"Laying waste" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... laying waste the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia, but not following as far south as the Yadkin. Daniel reached home, and set to work to strengthen the settlement's ties of friendship with the two tribes of the neighborhood, the Catawbas and the Cherokees. With their aid he was able to provide ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... through the paralyzing effects of pestilence, so that the van of our invaders had proceeded as far as Manchester and Derby, before we received notice of their arrival. They swept the country like a conquering army, burning—laying waste— murdering. The lower and vagabond English joined with them. Some few of the Lords Lieutenant who remained, endeavoured to collect the militia—but the ranks were vacant, panic seized on all, and the opposition that was made only served ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... excessive rains which had fallen and continued yet to deluge the earth, that it was impracticable to cross over to them; and Col. Broadhead, seeing the impossibility of achieving any thing farther, commenced laying waste the crops about Coshocton. This measure was not dictated by a spirit of revenge, naturally enkindled by the exterminating warfare, waged against the whites by the savages, but was a politic expedient, to prevent the accomplishment of their horrid purposes and to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... thousand men, conveyed in a flotilla of eight hundred ships. This time the Britons did not venture to oppose his landing; and when they met him in the field, as he marched inward, they were invariably defeated. They then changed their tactics and retired before him, laying waste the country as they went. He crossed the Thames some little way to the westward of where London now stands, received the submission of one native tribe, and finally concluded a peace with the native leader Cassivelaunus, who gave hostages and promised tribute. The general result ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... beseemeth, if so thou wilt, or to withhold, is in thy choice. But now let us bethink us of battle with all speed; this is no time to dally here with subtleties, for a great work is yet undone. Once more must Achilles be seen in the forefront of the battle, laying waste with his brazen spear the battalions of the men of Troy. Thereof let each of you think as he ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... intervention. During his stay in England, Nicholas I. was approached on behalf of the Jews by personages of high rank. Yet the Government would scarcely have yielded to public protests, had it not become patent that it was impossible to carry out the decree without laying waste entire cities and thereby affecting injuriously the interests of the exchequer. The fatal ukase was not officially repealed, but the Government did ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... of the Roman Emperor Valens some of the Goths joined a conspiracy against him. Valens punished them for this by crossing the Danube and laying waste their country. At last the Goths had to beg for mercy. The Gothic chief was afraid to set foot on Roman soil, so he and Valens met on their boats in the middle of the Danube and made a ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... Millalauco was sent with a message from the toqui to the Spaniards in the island of Quiriquina, whence he brought back intelligence that Don Garcia, with a large body of troops from Imperial, was laying waste the neighbouring provinces belonging to the Araucanian confederacy. On this information, and influenced by the advice of the aged Colocolo, young Caupolican deferred his proposed enterprise against ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Genesee country. Near Elmira, N. Y., he fought a fierce battle with the Indians and their tory allies. The latter being defeated, fled in dismay, while Sullivan marched to and fro through that beautiful region, laying waste their corn-fields, felling their orchards, and burning ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... of his threat to make Philip's dominions too hot to hold him, William, as soon as he was able to mount his horse, headed an expedition, and crossed the frontiers of Normandy, and moved forward into the heart of France, laying waste the country, as he advanced, with fire and sword. He came soon to the town of Mantes, a town upon the Seine, directly on the road to Paris. William's soldiers attacked the town with furious impetuosity, carried it by assault, and set it on fire. William ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... reentered Lyons and Avignon, and, crossing the Rhone, marched rapidly on Narbonne, to drive the Arabs from Septimania. He succeeded in beating them within sight of their capital; but, after a few attempts at assault, not being able to become master of it, he returned to Provence, laying waste on his march several towns of Septimania, Agde, Maguelonne, and Nimes, where he tried, but in vain, to destroy the famous Roman arenas by fire, as one blows up an enemy's fortress. A rising of the Saxons recalled him to Northern Gaul; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was