian king, consented, to the demand at once; and though, owing to insolent conduct on the part of the ambassadors, they were massacred with their whole retinue, yet this circumstance did not prevent the completion of Macedonian vassalage. When a second embassy was sent to inquire into the fate of the first, Alexander, the son of Amyntas, who had arranged the massacre, contrived to have the matter hushed up by bribing one of the envoys with a large sum of money and the hand of his sister, Gygsea. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... I came immediately into some small portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all, on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place, Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, more precious ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... themselves arbitrary and sovereign; that they deem as faults, and as criminal, all the virtues which agree not with their marvellous systems? The Christian morality appears only to have been proposed to blind men, to disturb their reason, to render them abject and timid, to plunge them into vassalage, to make them lose sight of the earth which they inhabit, for visions of bliss in heaven. By the aid of this morality, the priests have become the true masters here below; they have imagined virtues and practices useful only to themselves; they have proscribed and interdicted those which were ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the empire of the Mongols in China. War with them still went on, but the country at large was freed from their yoke, after nearly a century of submission to Tartar rule. Elsewhere the vast empire of Genghis still held firm. Russia lay under the vassalage of the khans. Central and Southern Asia trembled at the Mongol name. And at the very time that the Chinese were rising against and expelling their invaders, Timour, or Tamerlane, the second great conqueror of his race, was setting out from Central Asia on that mighty career ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... said the second man, with a querulous protest, which did not, however, conceal his admiring vassalage to his friend; "that's what I'm allus telling Jim. 'Jim,' I says, 'how is folks to know you're the man that shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped three o' them Mariposa Vigilants? They didn't see you do it! They just look at your fancy style and ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... great primary needs of Ireland—Peace between her warring Churches—Concord between her rulers and landlords on one side and her destitute and desperate Millions on the other. I wish the latter had sufficient courage and self-trust to demand and enforce emancipation from the Political and Social vassalage in which they are held; to demand not merely Tenant-Right but a restitution of the broad lands wrested from their ancestors by fire and sword—not merely equal rights with Englishmen in Church and State, but equal right also to ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... which he had wrongfully exacted. Two days later he knelt before Pandulf and did homage to the Pope for England and Ireland. He was no longer to be an independent king but the Pope's vassal. In token of his vassalage he agreed that he and his successors should pay to Innocent and his successors 1,000 marks a year, each mark being equal to 13s. 4d., or two-thirds of a pound. Innocent had reached his aim as far as John was concerned. In his eyes the Papacy was not merely the guide of the Church, it was ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... the Durance and the Isere, which Theodoric had wrested from his brother in 523. The occasion of this cession was probably some league of mutual defence against the Franks, which Cassiodorus could without dishonesty represent as a kind of vassalage of Burgundy to Ostrogothia. If so, it availed Godomar little, as his territories were overrun by the Frankish Kings in 532, and the conquest of them was apparently completed by ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... course of time, that he was errand-goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then only as some servant's deputy), but also that he was one of the house's retainers and owed vassalage to it and was bound to leal and loyal interest in it. For this reason, he always spoke of it as 'Our House,' and, though his knowledge of its affairs was mostly speculative and all wrong, claimed to be in its confidence. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... expulsion of the Saxon, and he had done such great deeds in the first twenty years of his reign, that a man of more practical temperament might have been forgiven for indulging in dreams of future success. Three obstacles stood in the way of the development of his power. These were his vassalage to the English crown, the hostility of the marcher barons, and the impatience with which the minor Welsh chieftains submitted to his authority. For five years he impatiently endured these restraints. He then took advantage of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Ever since the union of Colmar in 1397, Sweden had been more or less bound to Denmark, the strongest of the northern kingdoms. By the year 1520 the Danish monarch Christian had reduced the Swedes to a state of most cruel vassalage and misery. Only one young noble, Gustavus Vasa, a lad of twenty-three, still held out, and by adventures wild as those of Robin Hood evaded his enemies and at last roused his countrymen to one more revolt. It was successful, and in 1523 Gustavus, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... victory that must be credited to the period under discussion. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was scarcely a nation that acknowledged the right of the individual to a part in government, or to personal freedom. Men were in vassalage to their immediate lord, who, in turn, was obliged to acknowledge the "divine right" of the king over him. With the exception of Switzerland, who for centuries had maintained her freedom, and of England, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... in the kingdom; and these reflections, sir, have been rendered necessary by the unaccountable and diabolical scheme which many gentlemen now give in to, of laying a number of farms into one, and very often a whole parish into one farm; which in the end must reduce the common people to a stage of vassalage, worse than that under the barons of old, or of the clans in Scotland, and will in time depopulate the kingdom. But as you are tired of the subject, I shall take myself away, and you may visit ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... thirty years previous; the fact that the Transvaal was quite differently situated as to adjoining territory imposed the necessity, if only as a matter of form, to preserve the written conditions of Transvaal vassalage. ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... when Hiram Holt expressed himself so strongly on the subject, a grinding vassalage repressed the industry of the habitans. Though their annual rent, as censitaires or tenants, was not large, a variety of burdensome obligations was attached. When a man sold his tenure, the seigneur could demand a fine, sometimes one-twelfth ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... sporting, well-dressed gentleman, such as Oxford turns out; but in his heart was lust of power, and hatred of the white race that he felt would make his inheritance, the Peshwaship, but a vassalage. His dreams of ruling India would fade, and he would sit a pensioner of the British. The Mahrattas had been stigmatised by a captious Mogul ruler, "mountain rats." As Hindus there was a sharp cleavage of character; the Brahmins, fanatical, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... through the Chinese quarter, down Mott Street, and I could not but feel a pang of sympathy for these aliens, looked upon by the Americans as vermin. It is a strange war, this between John Chinaman and Sambo for the vassalage of the States; but in poor England, the asylum of the alien, all nationalities have an equal chance, and the nigger, the Chinaman, the Jew, and the German can walk arm in arm, whether in the squalid streets of Spitalfields or the aristocratic ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Cebu, curious to observe the manners of their strange visitors, attended its celebration, and, as the story goes, were so much edified by the sight, that they were baptized Christians, and an oath of allegiance and vassalage to the King of Spain administered to them; and their example being followed to a great extent by the nobles and people of Cebu, the Christian forms of faith and the symbolic cross were planted by the Spaniards in the country ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... wept? You must forgive me for saying that the noise you have just made around this table was very like to the noise made on the verge of the Boer War. And your procedure seems to me as unaccountable as would have seemed the antics of those mobs if England had been plainly doomed to disaster and to vassalage. My guest here to-night, in the course of his very eloquent and racy speech, spoke of the need that he and you should preserve your 'free and independent manhood.' That seemed to me an irreproachable ideal. But I confess I was somewhat taken aback by my friend's scheme for realising ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... confidence in her justice and generosity than to trust a monarchy too feeble to establish your independency, so perilous to her distant dominions; the enemy of the Protestant faith, and fraudulently avowing an affection for the liberties of mankind while she holds her native sons in vassalage and chains." He winds up by stating his conviction that it was the generous intention of Great Britain not only to leave the rights and privileges of the colonies unimpaired, together with their perpetual exemption from taxation, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... lord of the state of Atabalipa his brother Atabalipa[10] in whose coronation they observed ceremonies in accordance with the usage of the caciques of those provinces. Of the vassalage and obedience which Atabalipa and many other caciques offered to ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... will be seen that Annam was at no time really detached from China. In spite of political independence it always looked towards the Chinese Court and though complimentary missions and nominal vassalage seem unimportant, yet they are significant as indicating admiration for Chinese institutions. Between Champa and Annam on the other hand there was perpetual war: in the later phases of the contest the Annamites appear as ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... wind, "but the vassalage of this elfin nation that plays at empire, the romance and adventure of an imperial court! And when the mad King dies and the Prince Regent, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... light both by the Company and the successive members of the late Council; but to insure his attachment to the Company, his interest must be connected with it, which cannot be better effected than by freeing him totally from the REMAINS of his present vassalage under the guaranty and protection of the Company, and at the same time guarding him against any apprehensions from this government, by thus pledging its faith that no encroachment shall ever be made on his rights by the Company." And ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Phillips said that the glory of free men is that they trample unjust laws under their feet. That is how they repeal them. If a human being submits to having his lips sealed, to be in silence reduced to vassalage, he may have all else, but he is still lacking in all that ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... by analogy we may easily judge of the remainder. And indeed to what purpose would it be singly to recount the commonalty and rabble of mankind, who beyond all question are entirely on my side? and for a token of their vassalage do wear my livery in so many older shapes, and more newly invented modes of Folly, that the lungs of a thousand Democrituses would never hold out to such a laughter as this subject would excite; and to these thousand must be superadded one more, to ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Normandy, a large territory, inhabited to a great extent by a distinct people—a territory which, in all but name, was a kingdom rather than a duchy—a territory which, though cumbered by the relations of a nominal vassalage, fairly ranked, according to the standard of those times, among the great powers of Europe. Maine was simply one of the states which were cut off from the great duchy of France, and one over which Anjou, another state cut off in the like sort, always asserted a superiority. Setting ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... their governors, rebelled and usurped the government to himself, assuming the title of king. This was the same person with whom Annaya had now to contend, and whose son Solyman he established in the sovereignty, under the protection and vassalage ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... the realm of the Almohades, the Moorish kingdom of Granada was established, and was held in vassalage to Castile, of which Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1474, became joint sovereigns. The Moors made Granada, their capital, a large and powerful city, and there in the thirteenth century they built their magnificent palace and citadel, the Alhambra, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... slavery which I had felt in Europe. In vain have writers of ability, seeking to veil barbarous institutions by ingenious turns of language, invented the expressions negro peasants of the West Indies, black vassalage, and patriarchal protection: that is profaning the noble qualities of the mind and the imagination, for the purpose of exculpating by illusory comparisons or captious sophisms excesses which afflict humanity, and which prepare the way for violent convulsions. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... view, determined to replace Ahaz, the youthful king of Judah, by a creature of their own. Ahaz turned in his extremity to Assyrian help, and Tiglath-pileser seized the opportunity of accepting the vassalage of Judah, with its strong fortress of Jerusalem, and at the same time of overthrowing both Damascus and Samaria. Rezon was closely besieged in his capital, while the rest of the Assyrian army was employed in overrunning Samaria, Ammon, Moab, and the Philistines ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... Emperor Otta is the Emperor Otho II (973-983). His march on Denmark did not take place in 988 as Snorri calculates, but late in the autumn of 974. Nor was the Emperor's object the conversion of King Harald, for the latter had accepted Christianity about 960— but to bring Denmark under his own vassalage. ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... coronets, visiting-cards, blue hangings, the homage of lords, and the vassalage of ladies, there was something amiss. She caught herself continually looking back to the old days at Ecclesfield Manor, to the soft lawns and shady avenues, the fond father, who thought his darling the perfection of humanity, and whose face lit up so joyfully ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... marriage, for the chevalier who never comes, of the serf for the chatelaine, of the rose for the nightingale, of Rudel for the Lady of Tripoli. Another element of extravagance came in with the feudal spirit: Provencal love is full of the very forms of vassalage. To be the servant of love, to have offended, to taste the subtle luxury of chastisement, of reconciliation—the religious spirit, too, knows that, and meets just there, as in Rousseau, the delicacies of the earthly love. Here, under this strange complex of conditions, as in ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... reached the middle of the courtyard, but made no motion to dismount. The lady came slowly down the broad stone steps, followed by her feminine train, and, approaching the Elector, placed her white hand upon his stirrup, in mute acknowledgment of her vassalage. ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... the loathing I had for this place and its owners, I could not repress a feeling very much like consternation on hearing that the hereditary manor which bore my own name had apparently been taken and set on fire. It meant disgrace, defeat; and this fire was as a seal of vassalage affixed to my arms by those I called clodhoppers and serfs. I sprang up from my chair, and had I not been held back by the violent pain in my foot, I believe I should have ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... things, and hoping something would happen to change the situation. Even while she was thinking thus fate had a pleasant surprise in store for her, because the old mother, Faith, was at that very moment approaching the manor where Bertha lived. Like others of her class she owed vassalage to some petty seigneur, and while that meant oppression to be endured, it included the advantage of safety and protection in ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... your meditations? Are you the mere slave for your thoughts, compelled to follow as they, by some caprice, may direct? No intelligent mind in which the will is ruler is prepared to admit that it has been subjected to such vassalage. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Heav'n, this our delight; how wearisom Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue By force impossible, by leave obtain'd 250 Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek Our own good from our selves, and from our own Live to our selves, though in this vast recess, Free, and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easie yoke Of servile Pomp. Our greatness will appear Then most conspicuous, when great things of small, Useful of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... himself to all others, grovelled himself as an abject devotee at the feet of a haughty confessor. Amongst the populace of Klosterheim this feature of his character, confronted with the daily proofs of his entire vassalage to the Swedish interest, passed for the purest hypocrisy; and he had credit for no religion at all with the world at large. But the fact was otherwise. Conscious from the first that he held even the Landgraviate by a slender title (for he was no more than cousin once removed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathies were with the Stuarts and their dissipated insolent party, and all his hatred directed against those who endeavoured to check them in their proceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above a state of vassalage that is wretchedness. Those who were born great, were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, however worthless their characters. Those who were born low, were always to remain so, however great their talents—though ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... by a series of victories over the Moslems. To him Europe is indebted for the check he gave the Turks. He forced them to relinquish Servia and Bosnia, and in his time both provinces were placed under the vassalage of Hungary. We may go further and say that had Hunyadi's plans for hurling back the Moslem invaders been seconded by the other Christian powers, we should not have the Eastern Question upon our hands in this our day. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... from the south-eastern frontier of Shoa to the picturesque lake of Guaragu. But, instead of plundering these agricultural races, as his father had done, he promised them honourable treatment, a kind of mild vassalage, on the payment of a small annual tribute. The Gallas, surprised at his unexpected generosity and clemency, willingly accepted his terms, and, from former foes, enrolled themselves as his followers, and accompanied him on his expeditions. Theodore ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... empire. For more than two centuries, when the Greeks and Romans flourished, Jewish history is a blank, with here and there some scattered notices and traditions which Josephus has recorded. The Jews, living in vassalage to the successors of Alexander during this interval, had become animated by a martial spirit, and the Maccabaic wars elevated them into sufficient importance to become allies of Rome—the new conquering power, destined to subdue the world. During this period ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of scarcity, the command of the water-supply would be far preferable to the chances of rain in the most favoured country. Water, like fire, should be the slave of man, to whom it is the first necessity; therefore his first effort in his struggle with the elements should reduce this power to vassalage. There must be no question of supremacy; water must ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... provision, for the purpose of accumulating articles for their feasts, or after any great consumption of the necessaries of life. The lowest class of society after the rattira, is the manahoune, which bears a resemblance to our cottagers. They cultivate the lands, and are in a state of vassalage, but they are not compelled to constant service, and they are permitted both to change masters, and to migrate to other districts. The servants in any class are called toutou; such as wait on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... beautiful gipsy, who would not yield to his wishes unless he became a gipsy and made her his wife. The page did so, and was so much liked by the other gipsies, that they chose him for their lord, yielded him obedience, and in token of vassalage rendered to him a portion of everything they stole, whatever it ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dissensions threatened the security of his suzerainty. Their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them: a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example from spreading far and wide. The empire was ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... cantered slowly round half the meadow, and the cheer followed them as they went, like the moving cry of birds on the wing; and first they rode along the line of the King's men, but presently they came to the knights and soldiers of Eleanor's great vassalage, and all at once there were flowers in the air, wild flowers from the fields and autumn roses from the gardens of Nicaea, plucked early by young squires and boys, and tied into nosegays and carefully shielded from the sun, that they might be still fresh when the ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... to avoid the Spanish slaughter and Cruelty, deprived of all he was Master of, died in the Mountains; and all the rest of the Potentates and Nobles, his subjects, perished in that servitude and Vassalage; as you shall ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... let foreign affairs take their course, to establish my authority at home, and to do something for my religion." A few days later he announced the same intentions to the States General. [71] From that time to the close of his ignominious reign, he made no serious effort to escape from vassalage, though, to the last, he could never hear, without transports of rage, that men ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which Ferdinand had humiliated himself in advancing. He returned in answer, that he demanded, as the price of peace, not only that Ferdinand should renounce all claim whatever to the crown of Hungary, but that he should also acknowledge the Austrian territories as under vassalage to the Turkish empire, and ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... his condition is every-where met with contempt and scorn. They acknowledge that slavery, as it once existed, is overthrown; but the continued inferiority and subordination of the colored race, under some form of vassalage or serfdom, is regarded by them as certain. Sir, they have no thought of any thing else; and if the ballot shall be withheld from the freedmen after the withdrawal of military power, the most revolting forms ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... go to King Marsilius with the terms of peace, which were that he, the Moslem, was to hold half of Spain in vassalage to Charlemagne; that the other half of the conquered territory was to be ruled by the emperor's well-beloved Roland; and that Marsilius was to journey to France at Michaelmas and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... Portingale. Tidings to them in Carrion and in Castile they bring Of a Court held in Toledo by the much honored King, And that there they should be gathered when seven weeks should end. Who stayed at home, true vassalage no longer could pretend. And all men so determined throughout his breadth of lands Not to fail in the fulfillment of the King's high commands. CXXXV. Now are the Heirs of Carrion troubled by the report That the King within Toledo was about to hold his court. They fear my lord Cid Campeador ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... its crossroads, extending north, east, south and west, from Lyons to Marseilles, from Nimes to Turin. The French city, the accursed city, longing for a king, jealous of its liberties, shuddering beneath its yoke of vassalage, a vassalage of the priests with the clergy for ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Norman friends in England, always a minority, have ruled their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yankees till within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy years molded the policy of the Government, and placed our own men, or 'Northern men with Southern ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... abject, needy circumstances wherein the Devil keeps the Slaves, that are under his more sensible Vassalage, do suggest unto us, how woful the Devil would render all our Lives. We that live in a Province, which affords unto us all that may be necessary or comfortable for us, found the Province fill'd with vast Herds of Salvages, that never ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... began to exercise an undefined authority over the district, which they afterwards converted into a duchy. But, though Ghibelline for several generations, the Montefeltri were too near neighbours of the Papal power to free themselves from ecclesiastical vassalage. Therefore in 1216 they sought and obtained the title of Vicars of the Church. Urbino acknowledged them as semi-despots in their double capacity of Imperial and Papal deputies. Cagli and Gubbio followed in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth, Castel Durante was acquired from the Brancaleoni ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... importance. The personal qualifications of this prince, an excellent navy, a formidable army, well-ordered finances, and prudent alliances, had combined to give her prosperity at home and influence abroad. Gustavus Vasa had rescued Sweden from vassalage, reformed it by wise laws, and had introduced, for the first time, this newly-organized state into the field of European politics. What this great prince had merely sketched in rude outline, was filled up by Gustavus Adolphus, his still ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... turn up their eyes at the corruption of the world and preach asceticism. As regards the lower classes, the effort is on foot to lower still more the level of their education. The proletariat might become too knowing, it might get tired of its vassalage, and might rebel against its earthly gods. The more stupid the mass, all the easier is it ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel |
