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Rapine  v. t.  To plunder.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rapine" Quotes from Famous Books



... makes the following statements and remarks: "The value of the spoil, which was distributed by English and Hessian commissaries of captures, amounted to about L300,000 sterling, so that the dividend of a major-general exceeded 4,000 guineas. There was no restraint on private rapine; the silver plate of the planters was carried off; all negroes that had belonged to the rebels were seized, even though they had themselves sought an asylum within the British lines; and at one embarkation 2,000 were shipped to a market in the West Indies. British officers thought more ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... in the Mohammedan countries of the western part of Asia, and extended his conquests there in every direction. It is not necessary to follow his movements in detail. It would only be a repetition of the same tale of rapine, plunder, murder, and devastation. Sometimes a city would surrender at once, when the conqueror approached the gates, by sending out a deputation of the magistrates and other principal inhabitants with the keys of the city, and with magnificent presents, in hopes to appease him. And they usually ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... worst scoundrel race that ever lived A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, Who ransacked Kingdoms and dispeopled towns, The Pict, the painted Briton, treacherous Scot By hunger, theft, and rapine, hither brought Norwegian Pirates—buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; Who, joined with Norman French, compound the breed, From whence you ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... be the carnage! England would be at once bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would go uncontrolled. In every large town famine would be proclaimed, pestilence and death following in its train." {240a} Great allowance should be made for a first work, and I admit that much interesting matter is found in Mr. Darwin's journal; still, it was hardly to be expected ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... political greatness was pursued utterly regardless of human suffering. If advantages accrued to the conquered under her dominion, they arose altogether from incident, and never from her purposed intent. She was no self-conscious, deliberate civilizer. Conquest and rapine, the uniform aim of her actions, never permitted her, even at her utmost intellectual development, to comprehend the equal rights of all men in the eye of the law. Unpitying in her stern policy, few were the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... mere report; it is positively true.'" He concludes by expressing a hope that the course of events will enable Her Majesty's Government to take such steps "as will terminate this wanton and useless bloodshed, and prevent the recurrence of the scenes of injustice, cruelty, and rapine which abundant evidence is every day forthcoming to prove have rarely ceased to disgrace the Republics beyond the Vaal ever since ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... bending low to look curiously into the dead face—wrinkled, scarred, still featuring cruelty, the thin lips drawn back in a snarl. What scenes of horror those eyes had gazed upon during fifty years of crime; what suffering of men, women, children; what deeds of rapine; what examples or merciless hate. Juan Sanchez!—the very sound of the name made the blood run cold. "Dead or alive!" Well, they had him at last—dead; and the plainsman shuddered, as ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... this area was only 300,000 (Arabs, Turks, Jews, Greeks) in the Palestine finger, omitting Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem; while in the Mesopotamia finger—all that Hinterland of Palestine called "Turkish Armenia"—not 320,000 Armenians had been left by Khurdish rapine and Turkish atrocity: we may therefore say that the whole was an uninhabited land waiting ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... it is well understood, mingled and tempered with a strong sense of honour. I imagine, indeed, that they originate for the most part in that principle, developed in vendetta, though degenerating into rapine and robbery. Outlaws must find means of subsistence as well as honest men, and are not likely to be very scrupulous as to the mode of obtaining them. Among such characters there will be miscreants ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... facts had been highly embellished by fiction; handed down from generation to generation, it had now become a long tragic history of robbery, murder, and rapine, which precluded any intercourse between ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... of rifles flashed and the warriors replied instantly, but they were caught at a disadvantage. They had come there for rapine and murder, expecting an easy victory, and while Tandakora rallied them they were no match for the rangers, led by such men as Willet and his lieutenants. The battle, fierce and sanguinary, though it was, lasted a bare five minutes and then the Ojibway and ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... he said, "came out of the woods, pulled the beards of the senators, destroyed the Roman state, murdered and pillaged the Roman people, and left the world the Gothic arch; the Vikings came over the sea, roaring their sagas of rapine and slaughter; the conquerors came to Europe with spear and sword and torch and left the outlines of the map, the boundaries of states. Luther married his nun, and set Christendom to fighting over it for a hundred ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... pride of power, hypocrisy, double- mindedness, adultery, murder, rapine, pride, transgression, deceit, malice, arrogance, witchcraft, covetousness, and the want of the ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... this lip-service prevails in a very great degree, accompanied with extreme dissoluteness of morals. In Portugal, the country that I particularly allude to, it takes place of the most serious moral obligations; for a man is seldom assassinated when in the company of a woman. The savage hand of rapine is unnerved by this chivalrous spirit; and, if the stroke of vengeance cannot be stayed—the lady is entreated to pardon the rudeness and depart in peace, though sprinkled, perhaps, with her husband's ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... had prevailed almost universally in Great Britain also; and had been proclaimed by no one so vehemently as by Mr. Gladstone himself, whose famous declarations that the Nationalists of that day were "steeped to the lips in treason," and were "marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire," were not so quickly forgotten in Ulster as in England, nor so easily passed over as either meaningless or untrue as soon as they became inconvenient for a political party to remember. English supporters ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... is without remedy, and shall be without resentment. But those who have been thus busy with their sickles in the fields of their neighbours, are henceforward to take notice, that the time of impunity is at an end. Whoever shall, without our leave, lay the hand of rapine upon our papers, is to expect that we shall vindicate our due, by the means which justice prescribes, and which are warranted by the immemorial prescriptions of honourable trade. We shall lay hold, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... climes, all seasons in one land unite? What boots it that her buried caves are bright With wealth untold of gold or silver ore? While, checked by anarchy's perpetual blight, Industry trembles 'mid her hard-earned store, While rapine riots near in ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... made himself king of the wild beasts, and wishing to acquire the reputation of equity, abandoned his former course {of rapine}, and, content among them with a moderate supply of food, distributed hallowed justice with incorruptible fidelity. But after second ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... galleons. They were not always the aggressors. Every evidence proves that they submitted to grievances before resorting to arms. When retaliating it was with the knowledge that their own lands would be exposed to rapine. As an illustration of the view in which the Creach was held, the case of Donald Cameron may be taken, who was tried in 1752, for cattle stealing, and executed at Kinloch Rannoch. At his execution he dwelt with surprise and indignation on his fate. He had never committed ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... to cover the world's oceans with pirates, with murder, rapine, and robbery—to exaggerate still more the horrors of war—and yet deems that her commerce will escape! This is a different matter from the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... abbot empty-handed, bribed Lunison with four pieces of gold and five of silver to give him access to the chest. This Lunison did, and Hunus helped himself to as much as would fill a gallon-measure (vas sextarii mensuram) of the sacred remains. Eginhard's indignation at the "rapine" of this "nequissimus nebulo" is exquisitely droll. It would appear that the adage about the receiver being as bad as the thief was not current in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... hidden, and had removed to the Stygian shades.[32] Then destructive iron came forth, and gold, more destructive than iron; then War came forth, that fights through the means of both,[33] and that brandishes in his blood-stained hands the clattering arms. Men live by rapine; the guest is not safe from his entertainer, nor the father-in-law from the son-in-law; good feeling, too, between brothers is a rarity. The husband is eager for the death of the wife, she {for that} of her husband. Horrible ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... she survived, of a delicate frame and advanced in years, was committed to prison, where, with many other female sufferers, she was closely confined for eleven months, during which time she was compelled to endure all sorts of privations. After the committee of rapine had settled their black account, and had remitted the guilty balance to their employers, the latter, in a letter of "friendly collusion, and fraudulent familiarity," after passing a few revolutionary jokes upon what had occurred, observed that the G——s seemed to bleed very freely, and that ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... of the conquerors. His enemies affirmed he was assisted by a demon, whom he had propitiated by some fearful sacrifice made in the tower, and the notion seemed borne out by the success uniformly attending his conflicts. Ughtred's prowess was stained by cruelty and rapine. Merciless in the treatment of his captives, putting them to death by horrible tortures, or immuring them in the dark and noisome dungeon of his tower, he would hold his revels over their heads, and deride their groans. Heaps of treasure, obtained by pillage, were ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Loyalists and the restitution of Loyalist property. 'The proceedings of these people,' wrote Sir Guy Carleton, 'are not to be attributed to politics alone—it serves as a pretence, and under that cloak they act more boldly, but avarice and a desire of rapine are ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... hardier race you boast, I am not daunted, no; I will engage. But first,' said she, 'what wager will you lay?' 'A sheep,' I answered; 'add whate'er you will.' 'I cannot,' she replied, 'make that return: Our hided vessels in their pitchy round Seldom, unless from rapine, hold a sheep. But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun's palace porch, where when unyoked His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one and it awakens, then apply Its polished lips to your attentive ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... and this was only effected by an alarming sacrifice of their morality; Hickory and Wan Lee instantly became Pirates, and at once elected Polly as their Queen. The royal duties, which seemed to be purely maternal, consisted in putting the Pirates to bed after a day of rapine and bloodshed, and in feeding them with liquorice water through a quill in a small bottle. Limited as her functions were, Polly performed them with inimitable gravity and unquestioned sincerity. Even when her companions sometimes hesitated from actual hunger or ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... betray Morgan, yet a flash of his old admiration for the man came into his mind as he licked his lips like a wolf and thought of the days of rapine. There never was such a leader. He had indeed been the terror of the seas. Under no one else would there be such prospects for successful piracy. Yes, he would do all for him faithfully, up to the point of revenge. Morgan's plan was simple ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the war of Israel is being waged with the power which had been promised to Abraham but which had been snatched away from him by the Cross. Trampled under foot, humiliated by his enemies, ceaselessly under threats of death, of persecution, of rapine and violence of every sort, Israel has not succumbed; and if he is dispersed over the whole world it is because the whole world ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... Rapine has yet took nought from me; But if it please my God I be Brought at the last to th' utmost bit, God make me thankful still for it. I have been grateful for my store: Let me say grace when ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... people by its delay. Verse 3. It is an announcement of the overthrow of the Chaldean oppressor, carried out in a series of bold and vivid descriptions in which woe upon woe is pronounced against him for his rapine, covetousness, iniquitous oppression, and idolatry. The third chapter is a lyric ode in which the prophet, in view of both the judgments that God is about to execute on his countrymen through the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... he was, till the close of May, 1793, a Girondist, if not an ultra-Girondist. He exclaimed against those impure and bloodthirsty men who wished to make the public danger a pretext for cruelty and rapine. "Peril," he said, "could be no excuse for crime. It is when the wind blows hard, and the waves run high, that the anchor is most needed; it is when a revolution is raging that the great laws of morality are most necessary to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... lights. Such humours stirr'd them up; but this war's seed Was even the same that wrecks all great dominions. 160 When Fortune made us lords of all, wealth flow'd, And then we grew licentious and rude; The soldiers' prey and rapine brought in riot; Men took delight in jewels, houses, plate, And scorn'd old sparing diet, and ware robes Too light for women; Poverty, who hatch'd Rome's greatest wits,[593] was loath'd, and all the world Ransack'd for gold, which breeds the world['s] decay; ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... am I to look for redress, when I know not to whom the ruthless creatures belong? — Creatures that wander far and wide in search of food; that gain their precarious subsistence by plunder and rapine; and are intensely hostile to the labours and improvements of civilization. No wonder the poet looked upon them as hell-born, and called them a pest and a curse to ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... Sherman was driving Johnson toward Atlanta," said he, "some time in the early part of August, 1864, my father was conducting a revival at a little house called Pine Log Creek Church, about ten miles from Calhoun. The times were most terrible about then; murder, robbery and rapine were of daily occurrence, and the whole country was subject to visitations by marauding parties from both armies. One day the old gentleman was preaching a sermon of unusual power, and before he had gotten well under way a gang of Confederate soldiers rode up, and, dismounting ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... to St. John's Wood, the most drably respectable quarter of the town. This is explained by the fact that it is the Ghetto: the home of the severely moral Jew. There is no disorder in Whitechapel. There is no pillage or rapine or bashing. The colony leads its own pleasant life, among its own people, interfering with none and desiring intercourse with none. It has its own manners and customs and its own simple and very beautiful ceremonies. The Jews in London are ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... the spoilers, chartered by their leader to unlimited and open rapine—indeed, he had led them hither with that understanding—the Prussians, peasant and noble alike, fled to the East. A hundred times the advance guard, fully alive to the advantages of their position, had raced ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... the dais. In the evening the harper played and sang legends of deeds of bravery in the day of Ireland's independence; and as Ronald translated the songs to him Archie could not but conclude privately that civil war, rapine, strife, and massacre must have characterized ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... burnt, by order of the British general. The county of Westchester, very soon after the commencement of hostilities, became, on account of its exposed situation, a scene of deepest distress. From the Croton to Kingsbridge, every species of rapine and lawless violence prevailed. No man went to his bed but under the apprehension of having his house plundered or burnt, or himself or family massacred, before morning. Some, under the character of whigs, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... ammunition was a fatal mistake; Indian diplomacy had overreached Sully's experience, and even while the delivery was in progress a party of warriors had already begun a raid of murder and rapine, which for acts of devilish cruelty perhaps has no parallel in savage warfare. The party consisted of about two hundred Cheyennes and a few Arapahoes, with twenty Sioux who had been visiting their friends, the Cheyennes. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... of to-day steals or fights for his dusky bride, so did our own rude forefathers of past ages look to rapine and the sword as the natural means of procuring the mate who was to minister to ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... 3: Some have held that this prohibition of the apostles is not to be taken literally, but spiritually: namely, that the prohibition of blood signifies the prohibition of murder; the prohibition of things strangled, that of violence and rapine; the prohibition of things offered to idols, that of idolatry; while fornication is forbidden as being evil in itself: which opinion they gathered from certain glosses, which expound these prohibitions ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... The mightiest work of human power, And marvelled as the aged hind, With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, Of forayers who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And home returning, fill'd the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The gateway's broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, Glared through the windows' rusty bars; And ever, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... prevent. By this time the stores which had burned so brilliantly on the previous night were dully glowing heaps of ashes. The tom-toms had ceased their hollow-sounding monotones so suggestive of disorder and rapine, and the wild yelpings of the fiend-like crew had given place to the desultory howling of some coyotes and timber-wolves that had ventured right up to the outskirts of the village, attracted by the late congenial uproar. They were now keeping it up on their own account. Farther away ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... carnage! England would at once be bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would remain uncontrolled. In every large town famine would go forth, pestilence and death ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... bowed before them in adoring admiration; for the attributes wherewith he clothed them were fitting forces to stimulate his progress along the pathway he had chosen, where life was made hideous by the lowering shadows of rapine and murder. ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... defenders of their country drawn up in brilliant array before its peaceful citizens; their faces beaming—not with warlike ferocity, but with civilised gentleness; their eyes flashing—not with the rude fire of rapine or revenge, but with the soft light ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... accident of his mortality. The trouble of earth passed before him in its unceasing panorama, a pageant of pain and death. Every atom of creation was against every other atom, because everywhere was warfare, murder and rapine, for the mere chance of living. He had won his inherited chance by sheer luck of contest through millions of years while his forebears came up from the slime and the cave. The little hunted creature, shrieking out there in the wood in the clutch of a predatory enemy ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... Leyba were made up of Aguinaldo's fellow townsmen. They never obeyed any one else, and left a trail of murder and rapine behind them. Aguinaldo never punished them, and from the time when one of them tried to murder their commander until a guard composed of them murdered General Antonio Luna in June, 1899, they are mentioned only ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... Ferocity, lawlessness, rapine, cruelty, and—when they were glutted and debauched by the spoils of the Roman empire—sensuality, were the evils which were making Europe uninhabitable for decent folk, and history—as Milton called ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... as his associate their relative, the Dog. It is the same with the Eagle and the Crow. The latter, in order to seize the prey which he desires, needs much more varied resources than the great bird of rapine for ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... family of Logan; the assassination of Bald Eagle, of the gallant and high-souled Cornstalk, and his son Elinipsico: we need but recall these, from the long catalogue of similar cases, to satisfy every candid mind, that rapine, cruelty and a thirst for human blood are not peculiarly the attributes of ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... group of animals should have been directly created to lay their eggs in bowels and flesh of other,—that some organisms should delight in cruelty,—that animals should be led away by false instincts,—that annually there should be an incalculable waste of eggs and pollen. From death, famine, rapine, and the concealed war of nature we can see that the highest good, which we can conceive, the creation of the higher animals has directly come. Doubtless it at first transcends our humble powers, to conceive laws capable of creating individual ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... in time, and be of excellent use for the turner, not inferior to box, and accounted among the fortunate trees, and therefore us'd in fasces nuptiarum, since the jolly shepherds carryed the white-thorn at the rapine of the Sabines; and ever ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... for peace; and again, when refreshed, will rush into still more ruinous war:—thus all things run in a circle. But France has found out the secret for this age, and—vae victis!—the pestilence will be tame to the triumph of her frenzy, her rapine, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... De Meudon earnestly; "do not embark with these Irish rebels in their enterprise! They have none. Their only daring is some deed of rapine and murder. No; liberty is not to be achieved by such bands as these. France is your country—there liberty has been won; there lives one great man whose notice, were it but passingly bestowed, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would account for the awe in ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... the N.E. It would have been better to have traveled by compass alone, for the guides took advantage of any fears expressed by my people, and threatened to return if presents were not made at once. But my men had never left their own country before except for rapine and murder. When they formerly came to a village they were in the habit of killing numbers of the inhabitants, and then taking a few young men to serve as guides to the next place. As this was their first attempt at an opposite line of conduct, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... friendship, when peaceful immigration has replaced armed invasions, when the free exchange of capital and the international ownership of industrial and commercial enterprises, of manufactures, of mines, have replaced rapine and plunder—in this era of commercial conquest and industrial acquisition, of more frequent intercourse among men, of more intimate knowledge and better understanding, there has come to you in this your great misfortune the friendship and the sympathy ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root

... the brave Cavalier ballad, Halfman, watching her, found his eyes dim with most unfamiliar water. Fierce memories of his life seemed to come before him sharply, vivid succeeding pictures, rich in evil. In a flash he tramped across forests, sack and battle and rapine new painted themselves upon his brain; deeds long dead and forgotten suddenly became instant agonies. He seemed like a prisoner before an invisible judge, and his startled spirit sought wildly and vainly for some good deed it might offer ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... that they were enamored of being pirates and expected to follow a career of rapine and bloodthirsty adventure on the ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... on legend, such as have been accepted for more than two thousand years. It is but little consequence whether Romulus and Remus are real characters, or poetic names. This is probable, that the situation of Rome was favorable in ancient times for rapine, even if it were not a healthy locality. The first beginnings of Rome were violence and robbery, and the murder of Remus by Romulus is a type of its early history, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... himself upon the throne. For a long time he deliberated, till finally he came to a decision; and, sending for the Tailor, he told him that, seeing he was so great a hero, he wished to beg a favor of him. "In a certain forest in my kingdom," said the King, "there are two Giants, who, by murder, rapine, fire, and robbery, have committed great damage, and no one approaches them without endangering his own life. If you overcome and slay both these Giants, I will give you my only daughter in marriage, and half of my kingdom for a dowry: ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... hoodooed us," Pete went on. "You know they say the Wilmington 'Blue' brought bad luck to everybody who owned it. Anyway, battle, murder, adultery, rape, rapine, and sudden death have followed it right along the line down through history. Oh, it's been a busy cake of ice—take it from muh! Hope the mermaids fight ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... believe it turns out, after all, that these outraged people even then did not rise up against the local government; but the white ruffians of the island, goaded on by their own unchecked rapacity, and availing themselves of the infernal pretext of a black insurrection, perpetrated deeds of rapine and vengeance that find no parallel anywhere, save in the acts of their natural allies, the late slave-breeding rebels, against our flag. Sir, is there no warning here against the policy of leaving ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... which seemed as if it must have been attempted under the inspiration of science and with the hope of the most important discoveries, had been undertaken by Stradling with no object but of traffic and even of rapine. These had been the great ends of most of the bold enterprises which had preceded. The Spanish and Portuguese, in their discoveries of new continents, had thought less of glory than of riches; they had conquered the New World only to pillage it; the vanquished who escaped extermination, ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... They had also their class grievance against the rich, who had been enabled to buy themselves off from serving in the army. The numbers of the original fugitives were soon increased by evil-doers from all sides—ruffians who had a natural bent for rapine—and a plague of robbers was the result, threatening all parts of Hungary. The mischief grew to such serious proportions, and it transpired that the robbers had everywhere accomplices in the towns and villages. Persons ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... lot of the wild tribes of nature," said Isabella, "but chiefly of those who are destined to support themselves by rapine, which brooks no partner; but it is not the law of nature in general; even the lower orders have confederacies for mutual defence. But mankind—the race would perish did they cease to aid each other.—From the time that the mother binds the child's head, till the ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... diary made during the month of October, 1789, long before 'the Terror,' by Gouverneur Morris. 'Surely it is not the usual order of Divine Providence to leave such abominations unpunished. Paris is, perhaps, as wicked a spot as exists. Incest, murder, bestiality, fraud, rapine, oppression, baseness, cruelty, and yet this is the city which has stepped forward in the sacred cause ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... beginning to work as I expected. Our long deluded people are opening their eyes, and beginning to see and smell the blood and burnings of that 'Tophet', that political hell of slavery and ruin, to which the British army is now endeavoring, by murder and rapine, to ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... than seven weeks the pillage continued.[496] Twenty-two towns and villages were utterly destroyed. The soldiers, glutted with blood and rapine, were withdrawn from the scene of their infamous excesses. Most of the Waldenses who had escaped sword, famine, and exposure, gradually returned to the familiar sites, and established themselves anew, maintaining their ancient faith.[497] But multitudes had perished of hunger,[498] while others, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... sensations of pleasure from the novelty, extent, and variety of the whole scene. Yet, calmly and peacefully as it now slumbers in the genial sunshine of a summer's afternoon, what visions it conjures up of bloodshed and rapine, plague, pestilence, and famine, and of all the calamities wrought by human hands, and all the appalling visitations of a divine power by which this ill-fated spot has been afflicted. Looking back through the wide waste of years, the mighty hosts of Tamerlane ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... Sincapore. It was expected that we might there fall in with some of the piratical vessels which so completely infest the Indian Archipelago; and if so, we trusted to give them a lesson which might for a time put a check to their nefarious and cruel system of plunder and rapine. I found that my name was down in the list of the party selected for the expedition. Bidding, therefore, a temporary adieu to Sincapore, on the 2d of August we set off on the expedition, with a force consisting of two barges, one cutter, and a gun-boat belonging ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... Italian literature. The seemingly endless battle between Emperor and Pope, which scarred the soul of Italy through so many years, was at that time raging between Frederick II and Innocent III and Gregory IX. The land reeked with carnage, rapine, murder, fire and famine. So great was the force of all this that the people fell into a state of religious terror. They believed that the vengeance of a wrathful God must immediately descend upon the country, and as a penance the ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson

... munificentiae per bella et raptus. Nec arare terram, aut expectare annum, tam facile persuaseris, quam vocare hostes et vulnera mereri; pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore acquirere, quod possis sanguine parare.' 'War and rapine supply the prince with the means of his munificence. You cannot persuade the German to cultivate the fields and wait patiently for the harvest so easily as you can to challenge the enemy, and expose himself to honourable wounds. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... garnisshinges of yuorye, and other rare thinges whiche emong men are of price. And in this bounteous magnificence haue thei continued many yeres. For why the gredy compasse how to atteyne honoure with the vniuste rapine of other mennes goodes, that hath tombled downe headeling so many commune wealthes, neuer had place emong them. In richesse equal vnto them, are the Garrei, whose implementes of household are all of golde and siluer, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... at their head, and gout-ridden Governor Steed sitting on the ruins of a wall beside him, they glumly watched the departure of the eight boats containing the weary Spanish ruffians who had glutted themselves with rapine, murder, and ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... Let rapine its republics rear, And murder its red sceptre sway, Their blood-stained riot comes not near The quiet haven where we pray, And work and love and laugh and play; Unchanged, our skies are ever blue, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... the city, I destroyed its people;" he treated them as he did the Trojans, "taking as booty their wives and property." Such is the spirit begotten of that ten years' war in the character of Ulysses, a spirit of violence and rapine, totally unfitted for a civilized life, at bottom negative to Family and State. This is the spiritual starting-point from which he is to return to home and country through a long, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... says an old padre. "We knew since 1838 that gold was dug at Franscisquita canyon in the south. If we had the old blessed days of Church rule, we could have quietly controlled this great treasure field. But this is now the land of rapine and adventure. First, the old pearl-fishers in the gulf of California; then the pirates lurking along the coast, watching the Philippine galleons. When your Americans overran Texas, and commenced ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... cast down their arms and all as with one voice confessed themselves prisoners; whereupon quoth Cimon to them, 'Young men, it was neither lust of rapine nor hate that I had against you made me depart Cyprus to assail you, arms in hand, in mid sea. That which moved me thereunto was the desire of a thing which to have gotten is a very grave matter to ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... live is not so good as it might be. I know there are many people who suppose French revolutions, Italian insurrections, Caffre wars, and such other scenic effects of modern policy, to be among the normal conditions of humanity. I know there are many who think the atmosphere of rapine, rebellion, and misery which wraps the lower orders of Europe more closely every day, is as natural a phenomenon as a hot summer. But God forbid! There are ills which flesh is heir to, and troubles to which man is born; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... thoughts were thine, When ceaseless from the distant line Continued thunders came! Each burgher held his breath, to hear These forerunners of havoc near, Of rapine and of flame. What ghastly sights were thine to meet, When rolling through thy stately street, The wounded showed their mangled plight In token of the unfinished fight, And from each anguish-laden wain The blood-drops laid thy dust like rain! How often in the distant drum ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... evil under the sun; and I believe, there is no one mistaken principle, which, for its time, has wrought more serious mischiefs.—For a general proof of this,—examine the history of the Romish church;'—(Well what can you make of that? cried Dr. Slop)—'see what scenes of cruelty, murder, rapine, bloodshed,'—(They may thank their own obstinacy, cried Dr. Slop)—have all been sanctified by a religion ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... the principal entrance, the door of which had been forced. They were recognised in the neighbourhood as the most sanguinary and terrible marauders of the coasts,—men stained with a thousand murders, and who had never hitherto failed in any attempt to which the lust of rapine had impelled them. The footsteps of many others were tracked to the seashore. It seemed that their accomplices must have fled on the death of their leaders. But when the Venetian Proveditore, or authority, of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of the President? Not an armed rebel, clothed with belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding associates presume to use,—a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... supposedly sturdy republican. But he was only marking time. He left a terrific arraignment of war and its horrors. Nor did he spare the French. Callot, Hell-Breughel, are outdone in these swift, ghastly memoranda of misery, barbarity, rapine, and ruin. The hypocrite Ferdinand VII was no sooner on the throne of his father than Goya, hat in hand but sneer on lip and twinkle in eye, approached him, and after some parleying was restored to royal favour. Goya declared ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude, bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend,' said he, 'I know you for an associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine. Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you are broken on the wheel.' Vainly did Du Chatelet protest his ignorance. M. Pacome was resolute, and before the interview was over the robber confessed that Cartouche had ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... martyrdom on the part of the oppressed to obtain even the poor semblance of liberty that we flatter ourselves we possess. Kings have been beheaded, thrones have been overturned, cities have been given to the flames, and countries have suffered pillage and rapine, all to knock it into the head of that tyrannical brute, man, that, on the whole, it is better not to force his despotism on his fellow-creatures. Yet, human nature has not changed in the least, and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... as he judges to be within his reach, is attained, then, and not till then, he is for conservation;—revolution then is sin; but, till then he will have change and overturning—he will fill the earth with rapine, and fire, and slaughter. But this is just the peace and war principle, which this man, who proposes a durable and solid peace, and the true state, a state constructed with reference to true definitions and axioms,—this is the peace and war principle which the man of science, on scientific ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... thirsting for the marvellous in the adventures of heroes, has it that he found in the ruins of a church a treasure which enabled him to reconstitute his party. But he himself has contradicted this story, stating that it was by the ordinary methods of rapine and plunder that he replenished his finances. He selected from his old band of brigands thirty palikars, and entered, as their bouloubachi, or leader of the group, into the service of the Pacha of Negropont. But he soon tired of the methodical life he was obliged to lead, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... no experience of slaughter and rapine, their imaginations were not sufficiently strong to enable them to understand what these things meant; they were lost in the pettiness of daily life and its pressing local interests. Their homes in flames, they themselves massacred, ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... the barons supplied their places with native retainers. Thus the Ersefication of the degenerate Normans became complete; they "donned the saffron"—that is, they adopted the yellow dress of the Celts—abandoned their original language, and gave themselves up to a life of constant plunder and rapine. ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... other men's possessions, and exercised charity? "O Lord! in thy name we have done charitable deeds, we have fed the poor, clothed the naked, and hospitably received the stranger:" to whom the Lord will answer; "Ye speak of what ye have given away, but speak not of the rapine ye have committed; ye relate concerning those ye have fed, and remember not those ye have killed." I have judged it proper to insert in this place an instance of an answer which Richard, king of the English, made to Fulke, {63} a good and holy man, by whom God in these our days ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... resist, may be attributed more justly to their poverty and state of exile than to their sense of virtue. For they cannot be said to have repented, when we see them involved in such an abyss of vices, perjury, theft, robbery, rapine, murders, fratricides, adultery, and incest, and become every day more entangled and ensnared in evil-doing; so that the words of the prophet Hosea may be truly applied to them, "There is no truth, ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis

... of books is taken down into the yard on Sunday afternoon, and neighbors and lodgers have the use of them." It is satisfactory to know that the biggest of the home libraries is within stone's throw of Corlear's Hook, which the "Hook Gang" terrorized with rapine ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... And perhaps that accounts for their taking no notice of the actions of various portions of the Allied soldiery. Wholesale robbery, cruelty, and the raping of women were going on all round; a regular orgy of rapine surged through the captured city. Yet not one solitary voice of protest ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... physicians, lawyers, merchants, burst open the doors of cellars, drink the wine," and riot like drunken victors. In several communes these expeditions have become a custom; "a large number of individuals are found in them who live on rapine alone," and the club sets them the example. For six months, in the principal town, a coterie of the National Guard, called the Black Band, expel all persons who are displeasing to them, "pillaging houses at will, beating to death, wounding or mutilating by saber-strokes, all who have been ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... combination formed against us. Well, had the Dutch fleet been able to join forces with the French, this brave Britain of ours would no longer have ruled the ocean, and all the horrors of invasion, massacre, and rapine would have been added to our other troubles. We were depending upon our Channel fleet to avert the last and overwhelming calamity, when all at once, to the horror of every one, this fleet mutinied and refused to go to sea. They even seized their officers, and though they lifted no hand against ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... hushed whispers how it would be under the Reds. The huge mural became a panorama of rapine. Commie soldiers sacked Euramerican cities and hamlets. Girls were dragged off for the pleasure of drunken battalions. Barbarian guffaws rang out as homes and stores were pillaged ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds

... the Bastille, chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty. Foreign satellites in the interior of the state—bankruptcy, engulphing with your assignats your private fortunes and the national wealth—the fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration, despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country. Nobility; that is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one for tyranny, the other for ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... but I am telling a simple story in this log of what takes place in warfare, when men of our army and navy contend with the uncivilised enemies of other lands. In this case we were encountering a gang of bloodthirsty wretches, whose whole career had been one of rapine and destruction. The desire seemed to be innate to kill, and this man, a prisoner, who since he had been taken had received nothing but kindness and attention, had been patiently watching for the opportunity which came at last. Just ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... Zagatai; and, after his capture and the defeat of the Ottoman powers, the kingdom of Anatolia submitted to the conqueror, who planted his standard at Kiotahia, and dispersed on all sides the ministers of rapine and destruction. Mirza Mehemmed Sultan, the eldest and best beloved of his grandsons, was despatched to Bursa, with thirty thousand horse; and such was his youthful ardor that he arrived with only four thousand at the gates of the capital, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... found only in religion." In the same article we find the following: "We are obliged to hold intercourse and transact business and mix up in life with knaves possessing little or no reflection; with vast numbers of persons addicted to brutality, intoxication and rapine. You may, if you please, preach to them that there is no hell, and that the soul of man is mortal. As for myself, I will be sure to thunder in their ears that if they rob me they will inevitably be damned." His true position upon the hell question is, that it is necessary ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... the English was not so much affected by the irregularities of her privateers, armed for rapine, as by the neglect of internal police, and an ingredient of savage ferocity mingled in the national character; an ingredient that appeared but too conspicuous in the particulars of several shocking murders brought to light about this period.—One Halsey, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... generation, and the very spots in which they have occurred, howmuchsoever altered or improved in the course of ages, haunted, as if by an actual presence, by the horror and the scent of blood; while on the other hand the fame of ordinary deeds of violence and rapine seems almost to be lost before the lives of the perpetrators are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... in these words: 'The backwoodsman's hatred of the Indian has been a topic for some remark. In the earlier times of the frontier the passion was thought to be readily accounted for. But Indian rapine having mostly ceased through regions where it once prevailed, the philanthropist is surprised that Indian-hating has not in like degree ceased with it. He wonders why the backwoodsman still regards the red man in much the same spirit that a jury does a murderer, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... swarms, after the first, sally forth to avoid the battle of the Queens; constantly making a greater draft, in proportion to the number left, until the combs are partly exposed, which gives the miller free access to their edges.—The seeds of rapine and plunder are thus quickly sown, and soon vegetate, and fortify themselves by their silken fortress, before the bees are aware that their frontiers are invaded. While the moths are thus engaged ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks

... attachment; while, either by himself or by means of the troops of the line, he made them bear the most frightful yoke (le joug le plus affreux). He defamed honest people, encouraged insubordination, and closed his eyes to the rapine of his soldiers." ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... storms are hovering over head. The simplicity of early days is getting obsolete. Vice, gilded vice, flaunts in the palace. Gaunt famine is preying on the vitals of the people. 'Tis so at Versailles; 'tis so at Quebec. Lust—selfishness—rapine—public plunder everywhere—except among the small party of the Honnetes Gens: [120] a carnival of pleasure, to be followed by the voice of wailing and by the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... Marshal Soult, brought back, after his victorious invasion, pictures enough to enrich a Czar. One of these stolen treasures was the picture we are studying. In 1852, the French government bought it of him for more than $120,000. There is but one mitigating thought regarding this rapine of the French, and that is that many art treasures, heretofore virtually locked to the public, were opened to the ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... dominion of the Romans there were dukes who had a certain number of troops or armed men in the district where they governed, and their power was arbitrary and they had counts under them who also had a certain number of men subjected to their orders; sometimes these nobles carried rapine, pillage and slaughter into each other's territories, when the government had devolved upon the Franks; and the king took no notice of their misdeeds, as long as they observed a certain fealty towards him, and ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... offices, honours, and positions, which ill agree with human cupidity. Hence a conflict of desires, a collision of ambitions, a contest of interests, which at all times generate among men discords, machinations, frauds, usurpations, treachery, violence, and rapine. Add the consequences of the pride and ambition, which each more or less entertains, to reach or surpass some others in power, wealth, or fame, whence many causes of disappointments and heartburnings, of ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio

... that there is need of diversifying our industry—- as though industry would not diversify itself sufficiently through the diverse tastes and predilections of individuals—as though it were necessary to supplement the work of the Creator in this behalf, by human enactments founded upon reciprocal rapine. The only rational object of diversifying industry is to make people better and happier. Do men and women become better and happier by being huddled together in mills and factories, in a stifling atmosphere, on scanty wages, ten hours each day and 313 days each ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... that a minion of the wicked Italian government had once scraped its flowers and weeds away and cleaned it up so that it was perfectly spoiled. But it would take a good deal more than that to spoil the Colosseum, for neither the rapine of the mediaeval nobles, who quarried their palaces from it, nor the industrial enterprise of some of the popes, who wished to turn it into workshops, nor the archeology of United Italy had sufficed to weaken in it ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... to many wise citizens a clear prospect of dwelling in [the] midst of a furious pandemonium for several years after an unfavorable termination of the war; but was this prospect realized? Where were the highway robberies, the bloody vengeances, the arsons, the rapine, the murders, the outrages, the insults? They WERE, not anywhere. With great calmness the soldier cast behind him the memory of all wrongs and hardships and reckless habits of the war, embraced his wife, patched his cabin-roof, and proceeded to mingle the dust of recent ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... after two centuries of war and tumultuous movements we perceive that almost all its lands have found fresh masters. The political changes are tremendous. Cataclysm has followed hard on cataclysm. The Phrygian dynasty has gone down in massacre and rapine, and from another seat of power its former client rules Asia Minor in its stead. The strongholds of the lesser Semitic peoples have almost all succumbed, and Syria is a well-picked bone snatched by one foreign ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... was working as it had never worked before. She realised what a prodigious liar Shelek Pasha was; for, talking benignly of equitable administration as he did, she recalled the dark stories she had heard of rapine and cruel imprisonment ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and her Sister were so hampered and Tyrannically treated by the Steward, he came to their Assistance, supplied them with Money, which he raised from the Fen-men, and fairly set them free from his Oppression and Rapine, reversed his Grants, cancelled his sham Leases, restored Possessions, Leets and Manor-Courts, made up Fences for the Tenants, and so strongly secured their Copyholds, that there is no likelihood ...
— The True Life of Betty Ireland • Anonymous



Words linked to "Rapine" :   pillaging, pillage, plundering



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