alone, where every one Consented to the laying waste of Florence, He who defended ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... defended by a powerful fleet of armed vessels, of which each of the seaports fitted out its proportion, against the hostile attacks of the Abbaside lieutenauts of Africa, and the predatory descents of the Majus[14] or Northmen; who, after laying waste with fire and sword the French and English coasts, had extended their ravages into the southern seas even to the Straits of Gibraltar. Lisbon and Seville were sacked by them in 844; and their piratical fleets continued for many years to carry pillage and bloodshed along the shores ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... misfortune, at the same time magnifying themselves and their own commander, and it went so far that they would not exercise with them, nor lodge in the same quarters. But soon after, Pharnabazus, with a great force of horse and foot, falling upon the soldiers of Thrasyllus, as they were laying waste the territory of Abydos, Alcibiades came to their aid, routed Pharnabazus, and, together with Thrasyllus, pursued him till it was night; and in this action the troops united, and returned together to the camp, rejoicing and congratulating one another. The next day he erected a trophy, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Americans, compelled to withdraw from Fort George on the Niagara, burned the adjoining town of Newark and turned its women and children into the December snow. Drummond, who had succeeded Brock, gained control of both sides of the Niagara and retaliated in kind by laying waste the frontier villages from Lewiston to Buffalo. The year closed with Amherstburg on the Detroit the only Canadian post in American hands. On the sea the capture of the Chesapeake by the Shannon salved ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... and here it brought utter destruction on every living thing. The second monster, Tarabusaw, an ugly creature in the form of a man, lived on Mt. Matutun, and far and wide from that place he devoured the people, laying waste the land. The third, an enormous bird called Pah, [142] was so large that when on the wing it covered the sun and brought darkness to the earth. Its egg was as large as a house. Mt. Bita was its haunt, and there the only people who escaped its voracity were those who hid in caves in the mountains. ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... moment, told him also, that his designs were not so honourable as to serve the state, and that she believed he had only commenced a captain of banditti, to join the enemies of Venice, in plundering and laying waste the surrounding country. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Islesmen burnt all they could find ashore in Kintail. "In 1539 Donald Gorm of Sleat and his allies, after laying waste Trouterness in Sky and Kenlochew in Ross, attempted to take the Castle of Eileandonan, but Donald being killed by an arrow shot from the wall, the attempt failed." [Gregory, pp. 145.146. Border Minstrelsy. Anderson, p. 283. Reg. Sec. Sig., vol. xv., fol. 46.] In 1541 King James ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... the magistrates and the minister had met, a copy of the proclamation of the council held at Glasgow was put upon the Tolbooth door, by which it was manifested to every eye that the fences of the vineyard were indeed broken down, and that the boar was let in and wrathfully trampling down and laying waste. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Major Gordon left for Shanghai under the orders of Sir Charles Staveley who had been appointed to the command of the English forces in China. At the very time that England and France were at war with China, a terrible and far reaching rebellion was laying waste whole provinces. An article in our London Daily News about this date said, "But for Gordon the whole Continent of China might have been a scene of utter and hopeless ruin and devastation." At the date he took charge of the "ever victorious ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... in chess and in draughts, excellence in battle, excellence in contest, excellence in single combat, excellence in reckoning, excellence in speech, excellence in counsel, excellence in bearing, excellence in laying waste and in plundering from the ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... smarting with injuries and indignities which they have individually suffered, and they are driven to madness and despair by the wide-spreading desolation and the overwhelming ruin of European warfare. The whites have too frequently set them an example of violence, by burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence; and yet they wonder that savages do not show moderation and magnanimity towards those who have left them nothing but ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... green, and found an old rifle, its stock weather-warped and the barrel eaten away with rust. The ground was covered with tin cans, fragments of shell-casing, and rubbish of all sorts; but it was hidden from view. Men had been laying waste the earth during the long winter, and now June was healing the wounds with ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall |
