"Decapitation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The original Simon Stukely was a quaker, who went to Turkey with an intention of converting the Grand Turk: he narrowly escaped decapitation, by the interposition of the English ambassador. He was afterwards confined in an asylum: in answer to inquiries how he came there, he replied—"I said the world was mad, and the world said I was mad; and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... laughter). Besides, he liked our family, we suited him in every respect; and especially because we so much reminded him of John the Baptist (we inwardly hoped that the resemblance would not extend to decapitation). If Miss Greeley would not marry him, he kindly added, he would take her cousin Marguerite instead, but he must positively marry one of the family. He was now perfectly wild, and when he remarked, with a reproachful glance at Ida, that he disliked ko-kwettes, and liked a girl ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... respect and later into friendship, and even twenty years after, whenever we drove from our Oderbruch village to the neighboring city of Kuestrin, he never had much to say about Crown Prince Fritz, or Katte's decapitation, but regularly remarked: "Oh yes, Necker, who may be called the father of the French Revolution, traced his ancestry back to this city of Kuestrin. I owe the information to Ferber, Captain Ferber, whom we called Teinturier. It is a pity he could not give up his aqua ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... favourite method of flagellation in China. I asked Chung for an explanation, but he did not seem to understand my question, and replied that the "one piecee ting (soldier) no hab muchee hurtee," and that they might if they had liked have cut off his "one piecee head." True it is that decapitation is a very common punishment in ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... their inclination tempts them. In this country it is every person's interest, however wealthy, to exhibit an appearance of abject poverty; as the suspicion of wealth instantly produces from the Sultan or Pasha a demand for some large sum, which must be forthwith paid or decapitation or torture are the severe alternatives. Here justice is indeed an empty name, the most atrocious criminals escaping unpunished if able to offer a bribe sufficient to tempt the cupidity of those whose duty it is to administer it. Here money is sought after with insatiable ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... their heads should be recognized and their names disgraced, how they had thrown themselves into the flames of a temple which they had set on fire. Three of the company who had performed the friendly act of decapitation for their comrades had escaped by mountain roads and made their way back ...
— Japan • David Murray
... parallel, with secularity and religion reversed. It is as if some Clericalist or Royalist writer should give a list of the Archbishops of Paris from 1750 to 1850, noting how one died of small-pox, another of old age, another by a curious accident of decapitation, and throughout all his record should never once mention the nature, or even the name, of the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the same. After her settlement she made careful enquiry, and found that the number of lives sacrificed annually at the instance of this custom could not have averaged fewer than 150 within a radius of twenty miles, while the same number must have died from ordeals and decapitation on charges of causing sickness. To these had to be added the number killed in ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... rises a pyramidal canopy of open stone-work; and upon the wide transom-stone over the door, is sculptured the genealogical tree of Christ, arising from the root of Jesse. The carving over the north entrance is yet more peculiar, and evidently far older. It represents the decapitation of the Baptist, with "Salome dancing in an attitude, which perchance was often assumed by the tombesteres of the elder day; affording, by her position, a graphical comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... good policemen was there as usual, and saluted me profoundly. He had carried the last baby over the crossing, and guided all the venturesome small boys through the maze of trucks and horse-cars,—a difficult and thankless task, as they absolutely courted decapitation,—it being an unwritten law of conduct that each boy should weave his way through the horses' legs if practicable, and if not, should see how near he could come to grazing the wheels. Exactly at twelve o'clock, and again at two each day, in rain or sunshine, a couple ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... here, represents, on the right, the Union Generals who had been defeated by the Confederates in battle, and had suffered decapitation in consequence—McDowell, who lost at Bull Run; McClellan, who failed to take Richmond, when within twelve miles of that city and no opposition, comparatively; and Burnside, who was so badly whipped at Fredericksburg. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... young gentleman approached me with a letter: I received him with a strange nervousness; was there any crime in my record, I asked fitfully, for which I had been traced to this obscure suburb for condign arrest and decapitation? Ha! ha! it was my heart, not my lips, that laughed. I could have cried out like Enoch Arden in his ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... beginning with Gill-, may be from Gillian (see p. 46), or from Fr. Guillaume. A famous member of the latter family was Guillotin, the humanitarian doctor who urged the abolition of clumsy methods of decapitation. His name is a double diminutive, like Fr. diablotin, goblin. Leggatt is a variant of Lidgate, swing gate, and of Legate. Lovell is an affectionate diminutive or is for Old Fr. louvel, little wolf. It was also in Mid. English a dog's name, hence ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... liquifies in youth. The pipkin, therefore, goes through life empty and cracked, ever sounding flat and false. While in others the Me is enclosed in a sealed straw-covered flask and can only be awakened by either evaporation or decapitation, in other words, by a spiritual revolution. And in the very few among mortals, it emerges out of the iron calyx of a flower of red-hot steel, or flows from the transparent, odoriferous bosom of a rose of light. In the first we have a Caesar, an Alexander, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... solicitude. They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters of the criminal, and his whole family, for three succeeding generations, were excluded from all noble ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the precious fowl in his arms, watched the carriage drive slowly away. Then, after an interval in the kitchen devoted to hiding his purchases, he sought the library, striving to simulate a decent depression over the assumed decapitation of Job. ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... away, so that the jacks were seen. Oxford and his companion smiled and whispered. Elizabeth inquired the reason. They were amused, answered Oxford, to see that when jacks went up heads went down. The point of the sarcasm is presumed to have been the connexion of Ralegh's influence with the decapitation of Essex. That the reference was to Ralegh might have seemed rather dubious had not Bacon taken it for granted. The fact of the favour of the Queen ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... also serves the Sultan the same way, and then he turns his attention to "Mrs. Maruf," whom he threatens with death if she refuses to marry him. At a banquet she makes the Vizier drunk, obtains possession of the ring, secures the return of Maruf and the Sultan, and the decapitation of the Vizier. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... field, and who have power to restrain those feelings of revenge and violence which the spirits of the decapitated persons may be supposed hereafter to cherish against all who were instrumental in their decapitation. Last of all follows a herald on horseback, carrying a yellow banner inscribed "By Imperial Decree," an indispensable adjunct on such occasions, as without it the county ruler would not be justified in commanding the executioner to give the death stroke. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... me. The king then resided in a very pleasant country palace, situated on the banks of a river. In one of the rooms, there was a painting of Ogurlu- Mohammed, the kings eldest son, leading the sultan Busech, or Abu Said, tied with a rope; and in another picture the decapitation of Busech was represented. We were again invited to an entertainment, at which many different kinds of confections were served up. We remained at Ispahan till the 25th of November, during which period we were frequently invited to court. The city of Ispahan, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... from some of the reformer's idiosyncrasies. He was to his subjects what a rejected claimant of the Messianic office may have been to the Jews—a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to the people whom he came to bring to a new birth. His civil and ecclesiastical reforms, with the seeming decapitation of the Church by the abrogation of the patriarchate, were to the mass of the people an enigma only one shade less disreputable than the demeanor of himself and his courtiers. The repudiation of his legitimate wife, Eudoxia, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... sir; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... noiselessness came Ahab alone from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb's long spade—still remaining there after the whale's Decapitation—and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood leaning over with eyes ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... notice of a curious performance of John, or the ELDER HOLBEIN. It is divided, like many of the pictures of the old German masters, into three compartments. The Nativity occupies one; the Assumption another: and the decapitation of St. Dorothy the third. In the Assumption, the Trinity, composed of three male figures, is introduced as sanctifying the Virgin—who is in front. Below this group is the church of "Maria Maior," having two bells in the steeple; upon one of which, in the act of being ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... in finding him guilty of the acts recorded in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time in favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than decapitation. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... monopoly of exploitation. The defection of certain of their members who had found it to their advantage to go over bag and baggage to the rival house had roused them, to the wildest fury. They talked of decapitation. "... Burked.... Treachery.... ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... eruptions are among the worst vices of volcanoes. Every visitor to Naples remembers how plainly the landscape north of Vesuvius tells of a prehistoric decapitation, which left only a low, broad platform, on the south rim of which the little Vesuvius that many of us have climbed was formed by later eruptions, while a part of the north rim is well defined in "Monte Somma." Similarly, here at home, Mt. Adams and Mt. Baker are truncated ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... charm—"cool it with a baboon's blood, then the charm is firm and good." The two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April 3, 1880, of "Young Folks—a magazine of instructive and entertaining literature for boys and girls of all ages," containing "A Sequel to Desdichado" ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... years, these have been—beating with the light bamboo, beating with the heavy bamboo, transportation for a certain period, banishment to a certain distance, and death, the last being subdivided into strangling and decapitation, according to the gravity of ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... is "celebrated for the leap of Sappho, and the death of Artemisia." From this variety in the expression, a reader would hardly conceive that both the ladies perished in the same manner: in fact, the sentence is as proper as it would be to talk of the decapitation of Russell, and the death of Sidney. The view from this promontory includes the island of Corfu; and the name suggests to Mr. Gell the following note, which, though rather irrelevant, is of a curious nature, and we therefore conclude our citations ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Guardian of the Heir Apparent" and placed in charge of the Imperial funeral arrangements—a lucrative appointment. During that interval it is understood that the new Regent, brother of the Emperor Kwang-hsu, consulted all the most trusted magnates of the empire regarding the manner in which the secret decapitation Decree should be treated. All advised him to be warned in time, and not to venture on a course of action which would be condemned both by the nation and by the Powers. Another Edict was therefore prepared simply dismissing Yuan Shih-kai from office and ordering him ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... interesting, later, when Bok happened to get the angle of the employer, to discover that, invariably, these same lamenting young men were those who, from the employer's point of view, were either greatly overpaid or so entirely worthless as to be marked for early decapitation. ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... deported, but a number returned almost immediately. This happened under the jurisdiction of Omura, who had been specially charged with the duty of sending away the bateren (padres). He seems to have concluded that a striking example must be furnished, and he therefore ordered the seizure and decapitation of two fathers, De l'Assumpcion and Machado. The result completely falsified his calculations, for so far from proving a deterrent, the fate of the two fathers appealed widely to the people's sense of heroism. Multitudes flocked to the grave in which the two coffins were ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... with the death of our hero. The manner of it was decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Sarah, the daughter of Sir John Evelyn and widow of Sir John Wray. [Footnote: The ancient Lincolnshire family of Wray is mentioned in the Introduction of "King Monmouth" in connection with the remarkable portrait of the Duke after decapitation, which formerly was in the possession of Sir Cecil Wray. Since writing on this subject it occurs to me that it is very possible that the picture may have come originally to the Wrays through Lady Sarah Fanshawe, her husband being ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... his own language, 'on the last day of June, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the most happy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off by the most cruel Nero—on that very day, about an hour and a half after sunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused the Protonotary Colonna to be beheaded in the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... is a Mandarin's wig. Yes, of course it is one of his props. He has just been engaged on a great work: "The Decapitation of a Mandarin after a Chinese Reverse." The gentleman who sat for ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... by my obedience and my trust. He took me a long carriage journey, where to I know not, for we never spoke of that day again; I was led through a prison, into a closed court-yard, where, decently draped in the last robes of death, concealing the marks of decapitation, lay M. de la Tourelle, and two or three others, whom I ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... on Giovedi Grasso, the last Thursday before Lent, when the Piazzetta became the scene of ceremonies in which the Doge himself took part. These opened with the decapitation of three bulls: a rite said to commemorate some long-forgotten dispute between the inveterate enemies, Venice and Aquileia. The bulls, preceded by halberdiers and trumpeters, and surrounded by armed attendants, were led in state ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... solidly voted against the Tenure-of-office bill two years before, voted now with entire consistency for its repeal, and with them also, in solid ranks, voted the men who, in the preceding Congress, had clamored most loudly for Johnson's decapitation. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... four of his companions were hanged and then beheaded, but the horrid spectacle of their execution roused the public to demand the abolition of the punishment of decapitation, and they were the last persons ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... that untimely absence. Like the old gentleman who visited nightly Van Amburg's exhibition of the head-in-the-lion's-mouth feat, in the moral certainty that a single absence would fall inevitably upon the one night when Leo would vary the programme by decapitation,—so we lost the one afternoon when that dull discourse diversified the pious eloquence of Jotham Baxter, D.D., disciple of Dr. Hopkins and believer in Cotton Mather. Many a refreshing slumber has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pounds, the loss of its scroll preventing the realisation of a higher figure. Sixteen years after this event the purchaser applied to me for a Stradivari scroll, that he might make his instrument complete. The mongrel Violin described above being in my possession, decapitation was duly performed, and the Stradivari received its head again. Here was a fortuitous course of circumstances! This exchange of heads took place without my being at all aware that the "Strad" scroll had returned to its original body; but on my mentioning the circumstance ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... make their peace with that. And when I foreshadow this necessary liaison of the French and Arabic cultures, I am thinking not only of the Arab that is, but of the Arab that is to come. The whole trend of events in Asia Minor, the breaking up and decapitation of the Ottoman Empire and the Euphrates invasion, points to a great revival of Mesopotamia—at first under European direction. The vast system of irrigation that was destroyed by the Mongol armies of Hulugu in ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... identified with, a god or goddess, e.g., the hair with Nu, the face with Aten (i.e., the solar disk), the eyes with Hathor, and the deceased exclaims triumphantly, "There is no member of my body which is not the member of a god." Chapter XLIII. A spell to prevent the decapitation of the deceased, who assumes in it the character of Osiris the Lord of Eternity. Chapter XLIV. An ancient and mighty spell, the recital of which prevented the deceased from dying a second time. Chapters XLV and XLVI preserved the mummy of the deceased from decay, ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... recount some ridiculous miracles wrought in favour of this saint, both before and after his death. Charles V. emperor of Germany and king of Spain, caused this monastery to be built on the spot where Pontius suffered decapitation. But to return to the inscription: it appears ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... more successful. When a pair of mantis were put together in a glass they fought viciously, the fight ending with the decapitation of the male and his ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... had passed at Paris. But at night, the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the King's bed-chamber, and obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters of the day in Paris. He went to bed fearfully impressed. The decapitation of De Launay worked powerfully, through the night, on the whole Aristocratical party; insomuch, that in the morning, those of the greatest influence on the Count d'Artois, represented to him the absolute necessity, that the King should give up every ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... involved in the affair.... I replied that if there were enough to go around and the men didn't become too meddlesome, their presence wouldn't spoil the 'adventure.'... He assured me that the men were 'fine fellows,' the ladies the loveliest on earth, but the 'adventure' was one that might mean decapitation for me if I failed in the undertaking.... I told him that just suited me.... 'I expect to meet Colonel Z—— S—— von T—— at the track. If he takes a liking to you he'll invite you to Koenigergratzerstrasse for a quiet little talk,' ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... his cane, takes the heads off two unoffending crocuses that, most unwisely, have started up within his reach. He is the gentlest-natured fellow alive, but he feels a vicious pleasure in the decapitation of those yellow, harmless flowers. His eyes are on the ground. He is evidently bent on silence. On such occasions what is there that can be matched in stupidity ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... as ever before. In Holland a difference of opinion as to the true nature of predestination (a very obscure point of theology, but exceedingly important the eyes of your great-grandfather) caused a quarrel which ended with the decapitation of John of Oldenbarneveldt, the Dutch statesman, who had been responsible for the success of the Republic during the first twenty years of its independence, and who was the great organising genius ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of crime in Canton, one would look in vain for justice, but there is plenty of cruelty. We visited the execution yard, a circumscribed space in the very heart of the city. Here, our guide told us, twenty condemned prisoners were executed weekly, by decapitation, each Friday being devoted to clearing the docket. The executioner takes off a head with one stroke of the sword, and the guide said he had witnessed the decapitation of eleven heads in seven minutes. Through a grating in the wall of the yard, an open area was seen where a crowd of ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... arraignment charged him with high treason, in respect that he had stormed and taken towns and castles, and shed much blood. "Traitor," said Wallace, "was I never." The rest of the charges he confessed and proceeded to justify them. He was condemned, and executed by decapitation, 1305. His head was placed on a pinnacle on London bridge, and his quarters were distributed over ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... every year on 'Giovedi Grasso' sixty-two large loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being understood to represent the patriarch and the twelve pigs his clergy; and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators; together with a symbolic record of the attack on Aquileia, by the erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... seat upon a second throne, before which was a second altar, garnished - as Mr. Verdant Green soon perceived, to his horror and amazement - with a human head (or the representation of one) projecting from a black cloth that concealed the neck, and, doubtless, the marks of decapitation. Its ghastly features were clearly displayed by the aid of a wax light placed in a tall silver candlestick ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... his knife into the defenceless young throat, he nevertheless controlled his sentiments and looked up for instructions. Since the splendid decapitation which Coronado had performed, Texas respected him as he had never heretofore hoped ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... we are informed by a native authority on that country that "in some places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for a fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This institution was styled Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by decapitation. . . . It was an office tenable for five years during which its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers within his jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers, each of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... households, or attend to any magistrates and their rules; only those who cultivate the royal land have to pay (a portion of) the grain from it. If they want to go, they go; if they want to stay on, they stay. The king governs without decapitation or (other) corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances (of each case). Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right hands cut off. ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... therefore, loaded with caresses by the Turks as a faithful subject of the Porte. His offers were at once accepted; and he now displayed singular activity in the extirpation of all the other popular chiefs, who still held out in the woods and fastnesses, and sent their heads to the Pasha; but the decapitation of Glavash, who was, like himself, supporting the government, showed that when he had accomplished the ends of Soliman Pasha, his own turn would come; he therefore employed the ruse described in page 55, made his escape, and, convinced that it was impossible ever to come to terms with ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... their three brethren to sacrifice to idols; in the third the angels save them from drowning; in the fourth they are condemned to be burnt alive, and sing psalms in the midst of the flames; in the fifth is the stoning; and lastly the decapitation. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... dust. A hundred complainers and accused persons were in a similar posture; behind them twenty executioners, with drawn sabres in their hands waited the royal signal, which generally terminated each cause, by the decapitation of one or ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... Constance gravely,—"makes a futile attempt semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he periodically turns a frigid eye ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... taught a trade. The tiny fellow is small for his eight years, and his little wizened face, sallow and delicate, has a plausible tale to tell. He is always fretting and grieving for those whose heads were shown to him after decapitation. However, he is being cared for, and it is doubtful whether the authorities—or even the emperor himself—will mete out punishment to him when he grows older. He did nothing; he knew nothing. At the present ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... offence, adultery was, according to the ancient laws of Japan, punished by crucifixion. In more modern times it has been punished by decapitation and the disgraceful exposure of the head after death; but if the murder of the injured husband accompany the crime of adultery, then the guilty parties are crucified to this day. At the present time the husband is no ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... after the Chinese philosopher-warrior, Sun Tzu. The "Sun Tzu" example is based on selective, instant decapitation of military or societal targets to achieve Shock and Awe. This discrete or precise nature of applying force differentiates this from Hiroshima and Massive Destruction examples. Sun Tzu was brought before ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... days of the political deluge almost syllogistically, the example of not including one of the Estates might be imitated, and Commons and King do not necessitate the conception of an intermediate third, while Lords and Commons suggest the decapitation of the leading figure. The united three, however, no longer cast reflections on one another, and were an assurance to this acute politician that his birds were safe. He preserved game rigorously, and the deduction was the work of instinct with him. To his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he had given the matter the closest attention, and he had come to the conclusion that there was no preventive of a cold in the head so complete and drastic as decapitation. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... investigated is the heart. This is because of its resistance to any arrest of the circulation and also because its survival is easily shown by its contractility. In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye, 1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909). By irrigation of the heart and especially of its coronary vessels the period of revival may be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... or cause any other public scandal, shall be punished with the gallows, and their estates, where the law of the province permit it, confiscated; but if they abjure their errors, their punishment shall be commuted into decapitation with the sword, and their effects shall be preserved to their families." A cruel snare for parental affection! Less grievous heretics, it was further enacted, shall, if penitent, be pardoned; and if impenitent shall ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... statute requiring the death penalty to be inflicted by means of electricity. The object was to deter evildoers by surrounding the penalty with scientific horror, [Footnote: Hence also the new lingual atrocity, the word "electrocute," derived from "execute" by decapitation and the addition of "electro"] and the idea had its origin in the accidents which formerly occurred much more frequently than now. The "death current" is now almost everywhere, though the care of the men who continually ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... who received his favors. Coke is no exception to the rule. It is true enough that to him we are mainly indebted for the movement which, beginning on the 30th of January, 1621, ended that very day eight-and-twenty years with the decapitation of the king; but it is likewise undeniable that the nation's difficulties would have waited some time longer for solution had not the defender of the people's rights been inoculated with a love of liberty by the sudden application of the royal ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... trifle wide perhaps; too MANY celebrities? Though I was delighted to re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your high water mark; 'tis excellently human, cheerful and real. Do it again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good. Have you any document for the decapitation? It sounds steepish. The devil of all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. is DISTINCTLY GOOD. I am much interested with this book, which fulfils a good deal, and promises more. Question: ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Valida issue her commands; and to the eldest she intrusted Solyman's signet-ring and the pass-key which Aischa had sent her. The slaves bowed three times to the empress mother—laid their hands on their heads to imply that they would deserve decapitation if they neglected the orders they had received—and then withdrew. There was something terribly sinister in their appearance, as they retired noiselessly but rapidly through the long, silent and darkened ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... in the instance before us, it became really of small consequence to the artists of the Renaissance Incarnadine, whether a man had his head on or not, so only that his legs were handsome: and the decapitation, whether of St. John or St. Cecilia; the massacre of any quantity of Innocents; the flaying, whether of Marsyas or St. Bartholomew, and the deaths, it might be of Laocoon by his vipers, it might be of Adonis by his pig, or it might be of Christ by His people, became, one and all, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... forecast the first stages of the End's approach: Rioting. Disaffection of constabulary and troops. Subversion of the Government A policy of decapitation. Upthrust of the serviceable Anarchist. His prompt effacement by his victorious ally and natural enemy, the Socialist. Free minting and printing of money—to every citizen a shoulder-load of the latter, to the printers a ton each. Divided ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... January 30, 1879, he consented to accept the Presidency. When he entered the Elysee, the executive authority went out of it. The Third French Republic, such as it now exists, was constituted on that day—the anniversary, by the way, oddly enough, of the decapitation of Charles I. of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... and pleaded that he was a subject of France, honoured with a commission in the service of his most christian majesty. The identity of his person being proved, a rule was made for his execution; and on the eighth day of December he suffered decapitation, with the most perfect composure and serenity. Lord Lovat, now turned of four-score, was impeached by the commons, and tried in Westminster-hall before the lord high-steward. John Murray, secretary to the prince-pretender, and some of his own domestics, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... portions, the head in consequence being raised several inches from the ground. The idea in this was to make things easier for the executioner; the same reason also explaining why the straw rope was tied to each man's top-knot; for in this way another man could hold him fast to the stool when the decapitation was to take place. A somewhat closer examination of the first body in the illustration will at once show how distorted it is. This is what must have happened: in the final struggle with death the owner had ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... of growth had exerted its power eccentrically with the poorhouse poet. His legs and neck were elongated out of all proportion to the rest of his body. His small, pale face was raised unnaturally high in the air, as if he had suffered decapitation and his head had been posted as an assurance that offended law had been avenged. Unconscious of his own peculiarities, the persistent rhymer went about pleased with himself and all the world. Now he was particularly happy, for he considered ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... treasure to the care of this good man. But Decius, not finding as much as his avarice made him expect, determined to wreak his vengeance on the good prelate. He was accordingly seized; and on the 20th of January, A. D. 250, he suffered decapitation. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... England the sympathies of Massachusetts, of course, were with Parliament. New England ministers were invited to attend the Westminster assembly of divines held in September, 1642, and several of them returned to England. The most prominent was Rev. Hugh Peter, who was instrumental in procuring the decapitation of Charles I., and paid for the offence, on the restoration of Charles II., with his own life. In 1643 Parliament passed an act[1] freeing all commodities carried between England and New England from ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... beheaded at Constantinople. The Christian powers of Europe immediately remonstrated, and it was hoped that the law against apostates from Mohammedanism would be permitted to become a dead letter. In a few months, however, a firman issued from the government ordering the decapitation of a young man near Brooza, who was put to death for having promised in a passion, but had afterwards refused, to become a Mohammedan. Lord Aberdeen, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, then demanded of the Turkish Sultan that ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Norfolk, he is as prompt to speak as of the harp itself: "He was one of those politicians who are never contented; who plot and counterplot incessantly; who are always running their heads fearlessly, to be sure, but indiscreetly, into danger of decapitation." This fine analytic power appears throughout the book. Describing the enthusiasm of the Londoners for Henry of Bolingbroke, and their coldness towards the captive King Richard, the historian acutely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Emilia found herself thinking with great seriousness that it was not wonderful for boys to be always teasing and killing flies, whose thin necks and bobbing heads themselves suggested the idea of decapitation. She said to her hostess: "I don't like flies. They seem never to sing but when they are bothered." The woman replied: "Ah, indeed?" very smoothly, and thought: "If you was to bust out now, which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conspicuous. Here is one creeping and sipping along a grass stem. A small digger-wasp likes this grass stem too, but instead of exchanging courtesies on the subject, the wasp proceeds to bite the ant's head off without ceremony, and continues sipping at the stem as though decapitation were a mere casual incident in its ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Christmas there was always one or two beef cattle to kill. Sheep had also to be slaughtered, with the turkeys, geese and ducks, which had been getting ready for decapitation. After home wants were provided for, the rest ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... honour of having condemned her to the stake. But fifty years later than this—1773—the Associated Presbytery passed a resolution deploring the fact that witchcraft was falling into disrepute. In Germany the last witch was executed in 1749, by decapitation. The last trial for witchcraft in Massachusetts was as late as 1793. These dates refer, of course, to legal proceedings. Examples of the existence of this belief are continually being recorded in newspapers, although they now only rank as solitary reminiscences of one of the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... and time. Among the lower and smaller basso-relievos upon these porches, is the subject of the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod. She is manoeuvering on her hands, her feet being upwards. To the right, the decapitation of St. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... amputation of the first joint of the fore-finger of the right hand for the first offence. For the second, the whole hand was sacrificed, and for the third, the head itself was forfeited. Sometimes, in cases of capital punishment, decapitation was performed by degrees! and other refinements too horrible to ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... from the general context that this is the author's intention in the passage in question, Alaeddin's head being metaphorically in the hands of (or pledged to) the headsman, inasmuch as he had engaged to return and suffer decapitation in case he should not succeed in recovering the princess within ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... and propped it up with a short billiard-cue which fitted into a notch. All danger of sudden decapitation having been removed, I put ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... Decapitation was less frequently practised. The expression, indeed. "I cut off their heads," is common in the Inscriptions but in most instances it evidently refers to the practice, already noticed, of collecting the heads of those who had fallen in battle. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... flagrant inconsistency, a nobleman, Rene de Bonneville, superintendent of the royal mint, for the murder of his brother-in-law, was dragged to the place of execution on a hurdle, but suffered the less ignominious fate of decapitation. A part of his property was given to his sister, and the rest confiscated to the crown, with the exception of four hundred livres, reserved for the purchase of masses to be said for the benefit of the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... considered a high honour where his majesty personally condescends to become the executioner in these feats of decapitation, an office in which the king, at the time of the visit of Lander to Abomey, considered himself as a most expert proficient. The Europeans were present on one occasion, when a poor fellow, whose fear of death outweighing ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... girl, Minnie. She had promised the head this year. Next Christmas they would buy a body for it. Molly Brandeis's quick sympathy went out to the little girl who was to lavish her mother-love on a doll's head for a whole year. She saw the head, in ghastly decapitation, staring stiffly out from the cushions of the chill and funereal parlor sofa, and the small Minnie peering in to feast her eyes upon its blond and ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... you; my dear friends, who glance graciously over this, was ever shut up in a dungeon under expectation of bearing the unpleasant operation of decapitation within half an hour. It never happened to myself, either, that I can recollect; so, of course, you or I personally can form no idea what the sensation may be like; but in this particular case, tradition saith Sir ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... gallows for the decapitation decreed by the first judge, inasmuch as the latter punishment was reserved for criminals of noble birth, while hanging was ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was skimming along the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across the water, the mechanics having assisted her initial progress by pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he promised to take me up ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... battering of drums, big and little; a squeaking of scrannel pipes; a feminine 'break-down' of the most effrenee description, and a general libation to the Bacchus of Blackland. A debauched and drunken Ashanti, who executed for our benefit a decapitation-dance, evidently wishing that we had been its objects, thanked us ironically for a sixpence. We met some difficulty in seeing the swords, which were not to be sold. They were the usual rusty and decayed fish-slicers; Cameron, however, was kind enough ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... Place, the author of "La Mecanique Celeste," one of the greatest books of the world. He spoke from real experience. He had seen religion "abolished by law." He had seen the "worship of Reason" established with the decapitation of seven thousand innocent citizens of France. He had heard one of the apostles of Reason arise in the Constituent Assembly and demand two hundred and ninety thousand corpses instead of seven thousand. Then this man who had grasped the machinery of the heavens, who had shown the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... resemblance to the Vedic sacrifices and the essence of the ceremony is the presentation to the goddess of the victim's severed head in a vessel of gold, silver, copper, brass or wood but not of iron. The axe with which the decapitation is to be performed is solemnly consecrated to Kali and the victim is worshipped before immolation. The sacrificer first thinks of Brahma and the other gods as being present in the victim's body, and then prays to him directly as being all the gods ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Lancaster, not allowed to say a word in his defence, was at once sentenced to death as a rebel and a traitor. In consideration of his exalted rank, the grosser penalties of treason were commuted, as in the case of Gaveston, to simple decapitation. On the morning of March 22 Thomas was led out of his castle, clad in the garb of a penitent and mounted on a sorry steed. He was conducted to a little hill outside the walls. The crowd mocked at his sufferings and in scorn called him "King Arthur". In two or three blows ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... formidable armament; and though the difference with the Spaniards was speedily settled by negociation [sic], the jealousy entertained of the French Anarchists occasioned our Government to keep the country in armed preparation; till the indignation universally excited by the decapitation of the unfortunate French King, and the invasion of Holland by the armies of the French Republic, caused us to enter into that war, whose wide-extended fluence has deluged the continent of Europe with blood, tumbled the papal throne in ruins, dethroned the Kings of Naples ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... When he was hardly four years old, the discharge of a high moral lesson shook his ears: it was the French troops who were shooting brigands in the outskirts of Sonnino. After the return of Pius VII. he witnessed the decapitation of a few neighbouring relatives who had often dandled him on their knees. Under Leo XII. it was still worse. Those wholesome correctives, the wooden horse and the supple-jack, were permanently established in the village square. About once a fortnight ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... have accumulated much important evidence in the matter and the attorneys for the prosecution claimed with perfect confidence that they would be able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that both Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling are guilty of the murder, and decapitation of Pearl Bryan. It was claimed by them that enough evidence has been secured to reveal how, when, where and by whom Pearl Bryan was murdered; to reveal the secret of her whereabouts on the night proceeding ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... of the laws we find it ordained, that homicide by gun-firing shall receive a sentence conformable to the law against intentional murder; and that the law against intentional murder gives a sentence of decapitation on the next ensuing public execution, or gaol delivery. It is likewise found to be ordained by law, that whoever shall unwarily draw a bow, and shoot an arrow towards fields or tenements, so that any person unperceived ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the bodies of the Knights to be decapitated and nailed to wooden crosses, while across their corpses were slashed a cross in derision of the religion of his foes. The bodies were then cast into the harbour, and were washed up at the foot of Il Borgo. Instantly the Grand Master ordered the decapitation of all the Turkish prisoners, and their heads were fired from cannon into the camp ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey |
