"Stratagem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piece, rather an instrument than an agent. After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the king, he makes no attempt to punish him; and his death is at last effected by an incident which Hamlet had no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... was critically timed; for Gylippus had encouraged the Syracusans to attack the Athenians under Nicias by sea as well as by land, and by an able stratagem of Ariston, one of the admirals of the Corinthian auxiliary squadron, the Syracusans and their confederates had inflicted on the fleet of Nicias the first defeat that the Athenian navy had ever sustained from a numerically inferior ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... were seldom carried on openly; they preferred stratagem and artifice; and the conquerors practised the greatest cruelties on the conquered. If a party was so beleaguered as to lose all hope of effectual resistance, or of securing their safety by flight, knowing that ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... traitor in the English fort; a brave Indian warrior, himself entertaining an unhappy passion for Pocahontas; a medicine-man and priest of the Indians (very well played by Palmer), capable of every treason, stratagem, and crime, and bent upon the torture and death of the English prisoner;—these, with the accidents of the wilderness, the war-dances and cries (which Gumbo had learned to mimic very accurately from the red people at home), and the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... passers-by,—one who owned the patent and dispensed the right to tread that soil, to breathe that air, to be glorified in that sunlight and amid those snow-crystals. And he looked it all. Though at that moment his army was entrapped by military stratagem, and he himself was entrapped by diplomatic stratagem, that face and form were proud as ever and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... The effect of his stratagem was immediate. The spectacle of water apparently on fire was too much for the simple savages. For the first time they broke their silence, and were seen rushing up the wooded slope, uttering shrill cries of alarm. Only then did Smith become ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... a strong castle, Archie," Wallace said; "at least so people say, for I have never seen it, so far does it lie removed from the main roads. But unless by stratagem, I doubt if my force is strong enough to capture it; nor would I attack were I sure of capturing it without the loss of a man. The nobles and landowners stand aloof from me; but it may be that after I have wrested some more ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... lord wears breeches, and my lady's kind. To show the strength, and infamy of pride, By all 'tis follow'd, and by all denied. What numbers are there, which at once pursue Praise, and the glory to contemn it, too! Vincenna knows self-praise betrays to shame, And therefore lays a stratagem for fame; Makes his approach in modesty's disguise, To win applause; and takes it by surprise. "To err," says he, "in small things, is my fate." You know your answer, he's exact in great. "My style," says he, "is rude and full of faults." But ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... we covered apace, and at every curve and cross-road I peered ahead and around with my heart in my mouth. One point in my favour was the desolate nature of the country, exactly fitted for such a stratagem as was in hand. On the right the gloomy sky was blotted out by jagged masses of gloomier hills. On the left the country varied between flat and upland, but was ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... should happen at a time when a dispute should arise between two of his principal commanders. That dispute occurred at the time here alluded to, Achilles recommending force as most likely to reduce the city, and Ulysses stratagem. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... trick, cheat, wile, blind, feint, plant, bubble, fetch, catch, chicane, juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing from the bottom of the deck; artful dodge, swindle; tricks upon travelers; stratagem &c (artifice) 702; confidence trick, fake, hoax; theft &c. 791; ballot-box stuffing barney*[obs3][U.S.], brace* game, bunko game, drop* game, gum* game, panel game[U.S.]; shell game, thimblerig; skin* game [U.S.]. snare, trap, pitfall, decoy, gin; springe[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the north, against whom the Great Wall proved to be a somewhat ineffectual barrier. Also with the Huns, the forbears of the Turks, who once succeeded in shutting up the founder of the dynasty in one of his own cities, from which he only escaped by a stratagem to be related in another connexion. There were in addition wars with Korea, the ultimate conquest of which led to the discovery of Japan, then at a low level of civilization and unable to enter into official relations with China until A.D. 57, when an embassy ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... make a division of their movables too, that there might be no odious distinction or inequality left amongst them; but finding that it would be very dangerous to go about it openly, he took another course, and defeated their avarice by the following stratagem: he commanded that all gold and silver coin should be called in, and that only a sort of money made of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was worth but very little; so that to lay up a hundred or two dollars there was ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... on the isle; from them sprang all that was best and noblest in our past, and let no one think but that it was noble. Leaving aside that mystic sense of union with another world and looking only at the tales of battle, when we read of heroes whose knightly vows forbade the use of stratagem in war, and all but the equal strife with equals in opportunity; when we hear of the reverence for truth among the Fianna, "We the Fianna of Erin never lied, falsehood was never attributed to us"—a reverence for truth carried so far that they could not believe their foemen even ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... side, Mr. Andrews, counsel for Henrietta, maintained that while his learned brother assumed the one half of the case as proved, and repudiated the other as a lie or a myth, he had a right to embrace the other half, and pronounce the first a stratagem or trick. The proceedings in the back-room into which Jean Graham introduced Mrs. Hislop were more completely substantiated than those in the bedroom where Mrs. Napier lay; for while the one were sworn to by Mrs. Hislop herself, a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... thwart our designs. While his passion increased, the Chevalier de Grammont was solely occupied in endeavouring to find out some method, by which he might accomplish his intrigue; and this was the stratagem which he put in execution to clear the coast, by removing, at one and the same time, both the lover and ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... luck indeed," he would say. Or, "You played that trick as few could do it" Or, "Am not I in the key to-night? there's less craft than luck here." And he played even slovenly once or twice, flushing, we could read, lest we should see the stratagem. At these times, by the curious way of chance, he ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... elephant. But he rightly remarked that the coincidence was accidental. In the one case, after a siege of nine years, the principal heroes of the Greek army are concealed in a wooden horse, dragged into Troy by a stratagem, and the story ends by their falling upon the Trojans and conquering the city of Priam. In the other story a king bent on securing a son-in-law, had an elephant constructed by able artists, and filled with armed men. The elephant ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... not spilling the glass of claret punch which he carried in one hand, and not falling down on the slippery floor with the plate of salad which he bore in the other. She had thoughts of feigning unconsciousness; she would have had no scruple in practising this or any other social stratagem, for though she kept a conscience in regard to certain matters—what she considered essentials— she lived a thousand little lies every day, and taught her daughter by precept and example to do the same. You must seem ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that might inflame Vincent's ambition, and would certainly require his co-operation. So now, every evening, in the spare time after supper, she set to work on the drawings, aided by some photographs and rough sketches made by Hardy. After a little stratagem she got him to come up and help her with suggestions, or to sit for her while she sketched him in all the attitudes ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... little stratagem, said, "Oh, my, dear, that is not so certain. Miss Arrowpoint has ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... its most awful aspects, turn sick. Many walk unsteadily away from the spot; others support themselves against the trunks of trees or sit at the roots. Death has taken an unfair advantage; he has struck with an unfamiliar weapon; he has executed a new and disquieting stratagem. We did not know that he had so ghastly resources, possibilities of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... frontier, fling himself upon the royal troops, and seize the Abruzzi. A sensible project this, to take the offensive against the Pope's defenders. But before the Triumvirate could come to a definite decision, it was known that the French troops, by a disgraceful stratagem, had landed and taken possession of Civita Vecchia, General Oudinot entwining the French flag with the Roman tricolor and assuring the Romans that they only came to secure perfect freedom for the people to effect a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... pow'r, Misleading all; with lightest step she moves, Not on the earth, but o'er the heads of men, With blighting touch; and many hath caus'd to err. E'en Jove, the wisest deem'd of Gods and men, In error she involv'd, when Juno's art By female stratagem the God deceiv'd, When in well-girdled Thebes Alcmena lay In travail of the might of Hercules. In boastful tone amid the Gods he spoke: 'Hear all ye Gods, and all ye Goddesses, The words I speak, the promptings ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... in equilibrium by diplomacy. By far the most important people, next to the despots and the captains of adventure, were ambassadors and orators. War itself had become a matter of arrangement, bargain, and diplomacy. The game of stratagem was played by generals who had been friends yesterday and might be friends again to-morrow, with troops who felt no loyalty whatever for the standards under which they listed. To avoid slaughter and to achieve the ends of warfare by parade and demonstration was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... new attempts were made to overcome the resistance of the accused; and both stratagem and terror were brought into play. In the course of a second admonition, May 2d, the preacher, Master Chatillon, proposed to her to submit the question of the truth of her visions to persons of her own party. She did not give in to the snare. "As to this," she said, "I depend ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Greeks had gone away. The whole fleet, he said, had sailed off to the southward, and abandoned those seas altogether. The Persians did not, at first, believe this intelligence. They suspected some ambuscade or stratagem. They advanced slowly and cautiously down the channel. When they had gone half down to Thermopylae, they stopped at a place called Histiaea, where, upon the rocks on the shore, they found an inscription addressed to the Ionians—who, it will be recollected, had been brought ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... some trees on the brink of a river, which like a leech drew the moisture from the land and discharged it into the sea. Then they went to seek the house of the magicians, and, observing that Jennarone never took the ring from his finger, they sought to gain the victory by stratagem. So, waiting till Night had dyed with purple grape-juice the sunburnt face of Heaven, and the magicians had gone to bed and were fast asleep, Rudolo began to nibble the finger on which the ring was, whereupon Jennarone, feeling the smart, took the ring off and laid it on a table at the head ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... himself at their head. But the wary impostor was not to be entrapped so easily. He declined to trust himself in the hands of the well-disciplined bands which expressed so much readiness to follow him to death or victory; and the Kentish troops, despairing of success in their stratagem, fell upon such of his retainers as had already landed, and took 150 of them prisoners. These were tried, sentenced, and executed by order of the king, who was determined to show no lenity to the rebels. Perkin being an eye-witness of the capture of his people, immediately ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... Dutch makers, alarmed at the competition which this threatened, cunningly devised a stratagem for nipping it in the bud. They freighted a large worn-out ship with an enormous quantity of pipes of their own make, sent it to Ostend, and wrecked it there. By the municipal laws of that city ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... pounds for the copyright; and when he began to suspect that the work would be judged inferior to its predecessor, he employed the following stratagem to push it upon the trade. At a sale made to the booksellers, previous to the publication, Millar offered his friends his other publications on the usual terms of discount; but when he came to Amelia, he laid it aside, as a work expected to be in such demand, that he could not afford to deliver ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... dispersed; or rather pretended so to do, for a party of armed natives was observed to conceal themselves under some mangrove bushes near the beach, whilst two canoes were plying about near at hand to entice our approach; the stratagem, however, did not succeed, and we lay off upon our oars for some time without making any movement. Soon afterwards the natives, finding that we had no intention of following them, left their canoes, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... priest of the community, Hermes, joining in their worship. The hermit appears on the scene, and on his abusing Satyros for the theft of his crucifix, the people decide to offer him as a sacrifice to their insulted divinity. By a stratagem of the wife of Hermes, the hermit is rescued and the bestiality of Satyros exposed. In no way disconcerted, Satyros leaves the throng with flouts at their asinine attachment to their conventional morality ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Segmuller, who was now quite calm again—no outward sign of wounded vanity being perceptible—"I suppose you have decided what stratagem must be employed to lull the prisoner's suspicions if ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... at him while he made this statement, and he couldn't tell what her look meant. But, evidently, she yielded to his counter-stratagem, feeling it, no doubt, unavoidable, for the buggy just then drew up before the door, and the figure of ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the Book of Sindibad this is the "Story of the Prince who went out to hunt and the stratagem which the Wazir ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... consolation, edification; in all ways diligently "administering the discipline of the Church." It may be said, too, that in private disposition the new preachers somewhat resemble the mendicant Friars of old times; outwardly, full of holy zeal; inwardly, not without stratagem, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... companions as served us all the way to Warwick, which is a distance of some twenty miles from this, town: and very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves with it, feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem, I put double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my purse, and secured as much as I thought would keep good and moist for my next two or three days' eating. When I told this to my parents, on their first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this feat by adopting a stratagem which invariably deceives those who are ignorant of their habits and tactics. When suddenly pursued the Banattee sinks into the grass, and, serpentlike, creeps along with wonderful rapidity, not from but towards ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... operator stood panting, but half believing the witness of his own eyes to the success of the stratagem. Then at the top of his voice he cried: "Mr. Jones! Mr. Jones! Muskoka! ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... understood his meaning and the success of his stratagem. "You think you have saved HER from disgrace," he said, with a livid smile, in a lower tone and a desperate attempt to imitate Paul's coolness. "For the present—ah—yees! perhaps in this hotel and this evening. But you have not stop ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... day he again was missing, but she was not to be caught by his stratagem. Instead of venturing into the trap he had prepared for her, she remained on her side of the line smiling at the thought of him in hiding far up the road. If any one had suggested to her that she was developing too great an interest in this stalwart gentleman, she ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... therefore, as the unreasonable old gentleman perceived, it was necessary that we should all make our arrangements. I cannot say that they were such as enable me to look back on them with satisfaction. He did seem now at last to believe that I had been an unconscious agent in his niece's stratagem, but he hardly on that account became civil to me. "It was absolutely necessary," he said, "that he and that unfortunate young woman," as he would call her, "should depart at once,—by this ship now going." To this proposition of course I made no opposition. ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... corners of inaccessible security; and in order to conceal what every one can perceive, you now endeavor to impose your weakness upon us for an act of mercy. If you think to succeed by such shadowy devices, you are but infants in the political world; you have the A, B, C, of stratagem yet to learn, and are wholly ignorant of the people you have to contend with. Like men in a state of intoxication, you forget that the rest of the world have eyes, and that the same stupidity which conceals you from yourselves exposes you to their ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... dolorous weather, we found ourself unexpectedly moving in a fresh, cool, pure air; an air which, although there was no sunlight, had the spirit and feeling of sunlight in it; an air which was purged and lively. And, so strangely do things happen, after days of various complexion and stratagem, we found ourself looking across that green field, still unchanged, at ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... and of what value their opinions may be, from their personal abilities, from their knowledge, their experience, or their lead and authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under a high-sounding name, an importance to the public declarations of this club, which, when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... me by some stratagem to find out from you what the surprise is that you are preparing for the ball to-morrow," Pyotr ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... It is not known to me whether any search has been made. The owner of the site, Jens Grim, was attacked by people from Lubeck; they besieged his two fastnesses. They succeeded in taking one of them by a very simple stratagem. Jens Grim had lost his knife, which the Lubeckers found, and took it to the fastness, where they knew he was not, and said they had come to take possession by Jens Grimes order, and produced the knife. They were admitted and ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... once more ascendant—he penned those forgeries, closing them with Mark Wylder's seal, which he compelled his sister—quite unconscious of all but that their despatch by post, at the periods pencilled upon them, was essential to her wretched brother's escape. It was the success of this, his first stratagem, which suggested that long series of frauds which, with the aid of Jim Dutton, selected for his striking points of resemblance to Mark Wylder, had been carried on for so long with such consummate art in a ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Shaw, as he came riding up to us with a grin of exultation. He had a bottle of molasses in one hand, and a large bundle of hides on the saddle before him, containing, as he triumphantly informed us, sugar, biscuits, coffee, and rice. These supplies he had obtained by a stratagem on which he greatly plumed himself, and he was extremely vexed and astonished that we did not fall in with his views of the matter. He had told Coates, the master-wagoner, that the commissary at the fort had given him an order for sick-rations, directed to the master of any government train ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... stayed Grio's tongue and checked his foot in the very instant of assault. The student, watching his blade and awaiting the attack, was surprised to see his point waver and drop. Was it a trick, he wondered? A stratagem? No, for a silence fell on the room, while those who held the floor hastened to efface themselves against the wall, as if they at any rate had nothing to do with the fracas. And next moment Grio shrugged his shoulders, and with a ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... an incorrigible depravity of heart. He happened to cast his eye on Martha Swinton, the minister's eldest daughter, then but in her sixteenth year, and notwithstanding the sore affliction that she was in, with her mother, on account of her godly father's uncertain fate, he spared no stratagem to lure her to his wicked will. She was, however, strengthened against his arts and machinations; but her fortitude, instead of repressing the rigour of his persecutions, only made him more audacious, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... arrangements to stop a day or two with our friends in Indiana. When you were presented, my husband recognized you instantly by the name and description given of you by his friend. When you sang that first song, he guessed your secret and told me his thought, and helped me to work the stratagem to lure you here. When he reached Port Natal, he tried to invent some plausible reason to induce Mr. Jordan to come here, but he could not; and so has hurried to get the mill working, and now both are on the way, and I must meet them. Jack and Rose ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... learned that the Emperor had taken the Elector of Saxony captive on the battlefield, but the Landgrave of Hesse had been betrayed into his power by a stratagem which the Protestants branded as base treachery, and used to fill all Germany with the bitterest hatred against him; but here Barbara's wrath flamed forth, and she upbraided the slanderous heretics. It angered her to have the great sovereign denied his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... concerns. Which treaty of Union was concluded in a Parliament as manifestly prelimited, as any which ever was seen in Scotland; the members were corrupted with bribes and preferment, and so engaged to act contrary to the will and mind of those whome they did represent, and to comply with that stratagem hatched by the English, for enslaving this poor nation, and denuded it of its privileges, as well sacred as civil. And alas! how insignificant were the endeavours then used to prevent that course, and preserve the privileges of the Parliament and liberties of this kingdom? only some faint addresses, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... carried in the affirmative, and the man that was designed by this stratagem to be destroyed was one Mr. Resistance, otherwise called Captain Resistance. And a great man in Mansoul this Captain Resistance was; and a man that the giant Diabolus and his band more feared than they feared the whole town of Mansoul besides.[29] Now who should be the actor ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... by way of trap, circulated in the English press a forged news-letter from Nancy in Lorraine, dated August 24, 1750. It announced Charles's death of pneumonia, in hopes of drawing forth a Jacobite denial. This stratagem failed. On August 4, James, though piqued by being kept in the dark, sent Charles a fresh commission of regency. {65b} Of the Prince's English expedition of September 1750, the Government of George II. knew nothing. Pickle was in Rome at the moment, not with Charles; what Pickle knew the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... hut formed of branches, beneath the shelter of which, I had no doubt, Kathleen and Lily were resting. So far the men had shown some humanity. To recover the "captives" it was evident that we must use stratagem rather than force. We could scarcely expect to overcome four well-armed men, even should we first succeed in setting Dio at liberty. We might, however, easily shoot two of them, and then spring upon the other two, but as I felt that we should not be ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... a war, yet thought a surrender of their women little better than mere captivity. Being in this doubt, a servant-maid called Philotis (or, as some say, Tutola), advised them to do neither, but, by a stratagem, avoid both fighting and the giving up of such pledges. The stratagem was this, that they should send herself, with other well-looking servant-maids, to the enemy, in the dress of free-born virgins, and she should in the night light up a fire-signal, at which the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Heaven! he was not a goblin. There was something, it must be acknowledged, that did not exactly accord with his notions of strict veracity in the joke the knight had passed upon him of his being a dead man; but several old friends present, who had served in the wars, assured him that every stratagem was excusable in love, and that the cavalier was entitled to especial privilege, having ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... beyond your frontier, or their positions cannot be ascertained, the enemy must be disposed of by stratagem and in detail. One of the best modes of trapping them is to put some injured fruit beneath one of the trees, and over it a hand-light raised about three inches above the ground by stones or pieces of wood placed ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... which we learn that "he knew how to handle an army, and was finally appointed General." His work, entitled the Art of War, is a short treatise in thirteen chapters, under the following headings: "Laying Plans," "Waging War," "Attack by Stratagem," "Tactical Dispositions," "Energy," "Weak Points and Strong," "Manoeuvring," "Variation of Tactics," "The Army on the March," "Terrain," "The Nine Situations," "The Attack by Fire," and "The Use of Spies." Although ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... arms they use for procuring subsistence are the same; that their boats and method of fishing are exactly alike; that both make use of a wooden instrument for procuring fire by friction; that neither attack their enemies in the open field, but take all advantages of ensnaring them by wiles and stratagem; and that the vanquished, when taken prisoners, are tortured without mercy. These observations indicate a striking resemblance between the Tartars and the savages of America. One thing is certain, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... had a furious quarrel; a quarrel, I think, irreconcileable. Dr. Goldsmith has a new comedy, which is expected in the spring. No name is yet given it. The chief diversion arises from a stratagem by which a lover is made to mistake his future father-in-law's house for an inn. This, you see, borders upon farce. The dialogue is quick and gay, and the incidents are so prepared as not to seem improbable. . ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... days he did not go out, waiting for the inquest to be terminated; but on the fifth day he went out again and killed two more soldiers by the same stratagem. From that time on he did not stop. Each night he wandered about in search of adventure, killing Prussians, sometimes here and sometimes there, galloping through deserted fields, in the moonlight, a lost Uhlan, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was cast, and young Raasay, hearing that Murdoch Mackenzie was on board, discussed the situation with his friend MacGillechallum Mor MacDhomhnuill Mhic Neill, who persuaded him to visit the ship as a friend, and secure Mackenzie's person by stratagem, with the view of getting him afterwards exchanged for his own relative, John MacAllan Mhic Rory, then a prisoner in Gairloch. Acting on this advice, young Raasay, with Gillecallum Mor and twelve of their men, started for the ship, leaving word with his ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... live, together on earth; you want to live together forever. You do not want ten, or twenty, or fifty years to end your association, you want to take your companion into the kingdom of God with you. If this subject is irritating in the household, it is because you do not understand Christian stratagem. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... casks legitimately opened. For it seems that old Mrs. Cicero's housewifely plan was to seal up all alike, empty and not empty. Consequently with her no such excuse could avail. Which proves that often it did avail, since her stratagem is mentioned as a very notable artifice. What follows? Why, that the slave was doubly tempted: 1st, by the luxury he witnessed; 2ndly, by the impunity on which he might calculate. Often he escaped by sheer weight ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... believe that any eulogy of the President would equal this page on which he had depicted himself in all his greatness and all his simplicity.... History is too often only a school of immorality. It shows us the victory of force or stratagem much more than the success of justice, moderation, and probity. It is too often only the apotheosis of triumphant selfishness. There are noble and great exceptions; happy those who can increase the number, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... sensitiveness to criticism made him often vindictive, unjust, and venomous. They led him also into frequent quarrels, and lost him many friends, including Lady M. Wortley Montagu, and along with a strong tendency to finesse and stratagem, of which the circumstances attending the publication of his literary correspondence is the chief instance, make his character on the whole an unamiable one. On the other hand, he was often generous; he retained ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... that this was no idle boast, and that the disposition of his enemy's force, without some stratagem, set at defiance any attack under present circumstances. Still he did not despair, and taught in Indian warfare, such a position was the very one to bring out his energies and abilities. Falling back for a moment, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of the Chinese Ministers was Ong Kang and of another ONG SUM PING, and the latter had recourse to a stratagem. He made a box with glass sides and placed a large lighted candle therein, and when the dragon went forth to feed, ONG SUM PING seized the precious stone and put the lamp in its place and u the dragon ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... home, congratulating himself on his campaign, which seemed to him, not without reason, to have been a masterpiece of stratagem. By a clever mingling of frankness and cunning he had quickly enlisted Madame de Tecle in his interest. From that moment the realization of his ambitious dreams seemed assured, for he was not ignorant of the incomparable value ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... believing that they were completely beaten, formed a stratagem to secure their retreat. About the time that Wilson and Alexander were dispatched to General Rutherford, they sent a flag under the pretense of proposing a suspension of hostilities for the purpose of burying the dead, and taking care of the wounded. To prevent the flag ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... and established, no man can, hereafter, be sure that he shall be represented by him whom he would choose. One half of the house may meet early in the morning, and snatch an opportunity to expel the other, and the greater part of the nation may, by this stratagem, be without its ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Suntzu and Wutzu, Chinese strategists of about the fifth century B.C., is the most famous work on the art of war in the Far East. It deals with operations of war, statecraft, moral and training of troops, stratagem, the use of spies, etc., and for twenty-five centuries it has been the bible of the Chinese or Japanese ruler. The book is distinguished alike by the poetry and grandeur of its language and the modernity of ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... which he recoiled were put into practice, with less than his honesty, but with much more skill in stratagem, by those who sought to accomplish his fall. The very courtiers whose influence was accountable for the scandals which stirred the indignation of the country party, made themselves the trusted friends of the parliamentary opposition, and carefully nursed it for their ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... instance of this which could be conceived. The Upper House of our Victorian Constitution, representing the rich wool-growers, has disagreed with the Lower Assembly, and most business is suspended. But for a most curious stratagem, the machine of Government would stand still. Most Constitutions have committed this blunder. The two most remarkable Republican institutions in the world commit it. In both the American and the Swiss Constitutions the Upper House has as much authority ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... you see, as to any direct explanation, that he fairly gives it up: he has used artifice and stratagem, which he knows will not do; and at last attempts to cover the treachery of his conduct by the treachery of his memory. Frequent applications were made to Mr. Hastings upon this article from the Company,—gentle ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... these details obtain some idea of the theatre of the war and of the men who were its instruments. The flowering hedges of the beautiful valleys concealed the combatants. Each field was a fortress, every tree an ambush; the hollow trunk of each old willow hid a stratagem. The place for a fight was everywhere. Sharpshooters were lurking at every turn for the Blues, whom laughing young girls, unmindful of their perfidy, attracted within range,—for had they not made pilgrimages with their fathers and their brothers, imploring to be ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... was made up in an instant. Beyond a doubt this was but a stratagem to capture him. But he resolved that he would never surrender, as long as he had sufficient strength ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... to receive their debts in it; so that the loss by the brass money did, in a manner, entirely fall on the protestants, being defrauded (for I can call it no better) of about, L60,000 per month by this stratagem, which must, in a few months, have utterly exhausted them. When the papists had gotten most of their saleable goods from their protestant neighbours, and yet great quantities of brass money remained in their hands, they ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... stratagem, and, pretending not to be afraid of the animal, he threw his sword over the frog's back, exclaiming, "Take that; ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... are three sisters. She on the right hand, who is so very beautiful, died a maid; the next to her, still handsomer, had the same fate, against her will; this homely thing in the middle had both their portions added to her own, and was stolen by a neighboring gentleman, a man of stratagem and resolution, for he poisoned three mastiffs to come at her, and knocked down two deer-stealers in carrying her off. Misfortunes happen in all families. The theft of this romp, and so much money, was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... who took the blazing sun for his crest. The Fronde had been a time of pleasurable excitement to the high-spirited girl, whose mixed blood ran like quicksilver, and who delighted in danger and party strife, stratagem and intrigue. The story of her courage and gaiety of heart in the siege of Paris, she being then little more than a child, had reached the Flemish convent long after the acts recorded had been forgotten at ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... which were evidently made on purpose, might cause them to be late ere they arrived at the place of their destination. He had remarked, however, that the Messenger was somewhat proud of the beast that carried him, and he thought it in no degree wrong to make use of a stratagem in order to hurry ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... they were much in want of. On the 4th he rejoined with his squadron; having received intelligence from the Euryalus by telegraph, that the French ships in Cadiz were embarking their troops, and preparing to sail. Lord NELSON however conceived this to be merely intended as a stratagem, to draw him nearer to Cadiz, for the purpose of obtaining a knowledge of his force; and therefore directed Admiral LOUIS to proceed in the execution of the orders before delivered ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... love for the pleasures of the table, was a noted wrestler, boxer, and tennis-player. Antigonus himself, in spite of his love of learning, vied with his great predecessors, Philip and Alexander, in his addiction to the wine-cup. When, by a somewhat unworthy stratagem, he had tricked the widowed queen Nikaia out of the possession of the Acrocorinthian citadel, which was, politically speaking, the apple of his eye, he celebrated the occasion by getting exceedingly drunk, and went "reeling through Corinth at the head of a drunken ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... very natural passion in all good members of the commonwealth, to take what care they can of their families. Therefore I hope the reader will forgive me, that I desire he would go to the play, called the "Stratagem,"[93] this evening, which is to be acted for the benefit of my near kinsman, Mr. John Bickerstaff.[94] I protest to you the gentleman has not spoken to me to desire this favour; but I have a respect for him, as well in regard to consanguinity, as ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... looked into the cupboard, its shallowness would suggest to them that there must be a wide empty space behind it, and by setting to work with axes, picks, and crowbars, they would soon discover by force the secret she was trying to penetrate by stratagem. ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... position chiefly because it enabled him to get control of the public printing, and once when threatened by the advent of a new member with loss of this lucrative employment he saved himself by his usual recourse to honorable stratagem. Having heard that this gentleman had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, Franklin wrote him a note expressing a desire to read the volume and asking to borrow it for a few days. The book came immediately, and the two students were at once bound ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... Max Muller warns us that his riddle theory is not meant to explain 'the obscurities of all mythological names. This is a stratagem that should be stopped from the very first.' It were more graceful ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... to the westward of Algiers, and at the mouth of a small river; he then marched into the interior, and, fetching a circuit, presented himself on the northern side of the town. Here the Moors had laid a simple stratagem for the destruction of the invading army. The natives had conceived they would rush at once to the fort of the Emperor, which they therefore mined, and expected to destroy a number of the enemy by its explosion. This obvious device of war was easily avoided, and General Bourmont, in possession ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... intelligible to every one? You believe that the Decii,[246] in devoting themselves to death, appeased the Gods. How great, then, was the iniquity of the Gods that they could not be appeased but at the price of such noble blood! That was the stratagem of generals such as the Greeks call [Greek: strategema], and it was a stratagem worthy such illustrious leaders, who consulted the public good even at the expense of their lives: they conceived rightly, what indeed happened, that if the general ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Frauenberg, and to prevail on Altringer, his relation, to return with him. Wallenstein was so pleased with this proof of his zeal, that he even lent him his own equipage for the journey. Rejoicing at the success of his stratagem, he left Pilsen without delay, leaving to Count Piccolomini the task of watching Wallenstein's further movements. He did not fail, as he went along, to make use of the imperial patent, and the sentiments of the troops ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... give him time to complete the outline of this masterly stratagem. "Don't be impossible, Rod," she said. "Don't you even know whose birthday ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Lady Gerard, to whom he had retired for a season, spake of the marvellous hand, which, he was sure, being a devout and pious Catholic, would cure any disease incident to the human frame. It was absolutely needful that a cure should be attempted, along with some stratagem, to conquer the yet unbroken obstinacy in which, as with a double panoply, Ellen had arrayed herself. The result of the experiment has been shown. She was united to her cousin ere a few months were old, and the "merrie spring" had melted in the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... like even the shadow of deception," he said; "I hate concealment; and yet I should not like Campion to know that I practised even so innocent a stratagem." ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... assailants, and of dismay to the besieged; and if this devoted band could have maintained their post a few minutes longer, the reduction of the place might have been purchased by the sacrifice of their lives. After Sapor had tried, without success, the efficacy of force and of stratagem, he had recourse to the slower but more certain operations of a regular siege, in the conduct of which he was instructed by the skill of the Roman deserters. The trenches were opened at a convenient distance, and the troops ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... him involuntarily start; but looking at the boy, and discovering, by the arch malicious expression of his countenance, that the urchin saw and enjoyed his slight tremor, he became convinced that the whole was a concerted stratagem, and determined to know by whom, or for what purpose, the trick ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... of Bivens's failure to settle Woodman's suit with a grim resolution to win now, at all hazards. The sensational reports of Stuart's action against the big financiers had given her quick mind the cue to a new line of stratagem. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... this while how to revenge himself on Cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had formed for that purpose. His project was to get himself chosen Tribune, and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the people. But as all Patricians were incapable of the Tribunate, by its original institution so his first step was to make himself a Plebeian by the pretence of an adoption ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... however, be confessed, that sometimes the answer of the oracle was clear and circumstantial. I have related, in the history of Croesus, the stratagem he made use of to assure himself of the veracity of the oracle, which was, to demand of it, by his ambassador, what he was doing at a certain time prefixed. The oracle of Delphi replied, in verse, that ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... kept sailing around a dovecote for many days to no purpose, was at last forced by hunger to have recourse to stratagem. Approaching the Pigeons in his gentlest manner, he described to them in an eloquent speech how much better their state would be if they had a king with some firmness about him, and how well such a ruler would shield them from the attacks of ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... occurred one of the most striking events in the history of the war, that of the defeat of an invading army by stratagem without sight of soldier or musket. It is to be told from two points of view, that of the garrison, and that of the army of relief. As regards the garrison, its situation was becoming critical. St. Leger's parallels ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... either military, or more specially defensive military, or more particularly, defensive by fortification—and so lay it up. So likewise in politic matters. And such a little table you may easily make wherewith I would have you ever join the historical part; which is only the example of some stratagem, or good counsel, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... that his stratagem of keeping his grandson late Sunday evenings had not checked the boy's acquaintance with Mrs. Richie, he tried a more direct method. "You young ass! Can't you keep away from that house? She thinks you are ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... trading and warlike people, received from the Portuguese and the Dutch, knives, fish-hooks, small mirrors, and all sorts of glass beads. They excited the Indian chiefs to make war against each other, bought their prisoners, and carried off, themselves, by stratagem or force, all whom they found in their way. These incursions of the Caribs comprehended an immense extent of land; they went from the banks of the Essequibo and the Carony, by the Rupunuri and the Paraguamuzi on one side, directly south towards the Rio Branco; and on the other, to the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Filibusters descended upon the Peninsula, they employed—so says the native tradition—the time-worn stratagem of the Pious Aeneas; and, having obtained, by purchase, as much land as could be enclosed by the hide of a bull, from the Sultan of Malacca, they cut the skin up into such cunning strips that a space large enough to build ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... in church. He placed himself on his knees by the side of his intended prey, holding in a pair of artificial hands a book of devotion, to which he made a show of the most devout attention, while with his natural hands he cut the watch or purse-string of his unsuspecting neighbor. This stratagem, favored by the fashion, then general, of wearing mantles, met with great success, and of course soon produced a host of clumsy imitators, and excited the vigilance of the police, who at length made so many seizures of solemn-faced devotees provided with wooden kid-gloved hands, that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... "I have deemed it wise to use a little stratagem. But you must be hungry. Sit down and eat your supper while I ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... A stratagem was at this time framed by the ecclesiastical persecutors, of confounding together the crimes of heresy and witchcraft. The first of these might seem to be enough in the days of bigotry and implicit faith, to excite ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... with flashing eyes. "I shall fail giving evidence, if you mean that. They don't get me up to their justice-room, neither by force or stratagem." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... indeed could tell the whole story? Though you were to stay here and question me for five years, or even six, I could not tell you all that the Achaeans suffered, and you would turn homeward weary of my tale before it ended. Nine long years did we try every kind of stratagem, but the hand of heaven was against us; during all this time there was no one who could compare with your father in subtlety—if indeed you are his son—I can hardly believe my eyes—and you talk just ...
— The Odyssey • Homer |
