"Freebooter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far as government was concerned. Valentinian's miserable widow, daughter of the eastern, wife of the western, emperor, during a short two months the prey of her husband's murderer, became with her daughters the captive of the Vandal freebooter, and saw the elder compelled to marry his son Hunnerich, the future persecutor of the Church. Twenty years succeed in which emperors are enthroned and pass like shadows, until the Herule general Odoacer, commanding ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... as he was settled in his castle, the freebooter devoted all his energies to rendering it still more impregnable by strengthening the walls and breaking the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this work he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... for change and variety seemed likely to be fully satisfied. The ship was taken by English pirates, and as she was English and looked as if she would make a good freebooter, they compelled her to join them, and thus it was that she got her first idea of a pirate's life. When this company disbanded, she went to New Providence and enlisted on a privateer, but, as was very common on such vessels commissioned ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... make-up, and, being loosely cut, they allowed ample play to stalwart limbs. For dealing with metal the wearers required a cloth tightly woven, of a texture as nearly as possible resembling leather, and better accouterment for a rough-and-tumble, freebooter's excursion could not have been found, short of coats of mail, or, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... he failed to induce his undisciplined officers to act in unison, and the unhappy man's sole achievement seems to have been the welding of his foes into a compact body against himself. He lost his territory, kept up the struggle a little longer as a freebooter, was taken captive at Megiddo, escaped again on the eve of being shipped to Egypt, and fell in battle or died a natural death after at length meeting apparently with ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... you,' said Mr. Adister warming, to advise him, and checking the trot of his horse. 'Try South America.' The lordly gentleman plotted out a scheme of colonisation and conquest in that region with the coolness of a practised freebooter. 'No young man is worth a job,' he said, 'who does not mean to be a leader, and as leader to have dominion. Here we are fettered by ancestry and antecedents. Had I to recommence without those encumbrances, I would try my fortune yonder. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... called him the CID (Seid, the Lord), and the Champion (El Campeador). He was a vigorous, unscrupulous fighter, now on one side, now on the other. He was at one time entrusted with high embassies of state, at others, a rebel. His true place in history seems to be that of a great freebooter and guerrilla. His contemporary ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... apple-hoards. There was a delightful proprietary sense in the idea of owning one. It stimulated some latent propensity to secretiveness, as also the inclination to play the freebooter in a ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... tells that in the thirteenth century there lived at a castle in the heart of these mountains a nobleman called Wolfram Herzog von Bergendorf; and being no freebooter like most of the other German barons of the time, but a man of very pious disposition, he was moved during the prime of his life to forsake his home and join a body of crusaders. Reaching Palestine after a protracted journey, these remained there for a long time, Wolfram fighting ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... ask miracles? The peasant and mechanic were astonished that wages were not doubled, that bread was not to be had for asking, that the disparities of life remained the same,—the rich still rich, the poor still poor. In the first days of the revolution, Sir Geoffrey Gates, the freebooter, little comprehending the earl's merciful policy, and anxious naturally to turn a victory into its accustomed fruit of rapine and pillage, placed himself at the head of an armed mob, marched from ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fight, notwithstanding the martial character of Quentin Durward, was indifferent to him, in comparison with the fate of Isabelle of Croye, which, he had reason to fear, would be a dreadful one, unless rescued from the power of the dissolute and cruel freebooter who was now, as it seemed, bursting the gates of the castle. He reconciled himself to the aid of the Bohemian, as men in a desperate illness refuse not the remedy prescribed by quacks and mountebanks, and followed across ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... houses of the town clung to the hillside, creeping up close to the castle wall and clustering in its shadow as if to claim protection. In truth, for many a day it had been their warden against freebooter and foreign foe, gathering the habitations of the humble as a hen gathers her chickens beneath her wings to defend ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... was soon evident, could render them no assistance. The travellers were soon surrounded by the inhabitants, to whom a number of small presents were given. These men were very inferior in appearance even to the common Taki freebooter, and extremely degraded ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... which his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom; "who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... army. So now, instead of receiving Edward in his national costume, he had put on an old blue-and-red foreign uniform, in which he made so strange a figure that, though it was donned in his honour, his visitor had hard work to keep from laughing. Nor was the freebooter's conversation more in accord with his surroundings. He talked much of Edward's family and connections, and especially of his uncle's Jacobite politics—on which last account, he seemed inclined to welcome the young man with more cordiality than, as a soldier of King George, Edward felt to be his ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... herself advanced to the borders, to remedy this evil, and to hold courts at Jedburgh. Bothwell was already in Liddesdale, where he had been severely wounded, in an attempt to seize John Elliot, of the Parke, a desperate freebooter; and happy had it been for Mary, had the dagger of the moss-trooper struck more home. Bothwell being transported to his castle of Hermitage, the queen, upon hearing the tidings, hastened thither, A dangerous ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... which relieved the inhabitants of the nuisances that might otherwise have stagnated around it. At a little distance was the whole band of children, playing and building houses with peats around a huge doddered oak-tree, which was called Charlie's Bush, from some tradition respecting an old freebooter who had once inhabited the spot. Between the farm-house and the hill-pasture was a deep morass, termed in that country a slack—it had once been the defence of a fortalice, of which no vestiges now remained, but which was said ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... which the savagery of feudalism, without its order or its chivalry, would be varnished over by a thin coating of French "civilisation," and, as in the case of Bothwell, the vices of the court of Paris should be added to those of the Northern freebooter. To deliver Scotland from that ruin, it was needed that she should be united into one people, strong, not in mere political, but in moral ideas; strong by the clear sense of right and wrong, by the belief in the government and the judgments of a living ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... authenticated particulars. The Dick Turpin of eighteenth century France, Mandrin has engendered almost as many fables as his English congener. [See Maignien's Bibliographie des Ecrits relatifs a Mandrin.] As far as I have been able to discover, the great freebooter was born at St. Etienne in May 1724. His father having been killed in a coining affair, Mandrin swore to revenge him. He deserted from the army accordingly, and got together a gang of contrebandiers, at the head of which his ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... fee, and, pulling a long purse out of his pocket he took out a handful of gold pieces, one of which he tendered me an advance. This made me all the more reluctant to accompany him, as I feared he might be a robber or freebooter of some kind, but, quickly controlling my emotions, I set my reason to work, and argued that, whatever he might be, he could have no motive other than that assigned for taking me with him, that he could gain ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... known to infest the place, but, in general, there is too little to be gained for the risk. Your rich traveller is not an every-day sight among our rocks; and you well know Signore, that there may be too few, as well as too many, on a path, for your freebooter." ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... more ways of killing a cat than by choking him with butter which moved Bob McGraw to cudgel his nimble brain until he had discovered exactly how it would be possible for him to accomplish legally what every freebooter with an appraising eye on the public domain is troubled to accomplish illegally. The sole difference between Bob's projected course and that of his competitors' would be a slightly lessened profit; but after inventorying a free and easy conscience and posting it to the credit side ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "I should be by a long score the debtor if we came to that. If it had not been for Sir Reginald, I should be by this time a reckless freebooter, without a hope in this world or the next; if it had not been for you, these bones of mine would long since have been picked by my cousins, the Spanish wolves. But let the gold tarry in your keeping: it were better King Edward's good crowns ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "boucaniers" or "buccaneers." When later circumstances led the hunters to combine their trade in flesh and hides with that of piracy, the name gradually lost its original significance and acquired, in the English language at least, its modern and better-known meaning of corsair or freebooter. The French adventurers, however, seem always to have restricted the word "boucanier" to its proper signification, that of a hunter and curer of meat; and when they developed into corsairs, by a curious contrast they adopted an English name and called themselves ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... difficulties of the subject. Ralegh's multifarious activity, with the width of the area in which it operated, is itself a disturbing element. It is confusing for a biographer to be required to keep at once independent and in unison the poet, statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot, soldier, sailor, freebooter, discoverer, colonist, castle-builder, historian, philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary. The variety of Ralegh's powers and tendencies, and of their exercise, is the distinctive note of him, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... perhaps, with the spirit of deference to his regal authority on the part of his brother, implied in the referring of the case of the accused to him for trial, sent Remus back again to Numitor, saying that Numitor might punish the freebooter himself in any way that he thought best. Remus was accordingly brought again to Numitor's house. In the mean time, the fact of his being thus made a prisoner, and charged with crime, and the proceedings in relation to him, in sending him back and forth between ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... singular, it was bewildering, this change in her estimate of Marshall Haney. The deeper he sank in reminiscent meditation the farther he withdrew from the bold and splendid freebooter he had once seemed to her. She was now unjust to him for he was still capable of what his kind call "standing pat." The rough-and-ready borderman was still housed under the same thatch of hair with the sentimental old Irishman, and yet it would have sorely puzzled the keenest observer ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... interest, announcing "much gold and silver," his voyage was vain. His real discovery was deemed of no practical value. The robust Indians swarmed in thousands, living by the watersides in huts, wearing deerskin cloaks and garments of rushes. Hunters and fishers were they. They entertained the freebooter, and like him have long since mouldered to ashes. Along the Pacific Coast great mounds of shells, marking their tribal seaside feasts, are now frequently unearthed. Their humble history is shadowed by the passing centuries. They are only a memory, a shadow on Time's ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... "poet, statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot, soldier, freebooter, discoverer, colonist, castle-builder, historian, philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary," is, of course, from the romantic point of view, principally associated with El Dorado, and his quest of the magic and imaginary land of gold. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... gates and moved through the streets of the city, chanting the death-song of the great Hasting, until the church was reached, and they had advanced along its crowded aisle to the altar, where stood the priests ready to officiate at the obsequies of the expired freebooter. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... these dignitaries rode on asses, and lived in tents. The virtues of the people were rough, and their habits warlike. Their great men were fighters. Samson was a sort of Hercules, and Jephthah an Idomeneus,—a lawless freebooter. The house of Micah was like a feudal castle; the Benjamite war was like the strife of Highland clans. Jael was a Hebrew Boadicea; Gideon, at the head of his three hundred men, might have been a hero ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... earn an honest living at the law than by any other means of livelihood. Once one discovers this he must perforce choose whether he will remain a galley slave for life or hoist the Jolly Roger and turn freebooter, with a chance of dangling ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... men, with seven field-pieces, and many wagon-loads of munitions, were sent forward under Batenburg. This officer had replaced De la Marck, whom the Prince had at last deprived of his commission. The reckless and unprincipled freebooter was no longer to serve a cause which was more sullied by his barbarity than it could be advanced by his desperate valor. Batenburg's expedition was, however, not more successful than the one made by his predecessor. The troops, after reaching the vicinity ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India. The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly. Distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries - and the noble ladies of London and Paris ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him with undisguised favor, and met a request from Philip II. for Drake's surrender by knighting the freebooter and wearing in her crown the jewel he offered her as a present. When the Spanish ambassador threatened that matters should come to the cannon, she replied "quietly, in her most natural voice," writes Mendoza, "that if I used threats of that kind she would throw ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... meet with the more beautiful forms in the ruins of our abbeys. But when those abbeys were built, the pointed arch was used for every shop door, as well as for that of the cloister, and the feudal baron and freebooter feasted, as the monk sang, under vaulted roofs; not because the vaulting was thought especially appropriate to either the revel or psalm, but because it was then the form in which a strong roof was easiest built. We have destroyed the goodly architecture of our cities; we have ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... (“Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors,” pp. 115, 237) mentions similar tenures in Notts. and Kent (“Lincs. N. A Q.,” vol. i., p. 256). There is a peculiarity about these two “spur” tenures in our neighbourhood worthy of note. An old chronicler says that, when the freebooter’s larder got low, his wife had only to put a pair of spurs in his platter, as a hint that he must issue forth to replenish it. We can, without any great stretch of imagination, picture to ourselves the knight, Ralph de Rhodes, making an inroad on a neighbour’s soil, and therefore the annual ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... superior to the sneaking footpad, who leaped from behind a thicket and bade the unarmed pedestrian stand and deliver. But the wrecker-pirate takes his victim at a disadvantage, for he is not a genuine freebooter of the sea. He shuns an able foe and strikes the crippled. Like the shark and the eagle, he delights to prey on the carcass, rather than to strike ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of the line, as a soldier of fortune in the Seljukian service; and, in spite of the civilizing influences of the country, the people, and the religion, to which he had attached himself, he had not as yet laid aside the habits of his ancestors, but was half shepherd, half freebooter. Nor is it likely that any of his countrymen would be anything else, as long as they were still in war and in subordinate posts. Peace must precede the enjoyment, and power the arts of government; and the very readiness with which his followers left their nomad life, as soon as they had the opportunity, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Charles Town would need to fear no harm if more pirates were hanged, Captain Bonnet," roundly declared Mr. Forbes, shaking his gold-tipped cane at the freebooter. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... enthusiast, seeking in unknown regions, invested with strange charms by a heated imagination, the kingdom of saints upon earth, which he had vainly hoped to erect in the old world, down to the reckless freebooter, whose life had been passed in wild indulgence, unrestrained by law, human or divine, whom chance or design had thrown upon their coast, it is obvious that a vigilant eye and strong hand were necessary to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... presumption that your Honor already finds too bold, if one may judge by a displeased eye, by asking if report speaks to the face and other particulars of the person of this—free trader, one must call him, though freebooter should be ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... which his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom, "who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... at which we are now considering them, appear to have entertained sentiments not very different from those of the Arabs, from whose sandy plains they had just emerged. The life of a migratory shepherd, too, has a very close alliance with the habits of a freebooter; and the attentive reader of the ancient history of the Israelites will recollect many instances wherein the descendants of Isaac gave ample proof of their relationship to the posterity of Ishmael. The character of Abimelech, the son of Gideon, for example, cannot be viewed in ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... he chose to call himself, Robert Campbell. He was born in 1671 and died in 1734, and was a son of Donald MacGregor, a lieutenant in the army of James II, from whom after the accession of William of Orange, Robert obtained a commission. Afterward he became a freebooter. He was included in the Act of Attainder, but continued to levy blackmail on the gentry of Scotland while in the enjoyment of the protection ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... fit companion for treason and anarchy, for which the lowest seats of hell should be reserved. The outlaw, like the commercial freebooter, is often a deformity on the face of nature that darkens the light of ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... him over his shoulder. It was nothing—only the quip of a witty fellow, descendant of a Spanish freebooter. Ladies caught his eye, smiled and bowed to him. A little man, whose swarthy face showed African blood, reached up and quoted something about the bounds of freedom ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... young fellow had an amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule; he, too, had felt the world's injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently, he had struck back, and struck hard. He was striking all the time—there was war between him and society. He was a genial freebooter, living off the enemy, without fear or shame. He was not always victorious, but then defeat did not mean annihilation, and need ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... with visible emotion and Tom was moved also, he scarce knew why. A sudden sense of liking—almost of love—sprang up in his heart towards this freebooter. He laid a ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Craigie, to make what Sir William would call a 'famous witness.' He drinks deep, plays deep, swears deep, and I suspect can lie and cheat a little into the bargain; useful qualities, Craigie, if kept in their proper sphere, but which have a little too much of the freebooter to make a figure in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... seas. Pauline, too, wished to have Harry who was frowning and suspiciously demanding information. But she had sworn the oath of a buccaneer, and far be it from her to break faith with the confiding freebooter. ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, Joppa was besieged by the Turks of Cairo; and Baldwin embarked from the town of Assur, in a vessel called a buss, commanded by one Goderic an English freebooter, intending to proceed to the relief of the besieged. Fixing the royal banner aloft on a spear, that it might be seen of the Christians, they sailed boldly towards Joppa, with but a small company of armed men. The king knew that the Christians in Joppa were almost hopeless of his life and safety, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... traveled, but now deserted for the railroad. Here was the abode of Jack Slade, one of the station-masters on that famous stage-road—a man of bad reputation, and more than suspected of having been a freebooter, and even a murderer. This did not prevent his station from being one of the best on the road, his horses always good, his meals easily bolted. Of him and of his band you may read the history in Mark Twain's Roughing It. After ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... bandit, depredator, freebooter, pirate, brigand, despoiler, highwayman, plunderer, buccaneer, footpad, marauder, raider, burglar, forager, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Bred and raised a merry freebooter on the unbranded spoils of the cattle range, it was no long step from stealing a maverick to holding up ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... that as a result of such an association Gilles's mysticism began to soar. Henceforth we have to deal with a man who is half-freebooter, half-monk. Moreover—" ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... suffered the prisoner to escape. They had, indeed, little to learn from him, even had he been disposed to give intelligence, or capable of communicating it. All were well assured that their lady had fallen into an ambuscade, formed by Dawfyd the one-eyed, a redoubted freebooter of the period, who had ventured upon this hardy enterprise in the hope of obtaining a large ransom for the captive Eveline, and all, incensed at his extreme insolence and audacity, devoted his head and limbs to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... against Veli, the son of the slave, and drove him out of the house. The latter, forced to leave home, bore his fate like a brave man, and determined to levy exactions on others to compensate him for the losses incurred through his brothers. He became a freebooter, patrolling highroads and lanes, with his gun on his shoulder and his yataghan in his belt, attacking, holding for ransom, or ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... among the peaceable members of the club, by reason of his warlike character and gunpowder tales. All his golden stories of Kidd, however, and of the booty he had buried, were obstinately rivaled by the tales of Peechy Prauw, who, rather than suffer his Dutch progenitors to be eclipsed by a foreign freebooter, enriched every field and shore in the neighborhood with the hidden wealth of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... all, perhaps, some Churchman more learned than his brethren may have transferred the legend from Sicily to Duncrune, from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of Loch Lomond. I have heard it also told that the celebrated freebooter, Rob Roy, once gained a victory by disguising a part of his men with goat-skins, so as to resemble the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Wat was a noted freebooter. Never was raid or foray but he was well to the front, and when, as generally happened, the raid or foray resulted in a drove of English cattle finding their way over the Liddesdale hills, and down into Teviotdale, the Master of Harden had no difficulty ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... upon a chicken even in the farmer's presence; and one, in a headlong pursuit, broke through the glass of a greenhouse, then dashed through another glass partition, and was only brought up by a third. Pigeons are also quite in its line. Indeed, it is a bold red-taloned freebooter, and only condescends to insects and the smaller reptiles when there are no little birds at hand. During the spring migration this hawk is sometimes ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... corner, while Chook did the buying. He walked along the stalls, eyeing the sellers and their goods with the air of a freebooter, for, as he always had more impudence than cash, he was a redoubtable customer. There was always a touch of comedy in Chook's buying, and the Chinamen knew and dreaded him, instantly on the defensive, guarding ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... formidable by their numbers, they had, with some exertion of forethought and contrivance, constantly evaded, either by a little detour, or by a temporary halt in some place of strength. But now it was universally known that they were probably waylaid by a desperate and remorseless freebooter, who, as he put his own trust exclusively in the sword, allowed nobody to hope for any other shape ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... war. Sluggish as it was, the blood of the Spanish king was fired at last by the defiance with which the Queen listened to all demands for redress. She met a request for Drake's surrender by knighting the freebooter and by wearing in her crown the jewels he offered her as a present. When the Spanish ambassador threatened that "matters would come to the cannon," she replied "quietly, in her most natural voice, as if she were telling a common story," wrote Mendoza, "that if I used threats of that kind she ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... work requires explanation. It is at variance with the customs and inclinations of the prairie freebooter, who, having acquired a booty, rarely strikes for another till the proceeds of the first be squandered. He resembles the anaconda, which, having gorged itself, lies torpid till the craving of a fresh appetite stirs it ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... turn for a moment to the career of another great fortune-builder, the man who was, perhaps, the greatest freebooter the American financial world ever saw, who made his money by destroying rather than building up, and whose wealth finally killed him—Jay Gould. Let us see if we can get some sort of idea of the ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... says, "Unam feminam quam forte vargorum, hoc enim nomine indigenas latrunculos nuncupant," as though the common name by which those who lived a freebooter life ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the youngest of the party; then, seized with compunction, he unbound one of the captives, and stood over him, revolver in hand, whilst he saddled and mounted a horse, to go for a doctor to set the poor boy's broken leg. Before the messenger had gone "a league, a league, but barely twa',"—the freebooter recollected that he might bring somebody else back with him besides the doctor, and flinging himself across his horse, rode after the affrighted man, and coolly shot him dead. I really don't know ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... never was a lustier freebooter of the high seas than Capt. Thomas Randall, known familiarly as "Cap'n Tom," commander of the privateering ship Fox, and numerous other vessels. This boat, a brigantine, was well named, for she was quick and sly and ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... head of an armed party. The Steward endeavoured to protect the Duke's property by throwing the books of accounts and money into a garret, trusting they might escape notice. But the experienced freebooter was not to be baffled where such a prize was at stake. He recovered the books and cash, placed himself calmly in the receipt of custom, examined the accounts, pocketed the money, and gave receipts on the Duke's part, saying he would hold reckoning ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... religious aims they ignored ineradicable elements in human nature. They attempted the impossible. How then have their deeds become the source of song and story? Why all the honor that we pay them? It is not because in danger, in sacrifice, and in failure, they were stout-hearted. Many a freebooter or soldier of fortune has been that. It is, as one said whose name I bear, "because they were stout-hearted for an ideal—their ideal, not ours, of civil and religious liberty. Wherever and whenever ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Nuncomar, or the forged treaty by which Ormichund was entrapped? Having painted the atrocities and craven cowardice of Chief Justice Impey, could he reasonably expect them to be proud of this representative Englishman in India? Having told us that Lord Clive was a freebooter in his boyhood and a butcher in his prime, did he anticipate that even Englishmen would be proud of this countryman of theirs who founded the British Empire in India? Lord Macaulay gives us the following description of conditions in Bengal under ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... ship, the Victoire; was undoubtedly familiar to Defoe as the vessel commanded by the famous French corsair, Cornil Saus.[6] So convincing is Defoe that although his hero is shown meeting a real freebooter, Captain Tew, ten years after Tew's death, Misson is still included in the ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... actually kill Prince Hasan, before the latter could accomplish the portended crime of dealing death to his father? I was torn by distracted arguments; at one moment I believed firmly as ever in the stars, at the next my trust was in the lance of the burly freebooter I had brought down with ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... name—the name of one of the boldest warriors, and of the most accomplished freebooter of his time—even Martino's cheek grew pale, and his followers uttered a cry ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... after the departure of Nadir Shah, Ahmud Khan advanced with an army from Cabool, and took pretty much everything of value that the Khorassani freebooter had overlooked, besides committing more atrocities upon the population. At the end of another decade an army of Mahrattas took possession, and completed the spoilation by ripping the silver filigree-work off the ceiling of the Throne-room. Not long after this, yet another ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... imposts laid on for the maintenance of this corps, and in enforcing the black mail, Rob Roy had already gained the confidence of the better classes, whilst, by his exploits, he had taught the freebooter to tremble at his name. His journeys to England had not, either, been unprofitable to him in gaining friends. By a strict regard to his word, a true Highland quality, he had gained confidence; whilst his open and engaging ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the Grocers, we must mention Sir John Philpot, Mayor, 1378, who fitted out a fleet that captured John Mercer, a Scotch freebooter, and took fifteen Spanish ships. He afterwards transported an English army to Brittany in his own ships, and released more than 1,000 of our victualling vessels. John Churchman, sheriff in 1385, was the founder of the Custom House. Sir Thomas Knolles, mayor in 1399 ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "Fact," returned the freebooter, "but time vill make dat all squaar. Smugglers bring guns to we, an' pooder. Ver' soon ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... would be reduced to slavery together with the rest of Ionia, and he sailed forthwith straight to Phenicia; and having there sunk merchant ships and taken a great quantity of goods, he sailed thence to Sicily. Then with that for his starting-point he became a freebooter, not plundering any Hellenes, but Carthaginians ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... of a precipitous hill jutting out from the main range of mountains at the junction of the Bamee[a]n and Ir[a]k rivers, are the remains of an old castle called Zohawk, after a noted freebooter, who, secure in the strength of his fortress, was the terror of the surrounding villages, and lived by rapine, pillage, and plunder of every kind. To a careless observer the diminutive tower, which alone remains standing, ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... remember that I'm—Lucifer, a citizen of the world, at home anywhere, a sort of 'freebooter. I'm not here all the time—but that's no reflection on Quicksands. May I make a bet ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... supposed that in Mexico a robber may sometimes be an honest man, or at all events, have taken to the road through some supposed wrong—personal or political. Freebooting is less a crime, or at all events, more easy of extenuation in a country whose chief magistrate himself is a freebooter; and such, at this moment, neither more nor less, was the chief magistrate of Mexico, Don Antonio Lopez ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... myself, by going into the extravagances and tom-fooleries of Tannersoil, our neighbor over the way, who happens for the time to be 'under government,' with a salary of nothing to speak of, but with stealings equal to those of a successful freebooter, you—you—you have placed a—a bad estimate upon my common ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... be a late Latin word which passed into Greece and then entered Central Europe via the Balkans. It comes into 16th-century German from Hungar. huszar, freebooter. This is from a Serbian word which means also pirate. It represents medieval Gk. {koursarios}, a transliteration of Vulgar Lat. cursarius, from currere, to run, which occurs also with the sense of pirate in medieval ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... their hands. This confession from an enemy had great weight with the Chinese, who, till then, though they had revered the commodore's power, had yet suspected his morals, and had considered him rather as a lawless freebooter, than as one commissioned by the state for the revenge of public injuries. But they now changed their opinion, and regarded him as a more important person; to which perhaps the vast treasure of his prize might not a little contribute; the acquisition ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Revolutionary days, placed himself at the head of a volunteer company which called itself the "Wabash regiment," and had been recruited in Kentucky for an expedition against the Shawnee Indians. Clark had degenerated through intemperance into a kind of border freebooter. Turning his troops from the original purpose, he seized the goods of the Spanish traders at Post Vincennes as a retaliation upon the Spanish, and prepared to descend upon New Orleans. Congress was compelled to take strong measures for disbanding his followers and making amends to ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... thorns—the laurel-tree, with large white flowers; The range afar—the richness and barrenness—the old woods charged with mistletoe and trailing moss, The piney odour and the gloom—the awful natural stillness, Here in these dense swamps the freebooter carries his gun, and the fugitive slave has his concealed hut; O the strange fascination of these half-known, half-impassable swamps, infested by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of the alligator, the sad noises of the night-owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of the rattlesnake; The mocking-bird, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Thief.— N. thief, robber, homo triumliterarum[obs3][Lat], pilferer, rifler, filcher[obs3], plagiarist. spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark*, land shark, falcon, mosstrooper[obs3], bushranger[obs3], Bedouin|!, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit[obs3]; pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones|!, buccaneer, buccanier|!; piqueerer|, pickeerer|; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee[obs3], wrecker, picaroon[obs3]; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger*, bunko man, cattle thief, chor[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the port. For sailors to be robbed or murdered, or to fight with desperation to avert robbery and murder, was then only a commonplace of the sea. Men from the safety of the adjoining shore only looked on in calm curiosity, as nowadays men look on indifferently to see the powerful freebooter of the not less troubled business sea rob, impoverish, and perhaps drive down to untimely death others who only ask to be permitted to make their little voyages ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... which it was built immediately impress the beholder. Traces remain of the ponderous iron portcullis, heavy wooden bars, arrow-holes, and slits in the masonry for the pouring of boiling water or oil upon adverse knight or lordly freebooter. A steep path leads through two great entrance-gates into the large inner court, which is erected upon the virgin rock. A roof of old wooden shingles shelters the well, and ancient rotting timber mingles everywhere with the impervious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... given from Scott's Minstrelsy (1803), vol. iii. pp. 83-4. His introduction states that it was obtained from recitation in the Forest of Ettrick, and that it relates to the execution of a Border freebooter, named Cokburne, by ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... at Surat were imprisoned, and not released till they had paid full compensation. Some small satisfaction was experienced when it became known that John Proud, master of the Swan, one of the Company's ships, had encountered the Roebuck in the Comoro Islands, and had attacked the freebooter. He was unable to capture it, but succeeded in procuring restitution of the captured goods; the treasure, however, was carried off to London, where it must have seemed as if the days of Drake ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... this miserable object, the guide acquainted them with his tragical history. Sadhu Sing had been a Sipahee, or soldier, and freebooter of course, the native and the pride of a half-ruined village which they had passed on the preceding day. He was betrothed to the daughter of a Sipahee, who served in the mud fort which they saw at a distance rising above the jungle. In due time, Sadhu, with his friends, ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... flashed for a moment in the light at the cave's mouth, was not buried in Saul's great back, but only hacked off the end of his robe spread out behind him! No personal animosity was in David. However he had been driven to consort with outlaws, and to live a kind of freebooter's life, his natural sweetness was unspoiled, and was reinforced by solemn veneration for the sanctity of the Lord's anointing, which he reverenced all the more because himself had received it. He clambered back to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... offering serious resistance. The well-calculated moderation of Pompeius helped even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible marine strongholds. His predecessors had ordered every captured freebooter to be nailed to the cross; without hesitation he gave quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence. The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain at least their ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Takes the voices of the sea; As the music-billows quiver, See the dead freebooter shiver! "A furore ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Shakespeare if you don't know prudence. However, we're plotters now, and you must take on your wisest humor. You must not breathe a word to Rosa. Love is a freebooter in confidences. It has no conscience, as it has no law. It is an immense friction on the sober relations of life. It is cousin to the god of lies—Mercury. So be warned that while your heart is Rosa's your reason's your country's, your friends', ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Macgregor, and Sergeant Alan Mhor Cameron, have served to paint them in still more sable colours to his imagination. [Of Rob Roy we have had more than enough. Alan Cameron, commonly called Sergeant Mhor, a freebooter of the same period, was equally remarkable ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Sable Island reefs by false lights. It is unsafe to accept as facts the charges and countercharges made by these two enemies; but from independent sources it seems fairly certain that Charnisay, unknown to Cardinal Richelieu, was a bit of a freebooter and wrecker; for his men made a regular business of waylaying English ships from Boston, Dutch ships from New York, as they passed Sable Island; and Charnisay's name became cordially hated by the Protestant colonies of New England. La Tour, being ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... from recitation in the Forest of Ettrick, is said to relate to the execution of Cokburne of Henderland, a border freebooter, hanged over the gate of his own tower by James V., in the course of that memorable expedition, in 1529, which was fatal to Johnie Armstrang, Adam Scott of Tushielaw, and many other marauders. The vestiges of the castle of Henderland are still to be ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... nor could any European power send assistance to a monarch who had refused to listen even to the remonstrances of Austria against his cruelties. The stanchest of English conservatives, while they said they must regard Garibaldi as a freebooter, did not hesitate to express the warmest wishes for the freebooter's success. When the Sardinians marched to Garibaldi's aid, they did so in the interest of order, which has been promptly restored to Southern ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... during the generation which saw Richard I surrender his kingdom to be held as a fief of the empire, and John surrender it to be held as a temporal fief of the papacy; or when, in the reign of Henry III, a papal legate, Gualo, administered England as a province of the Papal States; when a foreign freebooter was sheriff of six English shires; and when aliens held in their hands the castles and keys of the kingdom. It was a dark hour which preceded the dawn of English nationality, and so far there was no sign of English indignation at ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... The Border Widow, and The Sang of the Outlaw Murray, also—in which we should perhaps see the reflection, in the popular mind of the day, of the efforts of James IV. and James V. to preserve order on the Borders—it is on the side of the freebooter rather than of the king and the law that our sympathies are enlisted. Indeed your balladist, like Allan Breck Stewart, was never a bigoted partisan of the law. There is ample proof in the writings of Sir David Lyndsay and others that in ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... was born at Locksley, in Notts., in the reign of Henry II. (1160). His real name was Fitzooth, and it is commonly said that he was the earl of Huntingdon. Having outrun his fortune, and being outlawed, he lived as a freebooter in Barnsdale (Yorkshire), Sherwood (Notts.), and Plompton Park (Cumberland). His chief companions were Little John (whose name was Nailor), William Scadlock (or Scarlet), George Green, the pinder (or pound-keeper) of Wakefield, Much, a miller's son, and Tuck, a friar, with one woman, Maid ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... service in the Roman army, and so created a class of dependents; he assigned land to the roving tribes, and collected them in towns—the Spanish town Graccurris preserved the Roman's name—and so imposed a serious check on their freebooter habits; he regulated the relations of the several tribes to the Romans by just and wise treaties, and so stopped, as far as possible, the springs of future rebellion. His name was held in grateful remembrance by the Spaniards, and comparative peace henceforth reigned in the land, although the Celtiberians ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the headworks, and brought near a dozen men in red shirts to where we were. I was interested listening to their conversation mixed with sharp jokes. Nearly every man had a nickname. Murch was called 'Captain Snarl'; a tall, fierce-looking man, who just filled my idea of a Spanish freebooter, was 'Dr. Coddle.' I think his real name was Wood. The rum seems to make them crazy, for one, who was called 'Rub-a-dub,' pitched 'Dr. Coddle' head and heels into the water. A gentlemanly man named Thompson, who acted as master of ceremonies, or Grand Turk, interfered and put a ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... by the freebooter who had burnt it down; one Philip Heredith, a descendant of Philip Here-Deith, whose name is inscribed in the Domesday Book as one of the knights of the army of Duke William which had assembled at Dives for the conquest of England. Philip Heredith, who was as great a fighter as ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... than of pursuing his original plan of conquest. It was not difficult to find his way back by the road he had come; and that road he travelled as fast as a leading breeze would carry him along it. But retreat, as it now appeared, was not the only difficulty with which this freebooter had to contend. It happened that no kind feeling existed between the admiral and the officers of the largest of the brigs. So far had their animosity extended, that the admiral had deemed it expedient to take a large sum of money, which had fallen to the share of the vessel in question, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... are also frank and prepossessing in their deportment. The Dongolese is dirty, idle, and ferocious. The character of the Shageian is the same, except that he is not idle, being either an industrious peasant or a daring freebooter. The people on the third cataract are not very industrious, but have the character of being honest and obliging. The people of Berber are by far the most civilized of all the people of the Upper Nile. The inhabitants ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... name makes itself felt from the very cradle. As a schoolboy I remember the pride with which I hailed Robin Hood, Robert Bruce, and Robert le Diable as my name-fellows; and the feeling of sore disappointment that fell on my heart when I found a freebooter or a general who did not share with me a single one of my numerous praenomina. Look at the delight with which two children find they have the same name. They are friends from that moment forth; they have a bond of union ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quarters on the banks of the Loire, devastated the country as high as Tourraine, shared the women and girls among his crews, and even carried off the male children, to be brought up in his own profession. Charles the Bald, not having the power to expel him, engaged the freebooter, for 500 pounds of silver, to dislodge his countrymen, who were harassing the vicinity of Paris. In consequence of this subsidy, Wailand, with a fleet of 260 sail, went up the Seine, and attacked the Normans ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... kerchief on the head; an embroidered jacket; a shawl encircling the waist; red greaves; a dirk; and a long gun, ornamented with gold, slung over the shoulder. Their wild fearless demeanour struck me as more characteristic of the freebooter, than the soldier of a regular government. Yet seldom have I seen more elegant graceful figures than were possessed by these mountain robbers, whose robust symmetry rendered each one of them a perfect model for ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... wishes proved fatal to him, for the woman, fearing the consequences, contrived to poison Asinai; and the authority which he had wielded passed into the hands of Anilai, without (so far as we hear) any fresh appointment from the Parthian monarch. Anilai had, it appears, no instincts but those of a freebooter, and he was no sooner settled in the government than he proceeded to indulge them by attacking the territory of a neighboring satrap, Mithridates, who was not only a Parthian of high rank, but had married one of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... other talk Raimbaut dismissed the fierce-eyed little man. The freebooter growled curses as he went. On a sudden he whistled, like a person considering, and ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and so he marooned a parcel more of them—some eighteen or twenty—upon a naked sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by another freebooter who chanced that way—a certain Major Stede Bonnet, of whom more will presently be said. About that time a royal proclamation had been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms who would surrender to the king's authority before a given date. So up goes Master Blackbeard to the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... known, that New Providence was the island selected for his residence by Blackbeard, the famous pirate; the citadel that stands on the hill above the town of Nassau, is built on the site of the fortress which contained the treasure of that famous freebooter. A curious circumstance occurred during my stay on this island, and which, beyond all doubt, was connected with the adventures of those extraordinary people, known by the appellation of Buccaneers. Some workmen were digging near the foot of the hill under the fort, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... suggest some very solemn and stimulating thoughts about the true nature of life. They refer, originally, to the strange vicissitudes and extremes of fortune and condition which characterised, so dramatically and remarkably, the life of King David. Shepherd-boy, soldier, court favourite, outlaw, freebooter and all but brigand; rebel, king, fugitive, saint, sinner, psalmist, penitent—he lived a life full of strongly marked alternations, and 'the times that went over him' were singularly separate and different from each other. There are very few of us who have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... said, "and it is for you to decide whether it will alter your plan of proceeding. The man whom I have just met is a messenger, dispatched by the governor of Arica to Lima, to warn the governor there that an English ship, under the noted freebooter Francis Drake, has put into that harbor; and has started again, sailing for the north, after exacting certain contributions, but otherwise refraining ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... them; and, in return for these little attentions, they suffered themselves to be milked before they returned to their respective owners. Her mode of obtaining eggs and fowls was on the same economical plan, and we all looked upon Betty as a sort of freebooter, living upon the property of others. She had had three husbands, and he with whom she now lived was not her husband, although the father of the splendid child whose beauty so won upon my woman's heart. Her first husband was still living (a thing by no means uncommon among persons of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... freebooter; "what meaning would there be in that? I would sever thy jugular vein in a moment if that would mend the broken fortunes of my chief. Farewell, however. Good ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... voyages to foreign lands. In part they went as traders and exchanged the furs, wool, and fish of Scandinavia for the clothing, ornaments, and other articles of luxury found in neighboring countries. But it was no far cry from merchant to freebooter, and, in fact, expeditions for the sake of plunder seem to have been even more popular with the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... rapid flight. The fish-hawk sees his enemy approaching, and attempts to escape; but, laden with the fish he has just captured, in spite of the various evolutions he performs, he is soon overtaken by the savage freebooter. With a scream of despair ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... noting: that the buccaneer by sea, the privateersman, through long practice in endurance, is able to live at the expense of far superior powers. Yes, and the life of the freebooter is no less natural and appropriate to landsmen—I do not say, to those who can till and gather in the fruit of their fields, but to those who find themselves deprived of sustenance; since there is no alternative—either men must till their fields or live on the ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... was long ago stripped of its pillage. The buccaneers took themselves off to keep company with the Vikings. Yet, away down in those money chests, once filled with what were pieces of eight and ducats and doubloons, who shall say that spirits may not lurk and ghosts walk, one old freebooter wheezing to another old freebooter: "They order these things better ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated without mercy. As soon as the extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safe in the Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter was exalted into a hero of romance. As long as the Gaelic dress was worn, the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent. Soon after it had been prohibited, they discovered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... N. thief, robber, homo triumliterarum [Lat.], pilferer, rifler, filcher^, plagiarist. spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark [Slang], land shark, falcon, mosstrooper^, bushranger^, Bedouin^, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit^; pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones^, buccaneer, buccanier^; piqueerer^, pickeerer^; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee^, wrecker, picaroon^; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger [Slang], bunko man, cattle thief, chor^, contrabandist^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the interest of the English at the trial, as they naturally would wish the relieving force to appear as large as possible. It has even been placed as low as three thousand. Among the officers who accompanied the Maid was a Gascon knight, named La Hire, half freebooter, half condottiere, a brave and reckless soldier, of whom it is recorded that, before making a raid, he would offer ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... a courtly, fine-mannered bird. Birds of prey will rend one another over their food; even buzzards will make some show of mauling one another with their wings; but I have yet to see anything of the kind with that gentle freebooter, the crow. Yet suspicion is his dominant trait. Anything that looks like design puts him on his guard. The simplest device in a cornfield usually suffices to keep him away. He suspects a trap. His wit is not deep, but it is quick, and ever ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... buried under that tree," I said to Frank, suppressing my excitement so far as I could. "More than likely it was placed there by some freebooter a long time ago, and these people were awaiting a ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... keys, accepted the sword of the captain commissioned by Charles with royal courtesy, gave his hand to be kissed by the mayor; and then, with grave inexorable air, like a statue of steel, watched as the freebooter Vaurus and his two chief companions were led down with their hands tied, halters round their necks, and priests at their sides, preparing them to be hung on that very tree. They were proud hard men, and uttered no entreaty for ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had been known far and wide for open-handed generosity and blunt truthfulness—and these were traits to silence or to soften reprobation of his fitful and reckless disregard for the property rights of the big companies. He was a freebooter with most of the virtues and vices of his kind. But the crowd that morning in Sleepy Cat was assembling to pay tribute to the man—however far gone wrong. His virtues they were, no doubt, willing to bury with him; the memory of his vices would serve some of them when they ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... observing that, the ship, in navigating into the harbor, was drawing too near the land; a sunken reef making out off her bow. This seemed to prove her a stranger, indeed, not only to the sealer, but the island; consequently, she could be no wonted freebooter on that ocean. With no small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her—a proceeding not much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through which the far matin light from her cabin streamed ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... which the Dictionaries give only "fat, thick." It applies in Arabia especially to a Harami, brigand or freebooter, most honourable of professions, slain in foray or fray, opposed to "Fatis" or carrion (the corps creve of the Klephts), the man who dies the straw-death. Pilgrimage ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... so loud that the lofty windows rattled, "Mr. Garry called me a foreigner, a freebooter and the like. I object most decidedly. I am as much an American citizen as Mr. Garry. Mr. Garry, do you hear I am an American citizen?" For certain reasons Lilienfeld had had himself naturalised only a month before. "Mr. Garry, do you hear I am an American citizen?" he cried several ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... him at Calicut on his former voyage. The truth is they were rich; he wanted the plunder; and there was less likelihood of trouble if he killed them than if they were left alive to publish and avenge their losses. It was merely an application of the freebooter's maxim, that "dead ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... not that, Elshie," answered the freebooter; "When I ride, my foes may moan. They have had mair light than comfort at the Heugh-foot this morning; there's a toom byre and a wide, and a wail and a ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Crompond, Westchester county, to James Jackson, Esq., of Fishkill, in Dutchess county, informing him that Husson, a notorious cowboy and freebooter, had gone up to steal his horses, and was to have a hundred guineas if he got them. Dated ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... This sanguinary freebooter was then, under the auspices and with the assistance of the equally sanguinary royal governor of Chili, Sanchez, carrying on a most horrid and cruel war of extermination against the republican inhabitants of the southern part of Chili. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... before. But the face of the woman advancing towards him suggested that she was not particular about the identity of the form emerging from the mists of time to rescue her from virginity. She looked as if she would have gladly surrendered that jewel to any freebooter in return for a passage in the ship of matrimony, and gone off flying the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... garment, but in armor of proof, with morion on head, and sword in hand, the great freebooter strode heavily through the ballroom, followed by a party of those terrible musketeers who never gave or asked for quarter, while the affrighted revelers ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... royalists, often led by monks, spread such terror and devastation over the northern provinces that the presence of foreign troops became the only safeguard for the peaceable inhabitants. [337] Madrid itself was threatened by the corps of a freebooter named Bessieres. The commandant sent his surrender to the French while they were still at some distance, begging them to advance as quickly as possible in order to save the city from pillage. The message had scarcely been sent when ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... men as he could enlist with such weapons as he could find, and sent out a little force of grooms and artificers to face the Constable's ruthless Spaniards and the fierce Germans of his companion freebooter, George of Fransperg, or Franzberg, who carried about a silken cord by which he swore to strangle the Pope with his own hands. The enemy reached the walls of Rome on the night of the fifth of May; devastation and famine lay behind them in their track, the plunder ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... reign of Henry VI., Malkin Tower became a robber's stronghold, and gave protection to a freebooter named Blackburn, who, with a band of daring and desperate marauders, took advantage of the troubled state of the country, ravaged it far and wide, and committed unheard of atrocities, even levying contributions upon the Abbeys of Whalley ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... An eager freebooter, ready for any task, the Ant is the first to come hastening and begin, particle by particle, to dissect the corpse. Soon the odour of the corpse attracts the Fly, the genitrix of the odious maggot. At the same time, the flattened Silpha, the glistening, slow-trotting Horn-beetle, the Dermestes, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... war continued after as before, it was merely to decide between the two claimants, Charles de Valois and Henry of Lancaster. Whoever gained the victory, nothing would be changed in the laws and customs of France. Yet this poor freebooter of the German Marches imagined none the less that under an English king he would be an Englishman. Many French of all ranks believed the same and could not suffer the thought of being Anglicised; in their minds their own fates depended ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... extraordinary power. Gray as a mediaeval castle, age had not yet touched his gnarled strength. The keen steady eyes, the close straight lips, the shaggy eyebrows heavy and overhanging, gave accent to the rugged force of this grim freebooter who had reversed the law of nature which decrees that railroads shall follow civilization. Scorning the established rule of progress, he had spiked his rails through untrodden forests and unexplored canons to watch the pioneer come after by the road he had blazed. Chief among the makers ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... stimulus to all honourable conduct and noble effort, a part of the poetry of life. It is so already to many of us, and has been so to the noblest Englishmen since we have had a literature. If Henry V's speech at Agincourt is the splendid gasconade of a royal freebooter, there is no false ring in the scene where John of Gaunt takes leave of his banished son; nor in Sir Walter Scott's 'Breathes there a man with soul so dead,' etc. 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... he a freebooter with all his other charms? His contempt for government, as we poor wretches know it, is sublime; and yet he is the safest man I know. The law, he often told me, was like a lie; useful only to scoundrels—torn-down ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... impeached as one of the most audacious and successful buccaneers of modern times. Without doubt he was so; a freebooter who, if he could not appropriate millions, would filch thousands; a pitiless human carnivore, glutting on the blood of his numberless victims; a gambler destitute of the usual gambler's code of fairness in abiding by the rules; an incarnate ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... was Messer Benincasa da Laterina, a learned judge, who had condemned to death for their crimes two relatives of Ghin di Tacco, the most famous freebooter of the day, whose headquarters were between Siena and Rome. Some time after, Messer Benincasa sitting as judge in Rome, Ghino entered the city with a band of his followers, made his way to the tribunal, slew Benincasa, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... roundabout to the Company's stores, and again there was a distinct improvement in the giant's spirits. Here at least he could be himself, he thought, here no one should say him nay. As if nerved by the idea, he plunged at once into boisterous raillery of the Chief Trader. "Oh, ho," he began, "me freebooter, me captain av the looters av the North!" The Trader snarled at him. "What d'ye mean, by such talk to me, sir? I've had enough— we've all had enough—of your brag and bounce; for you're all sweat and swill-pipe, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... men whom I serve, and pitied by men whom I hate. This pirate career suits me. What is society to me, whom it has ostracised? I was a gentleman once—quick at books, pleasing in company, shrewd in business. They say that I have power still, but lack integrity. Be it so! Better a freebooter at sea than upon the land. I have half made up my mind to evil. Hugenot, listen to me! I believe that were I to do one bad, dark deed, it would restore ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... seizure, since which time the purgunnah had been declining, and could not now yield seventy thousand (70,000) rupees to the treasury; that his family had held many villages in hereditary right for many generations, within the purgunnah, but that all had, been or were being seized by this lawless freebooter and his associates. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... typified in Frederick II., who was judiciously suspected of being Antichrist in person. In the midst of this anarchy, over-rapid industrial development had moreover begotten the tendencies to promiscuity, to mystical communism, always expressive of deep popular misery. The Holy Land had become a freebooter's Eldorado; the defenders of Christ's sepulchre were turned half-Saracen, infected with unclean mixtures of creeds. Theology was divided between neo-Aristotelean logic, abstract and arid, and Alexandrian esoteric mysticism, quietistic, nay, nihilistic; ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... captured after a siege. Under Simon's leadership the Cinque Ports played the part of pirates on all merchants going to and from England. At last in March, 1266, Edward forced Winchelsea to open its gates to him. He next turned his arms against a valiant freebooter, Adam Gordon, who lurked with his band of outlaws in the dense beech woods of the Chilterns. With the capture of Adam Gordon, after a hand-to-hand tussle with Edward in which the king's son narrowly escaped with his life, the resistance in the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... body and broke into laughter. It hurt his arm, but he gasped with fierce joy, "Francis would call him a freebooter." Then he fell back and quite helpless listened. Unable to turn his head, he heard behind him the wild rush of men. Leaping over horse and man they went by. He got a look to right and left. They tore through ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... the rock above the fall yawns a hole, hardly a cavern, where once lurked a famous freebooter of Wales, Twm Sion Catti: the entrance to this cave is through a narrow aperture, formed of two immense slate rocks, which face each other, and the space between them is narrower at the bottom than the top, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various |
