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noun
Abdication  n.  The act of abdicating; the renunciation of a high office, dignity, or trust, by its holder; commonly the voluntary renunciation of sovereign power; as, abdication of the throne, government, power, authority.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Abdication" Quotes from Famous Books



... first created by his sovereign, to the intent that after a certain state of Probation in life, such of them as shall be approved, are appointed to fill up those vacancies in the Heavenly Host, which were made by the abdication and expulsion of him (the Devil) and his Angels; so that man is appointed to come in Satan's stead, to make good the breach, and enjoy all those ineffable Joys and Beatitudes which Satan enjoy'd before his fall; no wonder then, that the Devil swells with envy and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... War II led to the formation of a communist Peoples Republic in 1947 and the abdication of the king. The decades-long rule of President Nicolae CEAUSESCU became increasingly draconian through the 1980s. He was overthrown and executed in late 1989. Former communists dominated the government until 1996 when they were swept ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... strong was the expression of odium against him, that he thought it prudent to retire to his mansion, in the country, and there altogether seclude himself. One anomaly in Sir Reginald's otherwise utterly selfish character was uncompromising devotion to the house of Stuart; and shortly after the abdication of James II., he followed that monarch to Saint Germain, having previously mixed largely in secret political intrigues; and only returned from the French court to lay his bones with those of his ancestry, in ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... him, still less to have an indictment filed against him. On the contrary, he kissed Savoff on his return to Sofia and later on made him his adjutant-general. Ferdinand's responsibility being established, his abdication was clamoured for by public opinion. His own estimate of his plight was impregnated with despair. He despatched the abject telegrams mentioned above to his influential friends. It was then that he received a letter signed by the three chiefs of the Liberal groups of the old ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... the authentic accounts of the Emperor's abdication at Fontainebleau on April 11th, and of his banishment to Elba, made it certain that ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... 'high horse' and to cheat the desire that she had kindled in him, to substitute a pleasure different from that which he might have tasted in her company by writing to invite one of his former mistresses to come and join him, would have seemed to him as cowardly an abdication in the face of life, as stupid a renunciation of a new form of happiness as if, instead of visiting the country where he was, he had shut himself up in his own rooms and looked at 'views' of Paris. He did not immure himself in the solid structure of his social relations, but had made ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... fast becoming an impossible one, and in order to obtain security for the French outlay he ordered the seizure of the custom-house of Vera Cruz. Maximilian was furious, and a rumor spread that he was seriously considering his abdication. The Empress, who strongly opposed his taking this step, suggested going abroad herself to see what could be done to save the crown. All confidence was at an end between the young monarchs and the marshal, whom they held responsible ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... to be some misapprehension at the bottom of these statements. No one, we believe, has ever undertaken to edit Robertson's History of Charles the Fifth. Prescott appended to it a long "Account of the Emperor's Life after his Abdication," and for that reason it has been included in all subsequent editions of his works. But no intimation has ever been given that the editor of Prescott's histories had assumed the same office for Robertson. If any one be engaged ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... resigned the crown (1088). The last days of Henry were clouded by the rebellion of his sons, first of Conrad (1093), and then of Henry (1104), who was supported by the Pope, Paschal II. The emperor was taken prisoner, and obliged to sign his own abdication at Ingelheim in 1105. The duke of Lotharingia and others came to his support, and a civil war was threatened; but Henry died at Luettich in 1106. His body was placed in a stone coffin, where it ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... directions along the path. Atkinson had at length wearied of Flambeau's almost paternal custody, and had endeavoured to knock him down, which was by no means a smooth game to play with the Roi des Apaches, even after that monarch's abdication. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... that sentiment is about to take from them; but they have, at the same time, a sense of joy in knowing that their sons are happy; conflicting feelings battle in their hearts. Though the result may be the development of their sons into superior men, true mothers do not like this forced abdication; they would rather keep their children small and still requiring protection. Perhaps that is the secret of their predilection for feeble, deformed, or ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... to end the schism at the Council of Pisa resulted only in the election of a third pope. The situation was finally dealt with by the Council of Constance which deposed two of the popes and secured the voluntary abdication of the third. The synod further strengthened the church by executing the heretics Huss and Jerome of Prague, and by passing decrees intended to put the government of the church in the hands of representative assemblies. It asserted ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... the six hundred men who know how to die, marching to the hymn of the Marseillaise. The country is in danger! Volunteer fighters gather. Duke Brunswick shakes himself, and issues his manifesto; and in Paris preternatural suspicion and disquietude. Demand is for forfeiture, abdication in favour of prince royal, which Legislature cannot pronounce. Therefore on the night of August 9 the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... capital on April 9, 1814. There they heard some days later of the arrival of Messrs. Clay and Russell at Gottenburg. The situation of Great Britain had greatly changed. Intoxicated with the success of their arms and the abdication of Napoleon, the English people were quite ready to undertake the punishment of the United States, while the release of a large body of trained troops in France, Italy, Holland, and Portugal enabled the ministry ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... heart from me? Perhaps not, for it may never have been mine. I know that Esterbrook Elliott will be true to the letter of his vows to me, no matter what it may cost him. But I want no pallid shadow of the love that belongs to another. The hour of abdication is at hand, I fear. And what will be left ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the wood which surrounds them,—and whose decayed summits afford a striking contrast to the young and luxuriant foliage with which their stems are enveloped. When we visited Fontainbleau, it was occupied by the old imperial guard, which still remained in that station after the abdication of Bonaparte; and we frequently met parties, or detached stragglers of them, wandering in the most solitary parts of the Forest. Their warlike and weather-beaten appearance; their battered arms and worn accoutrements; the dark plumes of their helmets, and the sallow ferocious aspect ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... offered to reveal to the Secretary of State the entire family history of Ferdinand of Bulgaria for fifty dollars. He says it is not worth it. I have offered to the British Embassy the inside story of the Abdication of Constantine for five dollars. They say they know it, and knew it before it happened. I have offered, for little more than a nominal sum, to blacken the character of every reigning family in Germany. I am told that it is ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... means. The President has announced the government's abdication in favor of Dr. Lett, and that the punishment for ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... chasing butterflies, and calling to her in a soft, musical voice; while within the house the grave father, when he was not away in Wales, of which he was lord- president, mused upon great events that were stirring in Europe—the abdication of Charles V., the fall of Calais, and the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne of England. The lordly banqueting-hall, in which the politics of three centuries ago were discussed at Penshurst, is still standing. You may ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... retire from the cabinet. Under this pressure he yielded. Mr. Black drafted a new reply to the commissioners, Mr. Stanton copied it, Holt concurred in it, and, in substance, Mr. Buchanan accepted it. This affair constituted, as Messrs. Nicolay and Hay well say, "the President's virtual abdication," and thereafterward began the "cabinet regime." Upon the commissioners this chill gust from the North struck so disagreeably that, on January 2, they hastened home to their "independent nation." ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... and which he had embellished, the Emperor Isaac Comnenus retired, when pleurisy and the injuries he received while boar-hunting made him realize that he had but a short time to live. In fact, he survived his abdication for one year only, but during that period he proved a most exemplary monk, showing the greatest deference to his abbot, and besides performing other lowly duties acted as keeper of the monastery gate. How thoroughly he was reconciled to the exchange of a throne for a cell appears in ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... character as to "ensure to the Associated Governments the unrestricted power to safeguard and enforce the details of the peace to which the German Government has agreed." At the end of this Note the President hinted more openly than in that of October 14 at the abdication of the Kaiser. This completes the preliminary negotiations to which the President alone was a party, adding without the Governments ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... war-horse at the sound of the trumpet. He stared solemnly at Lucia as she came forward followed by Rickman; then he rose from his own consecrated chair, heavily but with a certain dignity suited to the moral grandeur of the act, and made a gesture of abdication. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... people become excited, riots take place, Godoy's residence in Aranguez is attacked by the mob, and the king abdicates in favor of his son. Napoleon himself now lands at Bayona. Charles and his son hasten thither to salute Europe's master, and, after declaring that his abdication was imposed on him by violence, the king resumes his crown and humbly lays it at the feet of the arbiter of the fate of kings, who stoops to pick it up only to offer it to his brother Louis, who refuses it. Then he places it on the head ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... Swinburne, in an essay upon Matthew Arnold's New Poems (1867), has said, truly, that 'rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in England'; and that 'to throw away the natural grace of rhyme from a modern song is a wilful abdication of half the charm and half the power of verse.' To this general rule he might possibly admit one exception—Tennyson's short poem beginning with 'Tears, idle tears,' which is so delicately modulated that the absence ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... the Queen's difference from him on the matter he had most at heart, and saddened by the failure of his own schemings in opposite directions, Charles appears to have sunk for a time into a state of sullen passiveness, varied by thoughts of abdication or escape. By December, however, he had again roused himself. By that time, Will Murray having returned to him with fresh suggestions from London, he had made up his mind to send to the English Parliament an Answer to their Nineteen Propositions in detail. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... Both the queens, the one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance at each other at this time, a shrill, fine, trumpetlike note that any ear will at once recognize. This challenge, not being allowed to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a day or two, by the abdication of the old queen; she leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by her keepers, who, in her turn, abdicates in favor of the next younger. When the bees have decided that no more swarms can issue, the reigning queen is allowed to use her stiletto upon her unhatched sisters. Cases have ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... supposed to have had a prototype in the Roman prefect and the Saxon portgrave. The Lord Mayor is only "Lord" and "Right Honourable" by courtesy, and not from his dignity as a Privy Councillor on the demise or abdication of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Napoleon Bonaparte, on the eve of signing his first abdication, walked restlessly about, with his hands behind his back, muttering, "If I only had a hundred thousand men!" Similarly, as I contemplated that pub., I muttered, "If I only had a handful of corks!" ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... to learn," added Rollin, with a significant smile. "They will see the day—aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... occupation following World War II led to the formation of a Communist "peoples republic" in 1947 and the abdication of the king. The decades-long rule of dictator Nicolae CEAUSESCU, who took power in 1965, and his Securitate police state became increasingly oppressive and draconian through the 1980s. CEAUSESCU was overthrown and executed in late 1989. Former Communists dominated the government ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... he abdicated in favour of his son Charles. The Queen was dead, and he had privately married a lady of the Court, to whom he had been long attached; and the desire to acknowledge this union, combined with what seems to have been a premature old age, might sufficiently have explained the abdication; but Mr. Browning adopts the idea, which for a time found favour, that it had a deeper cause: that the King's intriguing ambition had involved him in many difficulties, and he had devised this plan ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... date may be traced the declination of Napoleon's greatness. In the field he was generally unsuccessful, and occasionally murmurs of discontent were whispered by citizen and soldier. The plot thickens in the eight volume, and his abdication of the throne of France, and subsequent journey to Elba, are feelingly narrated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... the result of this prospective union with Leon, assured them that her interests would ever be theirs, and that she would at all times counsel her son and help him in every way within her power; and finally, her will prevailed and the abdication was approved. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... of Germany in the time of Luther was Charles V.,—the most powerful potentate of Europe, and, moreover, a bigoted Catholic. On his abdication,—one of the most extraordinary events in history,—the German dominions were given to his brother Ferdinand; Spain and the Low Countries were bestowed on his son Philip. Ferdinand had already been elected ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... was awarded the reputation, good or bad, of all the witticisms in the clubs after the abdication of the throne of dandyism by Brummell; who, before that time, was always quoted as the sayer of good things, as Sheridan had been some time before. Lord Alvanley had the talk of the day completely under his control, and was the ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... succession of similar calamities; his adversaries obtained a majority in the general assembly; and the nuncio, after a declaration that he advanced no claim to temporal authority, prudently avoided a forced abdication, by offering to resign his office.[a] A new council, consisting, in equal number, of men chosen out of the two parties, was appointed; and the marquess of Antrim, the Lord Muskerry, and Geoffrey Brown, were despatched to the queen mother, and her son Charles, to solicit assistance in money and arms, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... was removed, 'as he began to show great favour to her, and gave her intelligence.' {118} Mary herself, through the narrative of Nau, her secretary, declares that Ruthven (then a married man) persecuted her by his lust. He aided Lindsay in extorting her abdication at Loch Leven. Such was his record as regards Mary: James too had little ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... unpopular, however, and gave rise to a conspiracy against him, and to his consequent abdication in 1809. He "died forgotten and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... through the streets during the long, wretched afternoon, announcing to the populace that Count Marlanx had established himself as dictator and military governor of the principality—pending the abdication of the Prince and the beginning of a new and substantial regime. All citizens were commanded to recognise the authority of the dictator; none except those who disobeyed or resented this authority would be molested. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... criticism transferred to the creative faculty; and, like its counterpart, is liable to the objection that the impression of one poet, so long as it is sincerely rendered, is as good as the impression of another. It is the abdication of art, as the other is the abdication ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... come from Paris by the same corvette that had brought me the despatch. He had seen the crash, had been present when the National Guard, upon whom my brother Nemours had called to resist the rioters, had overwhelmed him with abuse, had witnessed the abdication, the scenes in the Chamber, and the King's final departure. All the way across France, too, except at Toulon, where the strong hand of the navy made itself felt, Touchard had watched the eager speculations of the majority on the accomplished fact, and the struggle ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... defeat and abdication of Licinius, his victorious rival proceeded to lay the foundations of a city destined to reign in future times, the mistress of the East, and to survive the empire and religion of Constantine. The motives, whether of pride ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... a strangely pathetic effect, won from the black four-cornered cap of a priest that lay before it, like an offering. I wondered who the priest was that wore it, and why he had left it there, as if he had fled away in haste. I might have thought it looked like the signal of the abdication of a system; the gondolier who was with me took it up and reviled it as representative of birbanti matricolati, who fed upon the poor, and in whose expulsion from that island he rejoiced. But he had little reason to do so, since the last use of the place was ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... Antiochus Epiphanes and under Herod, has preserved the leaven from which Christianity was to emanate. But taken in themselves, all these old precautions were only puerile. The synagogue, which was the depository of them, was no more than a parent of error. Its reign was ended; and yet to require its abdication was to require the impossible, that which an established power has never done or been able ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... the country, not to return again till more than eighteen months had passed; and then only for a very brief sojourn. Already his father was meditating abdication in his favour, and Philip was pondering how he might secure at least a preponderating influence with Elizabeth, whose ultimate accession he regarded as inevitable. Thus the Spanish counsels were now directed largely to securing favourable treatment for her—a complete reversal of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... soon at an end. France was quickly invaded, Paris was obliged to surrender, and on April 7, 1814, the emperor signed an act of abdication and was exiled to the small island of Elba, in the Mediterranean, with an army of 400 men, chosen from his famous Old Guard. But the Powers of Europe, despite their long experience of Napoleon, did ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... secure for himself the kingdom of Poland. Indeed, as we shall see presently, the personality of Alexander was a permanent stumbling-block to most of the projects of European statesmen. As a whole, it cannot be denied that this particular period of history, between Napoleon's abdication in 1814 and the meeting of the European Congress at Verona in 1882, presented a profoundly distressing picture of international egotism. The ruin of their common enemy, relieving the members of the European family from the necessity of maintaining concord, ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney

... from first to last. Had our princess come to the throne only a few months earlier a regency must have been proclaimed, and had she lingered a few months longer increasing infirmities might have forced that same calamity upon us. But through God's mercy hers was a full orbed reign. There was no abdication of her power for a single day. The first serious illness of her life was also her last, and to her it was granted to cease at once to work ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... The so-called abdication, but really the deposition, of Prince Couza, as it was narrated at the time, was effected as follows. The conspiracy being ripe, on February 11 [23], 1866, a sufficiently strong body of military, acting under ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... commence to probe the machinery and to examine the looms more carefully, we begin to understand why the wheels creak, and why there are seconds and odd lots in the product as well as the rare and precious firsts. Moreover, we are learning how to handle the machinery ourselves. The abdication of Fate can therefore be confidently expected ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... odd! Her abdication also was very odd and abrupt. She changed her way of living, gave up society, let her hair go white, allowed her face to do whatever it chose, and, in fact, became very much what she is now—the most charming old ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... to this communication so well satisfied the old king that he persuaded the dauphin to join with him in abdicating all rights in favor of Henri V., the little Duc de Bordeaux. Up to this moment Charles seems never to have suspected that more than such an abdication could be required of him. But by this time it was evident that the successful Parisians would be satisfied with nothing less than the utter overthrow of the Bourbons. Their choice lay between a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head, or a renewal ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... not as a right, but as an indulgence. And young Jacob Dolph, in all his grief and anxiety, was guiltily conscious of a secret thrill of pleasure—natural enough, poor boy!—in his sudden elevation to the full dignity of manhood, and his father's abdication of the ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner

... remnants of his former subjects, the few surviving bedesmen now left at Hiram's Hospital. Six of them were still living. The number, according to old Hiram's will, should always have been twelve. But after the abdication of their warden, the bishop had appointed no successor to him, and it appeared as though the hospital at Barchester would fall into abeyance, unless the powers that be should take some steps towards putting it ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... slightest doubt that if the British had been free to continue the war they must have triumphed. But they were not free. Europe was seething with the profound unrest that made her statesmen feel the volcano heaving under their every step during the portentous year between Napoleon's abdication and return. The mighty British Navy, the veteran British Army, could not now be sent across the sea in overwhelming force. So American diplomacy eagerly seized this chance of profiting by British needs, and took such good advantage of them that the Treaty of Ghent, which ended ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood

... sacraments, public prayer and thanksgiving, the catechising and instructing of children and ignorant persons, the examination of those who are to come to the holy communion, the ecclesiastical discipline, the ordination of ministers, and the abdication, deposing, and degrading of them (if they become like unsavoury salt), the deciding and determining of controversies of faith and cases of conscience, canonical constitutions concerning the treasury of the church and collections of the faithful, as also concerning ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... with the people, were in full march upon the Tuileries, and the latter threatening the life of the King, when Emile Girardin, the editor of the Presse newspaper, who was in advance as an officer of the National Guard, hastily drew up an Act of Abdication, and placed it before the King as the only means of safety. The King at first refused, saying that he would rather die; but the Duc de Montpensier urged him, not only for his own sake, but to save his country from confusion. The King at last ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... not less attentive to America; agents were sent in the name of Joseph, king of Spain, to communicate to the colonies the abdication of Ferdinand, and Joseph's accession to the throne, and to procure the recognition of his authority by the Americans. Thus the obedience of the colonies was demanded by no less than four tribunals, each claiming to possess supreme authority at home. There could scarcely have occurred a conjuncture ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... his abdication, so the story goes, and it was lying on his desk, all signed, awaiting the moment ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... principle on which this diagnosis of his case was founded appear unreasonable. Ibrahim was a great general, an able ruler, a man of firm and steady purpose; not a weak and ineffectual libertine whom lust for blood and lechery had placed below the level of brute beasts. When the time for his abdication arrived, he threw aside his mantle of state and donned the mean garb of an Arab devotee, preached a crusade, and led an army into Italy, where he died of dysentery before the city of Cosenza. The only way of explaining his eccentric thirst for slaughter is to suppose that it was ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Bale with the mysterious agent of Prince Metternich have remained to this day buried in profound secrecy. The historians, who have preceded me, relate, without any explanation, that the Duke of Otranto laid before the Emperor, at the moment of his abdication, a letter from M. de Metternich; and that this letter, artfully worded, had determined Napoleon to abdicate, in the hope that the crown would devolve to his son. The particulars given in these Memoirs will entirely change the ideas formed of this letter, and of its influence. They confirm ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... Clement VIII's abdication had put an end to the schism; the great rift in the Church had been closed for thirteen years and all Christian nations recognized the Pope of Rome; even France who had become resigned to the disappearance of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... be an Augustus, with all the honors of an emperor. Diocletian ruled the East; Maximian ruled the West. Further partnership soon seemed advisable, and so each Augustus chose a younger associate, or Caesar, to aid him in the government and at his death or abdication to become his heir. Diocletian also remodeled the provincial system. The entire empire, including Italy, was divided into more than one hundred provinces. They were grouped into thirteen dioceses and these, in turn, into four ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... our marriage. Upon what ground that would bear announcing I know not, but let this be enough: try and realise that our respective positions are totally changed by this unforeseen event, and that, as Molly is now to be mistress at Pulwick, I must of course revoke my tacit abdication. Nevertheless, if you think you can put up with the new state of things, there need be little alteration in your present mode of life, my dear Rupert; if you will only make a generous effort to alter ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... to write petitions to the court asking the Han ruler to abdicate; he even fabricated "heavenly omina" in his own favour and against the Han dynasty in order to get wide support even from intellectuals. Secondly, he inaugurated a formal abdication ceremony, culminating in the transfer of the imperial seal to himself. This ceremony became standard for the next centuries. The seal was made of a precious stone, once presented to the Ch'in dynasty ruler before he ascended the throne. ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... therefore cover a most remarkable epoch in human history, from the abdication of Charles Fifth to the Peace of Westphalia, at which last point the political and geographical arrangements of Europe were established on a permanent basis,—in the main undisturbed until the French Revolution. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... revolutions so widely different in their aims and results, though following each other closely in the outward sequence of incident and character—would be between the Puritan struggle and the first revolutionary period in France, and between 1688 and the flight of James II, and 1830 and the abdication of Charles X. Both Guizot, whose memoirs of the English Revolution had appeared in 1826, and his master Louis Philippe intended that France should draw this comparison—the latter by the title "King of the French" adroitly ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... legal point of view the contract was a very singular one. The Government of Newfoundland, in fact, assumed to bind its successors by a partial abdication of sovereign power. Yet the same capacity which enabled the then Government to bind itself would equally and evidently inhere in its successors to revoke the obligation. Those who are struck by the conscientious obligation which the then Government could no doubt ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... unable to renounce her tyrant, and the tyrant was unwilling to relinquish his slave. When the Roman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, a new jurisprudence was introduced, that marriage, like other partnerships, might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates. In three centuries of prosperity and corruption, this principle was enlarged to frequent practice and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... Perhaps Murray (who had left for France before the marriage to Bothwell), perhaps fear of Elizabeth, or human pity, induced her captors, contrary to the counsel of Lethington, to spare her life, when she had signed her abdication, while they crowned her infant son. Murray accepted the Regency; a Parliament in December established the Kirk; acquitted themselves of rebellion; and announced that they had proof of Mary's guilt in her own writing. Her romantic escape from Lochleven (May ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... coldness, and moistness, form the body and its constituents. To these correspond the cardinal fluids, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. The fundamental condition of life is the innate heat, the abdication of which is death. This innate heat is greatest in youth when most fuel is therefore required, but gradually declines with age. Another necessity for the support of life is the pneuma which circulates in the vessels. All this may seem fanciful ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Constitution. They relied on physical force to carry out such a policy, and hence they looked on the demand of the people for a withdrawal of the troops as equivalent to a demand for the abandonment of their policy and the abdication of the Government. The partial removal already made caused great chagrin. The report, at first, was hardly credited in British political circles, and, when confirmed, was construed into inability, inconsistency, and concession by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... castle was built in the reign of Henry I., the site having been granted to Geoffrey de Clinton, Lord Chief Justice of England. The fortress at one time belonged to Simon de Montfort, who imprisoned Henry III. and his son Edward during the War of the Barons. Edward II. also was forced to sign his abdication there. Queen Elizabeth gave the castle as a present to her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who spent large sums in making great alterations and additions, and entertained the Queen on four different occasions. The memorable ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home

... reign of the infatuated King James II. the English nation, oppressed by a Popish faction, and apprehensive about their civil and religious liberties, were ripe for a revolt; and, upon his abdication, William Prince of Orange accepted of the English crown, on such terms as the Parliament thought proper to offer it. Though history can furnish few examples of a daughter conspiring with subjects to exclude her father from the throne, and ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... took place in the Empire of Brazil previously to and immediately consequent upon the abdication of the late Emperor necessarily suspended any effectual application for the redress of some past injuries suffered by our citizens from that Government, while they have been the cause of others, in which all foreigners seem ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... backgammon, and sing "di tanti palpiti," and, if an Irishwoman, is certain to be able to ride a steeple-chase, and has an uncle a lord, who (en parenthese) always turns out to be a creation made by King James after his abdication. In conclusion, she breakfasts en papillote—wears her shoes down at heel—calls every officer of the regiment by his name —has a great taste for increasing his majesty's lieges, and delights in London porter. To this genus of Frow I have never ceased to entertain the most thrilling abhorrence; ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... is not. When Thenardier tried to rob and was no doubt quite ready to murder, but did, as a matter of fact, help to resuscitate, the gallant French Republican soldier, who was so glad to receive the title of baron from an emperor who had by abdication resigned any right to give it that he ever possessed, it might have been Malplaquet or Leipsic, Fontenoy or Vittoria, for any relevance the details of the battle possessed to the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... friend and companion in the 'Speronare.' He showed Robert at his house poor Louis Philippe's famous 'umbrella,' and the Duke of Orleans' uniform, and the cup from which Napoleon took his coffee, which stood beside him as he signed the abdication. Then there was a picture of 'Milord' hanging up. I must go to see too. Said Robert: 'Then Alexandre Dumas doesn't write romances always?' (You know it was like a sudden spectacle of one of Leda's eggs.) ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... said Napoleon, when Ney had finished. "Macdonald and Ney, with Caulaincourt, will immediately repair with this document to Paris. On the way they will meet Mortier, and request him to accompany them. The four dukes will present my conditional abdication to the Emperor Alexander, and treat with him in regard to the future of my son and the regency ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... foreign, in Belgium (already seen to be the point on which the fate of Napoleon would be decided), the Duke of Wellington assumed the command. The campaign was closed by the decisive victory of Waterloo, on the 18th June, followed by the abdication of Napoleon, and the convention ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... tarried a moment with the Prussian Ambassador and M. de Lesseps, who had to communicate to him a letter from Alexandria relative to the strange abdication of the Pacha ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... different element in his character. He tried to forget something which he could not forget. On the night of the 23rd of March of the year 1801 he had been sitting in a room of the St. Michael Palace in Petersburg, waiting for the news of his father's abdication. But Paul had refused to sign the document which the drunken officers had placed before him on the table, and in their rage they had put a scarf around his neck and had strangled him to death. Then they had gone ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... hereditary in Charles and his heirs male. In the summer of 1651 Christina was, with difficulty, persuaded to reconsider her resolution to abdicate, but three years later the nation had become convinced that her abdication was highly desirable, and the solemn act took place on the 6th of July 1654 at the castle of Upsala, in the presence of the estates and the great dignitaries of the realm. Many were the causes which predisposed her to what was, after all, anything but an act of self-renunciation. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... knowledge. Now and then, however, it happens that they differ, and then the modern student is at a loss. This has been in some measure the case with the famous "gran rifiuto," iii. 60; so that while we may with a high degree of probability accept the more usual view that the allusion is to the abdication of Celestine V., we cannot without further evidence feel so certain about it as we could wish. The whole conception of this canto seems to be due to Dante's own invention; only to a nature like his, keenly alive to the eternal distinction between right and wrong, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... extraordinary than my own; he had lately come back from the frontiers of China, which he had tried to cross after escaping from Siberia. He told me of the catastrophe of the Russian campaign, and of Napoleon's first abdication. That news was one of the things ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... Government, as this scheme evidently was, nor by what authority Congress could declare that the illegal, inoperative, and void acts of usurpers who might have temporary possession of or be a majority in a State, could constitute a practical abdication by the State itself of all rights under the Constitution, regardless of the rights of a legal, loyal minority, guilty of no usurpation or attempted secession—the innocent victims of a conspiracy; nor where Congress or the Federal Government obtained authority ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... Dead, whose abdication Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation. For that performance 'twere unfair to scold her: She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her. To History she'll be no royal riddle— Merely a plain parched ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... of St. Real, which was first read by Schiller in the summer of 1782 and drew from him the comment that the story 'deserved the brush of a dramatist'. St. Real's novel begins by telling how Charles the Fifth arranged, just before his abdication, that his grandson Carlos should some day marry Elizabeth of Valois: and how afterwards Philip determined to take the French princess for his own wife instead of leaving her to his son. Meanwhile, however, by much gazing at the picture of his betrothed, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... no necessity or motive for his abdication; also, having lived all his life with his daughters, has no reason to believe the words of the two elders and not the truthful statement of the youngest; yet upon this is built the whole ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... however, by this time been appointed, with Xavier de Luna Pizarro as its head, so the remonstrances of the Protector were unheeded. After some time spent in useless recrimination, he made a virtue of necessity, and sent in his abdication of the Protectorate, returning, as ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... the manager's parlour. It might have been a court of justice, or a dentist's surgery, or the cabinet of an insurance doctor, or the room at Fontainebleau where Napoleon signed his abdication—anything but the thing it was. Happily Mr Lovatt had a manner which never varied; he had only one manner for all men and all occasions. So that Edwin was not distressed either by the deficiencies of amateur acting or by the exhibition of another's self-conscious awkwardness. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... to do it. You know how some women, when they are married, absolutely give themselves up, try to lose themselves in the behoof of their husbands? I don't say it rightly; there are no words that will express the utterness of their abdication." ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... himself forward; favors, such as he received, sought him. For this reason he remained eleven years a mere captain of the artillery of the Guard, not receiving the rank of major until 1814. His almost fanatical attachment to Napoleon forbade his taking service under the Bourbons after the first abdication. In fact, his devotion in 1815 was such that he would have been banished with so many others if the Comte de Gondreville had not contrived to have his name effaced from the ordinance and put on the retired list with a pension, and the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... of his glory"—that was what the women called it. I can hear Mrs. Gideon Thwing—his last Chicago sitter—deploring his unaccountable abdication. "Of course it's going to send the value of my picture 'way up; but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham—the loss to Arrt is all I think of." The word, on Mrs. Thwing's lips, multiplied its rs as though they were reflected in an ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... names important in Germany—names not found under the manifesto of the Intellectuals—a question arises: Were they not solicited as well to cover up these crimes, or did they refuse? If the question were one of a simple memorial, carrying with it no abdication of conscience, this point would be without importance, for it would simply mean that a list, however long, could not bring together all the men of renown of a country, and omissions would often have to be laid to chance. But here a venomous ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... be sorry to hear of your abdication, but I am, notwithstanding, most heartily and sincerely sorry, for my own sake and the sake of thousands, who may now go and whistle for a theatre—at least, such a theatre as you gave them; and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... concerts, and promenades, and such matters, a woman is far stronger than the most robust of porters. But, however great a woman's strength may be, there is a limit to it, and she cannot hold out long under such a system. As for Monsieur, he had not even the satisfaction of witnessing Madame's abdication of her royalty in the evening, for she lived in the royal pavilion with the young queen and the queen-mother. As a matter of course, the Chevalier de Lorraine did not quit Monsieur, and did not fail to distil drops of gall into every wound ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... proscription. The ancient mother of the nations never forgave the intruder who had disturbed her queenly rest with civil war and filled her streets with bloodshed. Meantime Constantius came up from Syria, won over the legions of Illyricum, reduced Vetranio to a peaceful abdication, and pushed on with augmented forces towards the Julian Alps, there to decide the strife between Magnentius and the house of Constantine. Both parties tried the resources of intrigue; but while Constantius won over the Frank Silvanus from the Western camp, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... of Lambard and Coke be well founded, it might have become a very curious question at the time of the revolution in 1688, in whom the right of the duchy remained after king James's abdication. The attainder indeed of the pretended prince of Wales (by statute 13 W. III. c. 3.) has now put the matter out of doubt. And yet, to give that attainder it's full force in this respect, the object of it must ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... As to the abdication of King James, which the advocates on that side look upon to have been forcible and unjust, and consequently void in itself, I think a man may observe every article of the English Church, without being in much pain about it. 'Tis not unlikely ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... being defeated, Mr. Croker developed with much speed an eagerness for England. I do not blame him; while outwardly respectful, the leading folk of his circle were cheerless and cold, for to be beaten is to be hated in Tammany Hall. And so he made pretense of abdication and Mr. Nixon appeared in his place. The sequel of that ill-fortuned ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... from the endless record of government by massacre, in which, it is to be observed, the crime of bloodguiltiness can by no means be laid exclusively at the door of the dominant race, whilst Mr. Miller's sombre but perfectly true remark that "assassination or abdication, execution or exile, has been the normal fate of Balkan rulers," throws a lurid light on the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... Jonnart en Grece et l'abdication de Constantin." By Raymond Recouly, Paris, 1918. Though not written by the High Commissioner himself, this account may be regarded as a ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... Von Egmond, who commanded the rebels at Gallows Hill during Mackenzie's rebellion, was the first agricultural settler on the Huron tract. He had formerly been a Colonel in the old Imperial Army; and after Buonaparte's abdication and retirement to Elba, he joined the Allies, and held the rank of an officer in one of ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... as Belial had planned, occurred immediately after the receipt of a message from Lucifer, in whose bosom love had finally gained the victory, and who had telegraphed his abdication and resignation of Madam Lucifer to Adeliza's betrothed. The poor young man had just been hauled up from the lower depths, and was beset by legions of demons obsequiously pressing all manner of treasures upon his acceptance. He stared, helpless and bewildered, unable to realise his position ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... nothing more upright. But the gentry were of a different way of thinking,—especially the lawyers and the clergymen. They said such conduct was very weak and undignified; that Mr Harding evinced a lamentable want of esprit de corps, as well as courage; and that such an abdication must do much harm, and could do ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... hive. At this time both the queens, the one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance at each other, a shrill, fine, trumpet-like note that any ear will at once recognize. This challenge, not being allowed to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a day or two by the abdication of the reigning queen; she leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by her keepers, who, in her time, abdicates in favor of the next younger. When the bees have decided that no more swarms can issue, the reigning queen is allowed to use her stiletto upon her unhatched ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... succeeded as King of Spain by Philip II., his son, who also inherited the Flemish provinces. Mr. Motley's incomparable History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic, commences at this point, with the abdication of Charles V., and the accession of Philip II. I hope all who have not read this work will do so, as many of you can, here in the midst of the scenes described ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... wanting is not considered a necessary condition to the granting of education or the extension of any privilege. Such a State confers it in order to create the desire; unenlightened States, like Turkey and Russia, hold off until revolution compels a reluctant, niggardly abdication of tyranny.... We have the conviction that that which has come in Finland and Australia, which is coming in Great Britain, will come in America, and there is a majesty in the sight of a great world-tide which has been gathering ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... man must indeed have had a strong and well-tempered soul; for he learned in forty minutes all the woful events which fortune had scattered through eighteen years, from the first abdication up to the death of the King of Rome. Less happy than his old companions in arms, he had no interval of repose between these terrible and repeated shocks, all beating upon his heart at the same time. One could ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... British Admiral is already informed of the Grand Army being totally defeated and destroyed, the abdication of Buonaparte, &c. and the arrival of the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... accomplishing a large amount of literary work, which repaired his fortune, so that on his return form Paris, where he was United States Ambassador, under President Fillmore, he purchased a country-seat in Jube's Lane, now Forest Hills Street. Mr. Goodrich was in Paris at the time of the abdication of Louis Philippe, was an intimate friend of M. Lamartine, and was of great service through his wise diplomacy. Many of his works were afterwards translated into French by M. de Boisson. While a resident here he was interested in local affairs, and was genial in his relations ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb

... this series of events that in time brought a soldier of the French army to the Swedish throne. How this came about is well worth the telling. After the abdication of Gustavus, Duke Charles of Sodermanland was elected king as Charles XIII., and as he had no children, a Danish prince ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... main antagonist of Godoy, was regarded as the champion of Spanish right and was loved by the Spanish people. The people rose and demanded that Godoy should be delivered to them. In March, 1808, the King abdicated and Fernando was proclaimed King. But the abdication was insincere, and Charles IV wrote to Napoleon that he had been compelled to take that action, certain that if he did not do so, he and the Queen would perish. Not content with this communication, Charles IV went to Bayonne to meet Napoleon, where his son Fernando had been invited by Napoleon to ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... in the Corps Legislatif, "he turned pale, trembled, and seemed to lose his head at the shouts of outlawry.... they had to drag him out.... they even thought for a moment that he was going to faint."[1221] After the abdication at Fontainebleau, on encountering the rage and imprecations which greeted him in Provence, he seemed for some days to be morally shattered; the animal instincts assert their supremacy; he is afraid and makes no attempt at concealment.[1222] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of Shakespeare's love of hierarchy, and shows also that his power of realizing character is as yet but slight. The abdication follows, when Richard in exquisite speech after speech unpacks his heavy heart. To the very last his irresolution comes to show as often as his melancholy. Bolingbroke is sharply practical: "Are you contented to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... whether it had seemed the heroic act of setting forth at the head of her armies, to beat back a German invasion, which it had essentially been, with his instantaneous return as victor, and the Queen's abdication and adoption of republican principles under conviction of his reasoning, and her idolized consecration as the first chief of the Dutch republic. His cheeks glowed, and he quaked at heart lest Lottie should surprise his thoughts and expose them to that sarcastic acquaintance, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... cathedral, statues of Rubens, of the Virgin and Saviour. Proceeded to Brussels; visited three schools; courteously received; arrangements good. Visited the Hotel de Ville; Gobelin tapestry; history of Clovis; abdication of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... When his father's abdication gave him power in 1555, Philip's first active movement was against France. He sought to avenge his father's loss of Metz, and persuaded his English wife to join him in war against young Henry II. With ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... and cold; it has its own peculiar season—a perpetual spring, which the external atmosphere can never change. A subterraneous church is built beneath this temple;—the popes, and several foreign potentates, are buried there: Christina after her abdication—the Stuarts since the overthrow of their dynasty. Rome has long afforded an asylum to exiles from every part of the world. Is not Rome herself dethroned? Her aspect affords consolation to ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... proved to have existed before the end of the third century, which makes the accepted derivation of the name from "ad Palatium" plainly erroneous. Its great celebrity is due to the palace which Diocletian began to build for himself there shortly before 300 A.D. and to which he retired after his abdication in 305. Within its walls fugitives from Salona, who had returned from the islands to which they had fled at the time of the destruction of the city in 639, found shelter, and so the existing city began its mediaeval course. The palace faced the sea to the south, and ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... of the streets of Paris, had noticed that nothing is more propitious to revery than following a pretty woman without knowing whither she is going. There was in this voluntary abdication of his freewill, in this fancy submitting itself to another fancy, which suspects it not, a mixture of fantastic independence and blind obedience, something indescribable, intermediate between slavery and liberty, which pleased ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... for a long time with a life like this, compounded of work and meditation, of solitude and society. Be happy, therefore, Fernand; my abdication has brought no afterthoughts; I have no regrets like Charles V., no longing to try the game again like Napoleon. Five days and nights have passed since I wrote my will; to my mind they might have been five centuries. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... months she was unable to receive her ministers. This weakening of the strong hand was taken advantage of by her enemies. Murdering her principal relatives, they broke into the palace and demanded her abdication. Unable to resist, she, with unabated dignity of mien, handed to them the imperial seal and the other emblems of power. In the following year she died. For more than forty years she had been the supreme ruler of China, and held her great office with a strength and dignity ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... It is a fatal fact, and one indicating a profound social evil, that light should crush the shadow! Gwynplaine thoroughly grasped this dark evil. What! a destiny so reptile? Shall a man drag himself thus along with such adherence to dust and corruption, with such vicious tastes, such an abdication of right, or such abjectness that one feels inclined to crush him under foot? Of what butterfly is, then, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... relinquishment, in the present, of the government of France to the hands of an English prince nominated to become before long her king; this authority given to the English prince to prosecute in France, against the dauphin of France, a civil war; this complete abdication of all the rights and duties of the kingship, of paternity and of national independence; and, to sum up all in one word, this anti-French state-stroke accomplished by a king of France, with the co-operation of him who was the greatest ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Africa, Don Luis Perenna, Sultan of Mauretania, found his old associates and accredited Mazeroux to them and to his grand dignitaries. He organized the government to follow on his abdication and precede the annexation of the new empire by France, and he had several secret interviews on the Moorish border with General Leauty, commanding the French troops, interviews in the course of which ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... portrait of the Senator. He will find that in neither instance did Rienzi fall from his own faults—he will find that the vulgar moral of ambition, blasted by its own excesses, is not the true moral of the Roman's life; he will find that, both in his abdication as Tribune, and his death as Senator, Rienzi fell from the vices of the People. The Tribune was a victim to ignorant cowardice—the Senator, a victim to ferocious avarice. It is this which modern historians have failed to represent. Gibbon records rightly, that ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... pillage, rape, massacre, as at Cesena—a downright river of Carbonaro blood—the Sick Man will have a surfeit of it. So many butcheries in his name—he will shrink, be sure he will shrink—every day will have its remorse, every night its terror, every minute its anguish; and the abdication he already threatens will come at last—perhaps too soon. That is now the only danger; you must provide ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... old, though a priest, though the Vicar of Christ, and there the Emperor was to drink the cup of humiliation, of despair, to the dregs. It was there that, conquered, broken, betrayed by fortune, he was to sign his abdication. It was there that he was to utter those heart-rending words: "It is right; I receive what I have deserved. I wanted no statues, for I knew that there was no safety in receiving them at any other hands than those of posterity. A man to keep them while he lives, needs ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... superhuman dignities, was invested with a sanctity that gradually became irksome, shutting him out, as it did, from all fellowship with men, and compelling him to forego all familiar intercourse with even the highest nobles around his throne. Consequently arose the custom of abdication at a very early age by the Mikados, in favor of their children, for whom they acted as regents, circulating freely, upon their descent to mere mundane authority, with the rest of the court. By this course, however, the integrity of the government was weakened, and, dissensions arising, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... upon half the trouble when he referred the organized absurdities of his contemporaries to hereditary fear: which in the last analysis is a derangement of the higher activities extending to abdication. Its onset is an ataxy; and its culmination a paralysis. In its mental aspect it is failure of the Will-to-know; acceptance of an inferiority to which ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... doth vacate; While English William,—a diviner thing,— Of his free pleasure hath put off the king. The forms of distant old respect lets pass, And melts his crown into the common mass. Health to fair France, and fine regeneration! But England's is the nobler abdication. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of Spain to which he claimed to have prior rights to those of Queen Isabella's branch of the family. This war, which really was a civil war, was accompanied by a great deal of bloodshed and cruelty and finally brought about the abdication of King Amadeus. For a short time after that Spain became a republic, but in 1874 the people decided that their interests would be better served by a monarchy and they made the son of Queen Isabella, Alfonso XII, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... of earthliness. Love is what it ever should be, all noble and elevating,—worship as well as devotion,—annihilating only selfishness, sanctifying, not sacrificing, duty. There is no yielding to a depraved popular taste, no abdication of an inherited throne to stand on a level with the unthinking crowd and receive its worthless applauses. Rather the crowd is bidden higher, to enter upon its own rightful, royal possessions. This is the true ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... bore the first brunt of Mr Fraser's satire, objected to his abdication. He said, as the company was assembled by invitation from the cawdies, he expected they were to be entertained at their expense. 'By no means, my lord (cried Fraser), I wad na he guilty of sic presumption for the wide warld — I never affronted a gentleman ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... carbonari—"married my Aunt. The Chertons are also some sort of distant connection. At least they often stay with Madame. So that she'll be their chaperone. I'm sure you'll like 'em immensely," he adds, "and the Signor, my uncle, is first-rate." We decide. Abdication of Mrs. Boodels and enthronement of the ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand

... broke out in China on the 10th October, 1911, and which was completed with the abdication of the Manchu Dynasty on the 12th February, 1912, though acclaimed as highly successful, was in its practical aspects something very different. With the proclamation of the Republic, the fiction of autocratic rule had truly enough vanished; yet the tradition survived and with it sufficient ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... would have been lost. Nor was there any remedy but one. Representation of the provinces was out of the question. Supposing it possible that a single assembly could have been formed out of all these different races and tongues, the representation of the conquered would have been the abdication of the conqueror, and abdication was a step for which the lazzaroni of the so-called democratic party were as little prepared as the haughtiest aristocrat in Rome. A world of egotism, without faith or morality, could be held together only by force, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... his arrival in the camp, been regarded as a prisoner—although treated with courtesy—and after the battle of Chaurasia—feeling his own impotence, and being viewed with hostility by both parties—he resigned his position as Ameer, and asked to be sent to India, which was done. The abdication of the Ameer really took place on the day the troops entered Cabul, but it was not publicly known until the end of the month; as nothing could be done, on the subject, until his desire was communicated to the Indian authorities, and ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... Fanny's account of her adventures during the " Hundred Days " which elapsed between the return of Napoleon from Elba and his final downfall and abdication. This narrative may be recommended to the reader as an interesting supplement to the history of that period. The great events of the time, the triumphal progress of the emperor, the battles which decided his ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... actual exercise of government and to entrust his functions to a Regency. The moderate Tories under Danby's guidance admitted that James had ceased to be king but denied that the throne could be vacant, and contended that from the moment of his abdication the sovereignty vested in his daughter Mary. It was in vain that the eloquence of Halifax backed the Whig peers in struggling for the resolution of the Commons as it stood. The plan of a Regency was lost by a single ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green

... he feels when he remembers The dust and sweat and ointment of his calling With his lords looking on and laughing at him. King as he is, he can't be king de facto, And that's as well, because he wouldn't like it; He'd frame a lower rating of men then Than he has now; and after that would come An abdication or an apoplexy. He can't be king, not even king of Stratford,— Though half the world, if not the whole of it, May crown him with a crown that fits no king Save Lord Apollo's homesick emissary: Not there on Avon, or on any stream Where Naiads ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... Paris in ’48; from my window at Meurice’s I saw poor old Juste Milieu read his abdication from the historic middle balcony of the Tuileries, and half an hour later we perceived the Duchesse d’Orléans leave the Tuileries on foot, leading her two sons by the hand, and walk through the gardens and across the Place ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... London is very likely, and is noticed by Matthew Paris. But it is curious that the great Offa's biographers wholly omit to mention London. There were some half-dozen kings of the East Saxons after the abdication of Offa, of Essex, and there is some confusion among them and among the Saxon "dukes" after the submission to Egbert in 823, when we may suppose the Kinglets of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various



Words linked to "Abdication" :   resignation, abdicate



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