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Reprisal   Listen
noun
Reprisal  n.  
1.
The act of taking from an enemy by way of reteliation or indemnity. "Debatable ground, on which incursions and reprisals continued to take place."
2.
Anything taken from an enemy in retaliation.
3.
The act of retorting on an enemy by inflicting suffering or death on a prisoner taken from him, in retaliation for an act of inhumanity.
4.
Any act of retaliation.
Letters of marque and reprisal. See under Marque.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Reprisal" Quotes from Famous Books



... Allies of such Hungarian subjects as were left within their territory at the opening of hostilities. Of the nations which I have studied Hungary is the only one involved in the present conflict which has not stooped to reprisal and retaliation. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... the forge and bakery, conceived the idea of taking forcible possession of them, in order to appropriate them to their own use. As a preparation for this, and particularly to put themselves in a favorable condition in case of an attack or reprisal, they were seen removing their women, children, and effects into the forests, and even taking down their cabins. De Poutrincourt, observing this, gave orders to the workmen to pass their nights no longer on shore, but to go on board the barque to ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... hundred times a day he closed his eyes and lived the sweet memory of her visit; but with the gathering arraignments of his doubts, he wondered if it had all been the studied act of the English girl's reprisal on the American who had ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... spear from the scrub, can't find a place for Exeter Hall and its 'poor native' in our hard hearts. We stand in such a case for justice. It is a new country. Not once in fifty times would law reach them. Reprisal and dispersion were the only things possible to men whose friends had been massacred, and—well, they punished tribes for the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the Canadians in shallow dugouts and behind flimsy trenches endured the maddening pounding of the Huns' guns, big and little, without the satisfaction of reprisal, except in raid or counter-attack, suffering the loss of two-thirds of their entire force, but still holding. Now at length came the welcome release. They were ordered to the Somme. Welcome not simply because of escape from an experience the most trying to ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... Jacobins, and on fair terms exchange prisoners with them, whilst the Royalists, invited to our standard, and employed under our public faith against the Jacobins, if taken by that savage faction, are given up to the executioner without the least attempt whatsoever at reprisal. For this we are to look at the king of Prussia's conduct, compared with his manifestoes about a twelvemonth ago. For this we are to look at the capitulations of Mentz and Valenciennes, made in the course of the present ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... opposition: they will shut themselves up in their own territories, and let us exhaust our seamen in a hopeless siege: they will give commissions to privateers of every nation, who will prey upon our merchants without possibility of reprisal. If they think their Plata fleet in danger, they will forbid it to set sail, and live awhile upon the credit of treasure which all Europe knows to be safe; and which, if our obstinacy should continue till they can no longer be without it, will be conveyed to them with secrecy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... guilt the first suggestion of which excited her scornful laughter, and she knew it to be more than probable that her father had yielded to temptation purposely put in his way. She was not unconscious of the power of reprisal which so gross a plot put into her hands, though it was true that the secrecy Dagworthy had maintained in his intercourse with her left but her bare assertion for evidence against him. Yet the thought was profitless. Suppose he did not venture to ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... however—that arch schemer—had not forgiven the girls for laughing at his overset on the toboggan slide the night before. And as he sat whistling "Good Night, Ladies" in a dreadful minor, he evolved such a plan for reprisal in his fertile mind that his eyes began to snap and he could hardly whistle for the grin that wreathed ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... wanted to flog a French soldier, he shared my indignation. He returned to the king to whom he protested warmly, adding that if the sentence were to be carried out, the Emperor by way of reprisal would flog not only the soldiers but also the Prussian officers who were his prisoners. The king was a humane man; he ordered that the dragoon Harpin should be released, and to please Napoleon, from whom he was at that moment asking peace, he offered to Marshal Duroc to release to him all ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... not be shocked by ragged and hungry children, and persons of seventy and eighty years of age, begging for bread. The dying poor will not be dragged from place to place to breathe their last, as a reprisal of parish upon parish. Widows will have a maintenance for their children, and not be carted away, on the death of their husbands, like culprits and criminals; and children will no longer be considered as increasing ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... British to come out. An English ship having bombarded the American port of Falmouth, an act was passed by the General Court of Massachusetts, encouraging the fitting out of armed vessels to defend the coast of America, and granting letters of marque and reprisal. In October a conference of delegates was held, under Washington's presidency, of which Benjamin Franklin was a member, with regard to a new organisation of the army; and a new force of twenty-two thousand was formed, every soldier being enlisted ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... at Hong Kong at once protested. The Chinese Imperial Commissioner Yeh replied that "The Arrow" was not a foreign vessel, and therefore declined to enter into any discussion about her. As a first step toward obtaining reparation the British seized a Chinese imperial junk and held her in reprisal. As this failed to bring the Chinese to terms, Sir Michael Seymour with a British squadron bombarded and seized the barrier forts of Canton. The fleet proceeded up the river, and, after capturing the Chinese fort of Macao Passage, came to anchor before Canton. An ultimatum ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... high-priced and indifferent manufactures. In a word, she would lose the monopoly of trade which she at present possesses in these provinces. But, on the other hand, were Turkey animated by a spirit of reprisal, she might throw such obstacles in the path of her more powerful neighbour as would almost compel her to ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... is not to have— Under the seared Firmament, Where Chaos sweeps, and Vast Futurity Sneers at these puny Aspirations— There is the full Reprisal." ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade

... and the useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations; declare war; grant letters of marque and reprisal; make rules concerning captures on land and water; raise and support armies; provide and maintain a navy; make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; provide for calling forth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... commanders of the soldiers and militia all over the Cevennes, were hunting the Protestants and their families wherever found, pillaging their houses, driving away their cattle, and burning their huts; and it was evident that the war on both sides was fast drifting into one of reprisal and revenge. Brigands, belonging to neither side, organized themselves in bodies, and robbed Protestants and ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... second detachment, which had entered and begun to plunder the magazine, was set upon by the rabble and completely butchered. Duclerc's defence soon grew hopeless, and he was forced to surrender at discretion. The Portuguese sullied their victory by acts of cruel reprisal, many of the prisoners in their hands being murdered. In all nearly seven hundred of the French were killed and wounded. Six hundred, including the wounded, were taken prisoners, and of these many died through bad treatment in the prisons. Duclerc was murdered some-months after ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... or a wrought nail from a European, is looked upon as a praiseworthy action. Or rather, it may be presumed, that bearing in mind the wholesale forays made upon them by their nautical visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair object of reprisal. This consideration, while it serves to reconcile an apparent contradiction in the moral character of the islanders, should in some measure alter that low opinion of it which the reader of South Sea voyages is too ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... the part that was like a dying reprisal, though obviously not being directed by him as of now. And come to think of it, it may ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... chose; though he was ordinarily suspicious as to the motives of people in saying things. With March he got on no better than at first. He seemed to be lying in wait for some encroachment of the literary department on the art department, and he met it now and then with anticipative reprisal. After these rebuffs, the editor delivered him over to the manager, who could turn Beaton's contrary-mindedness to account by asking the reverse of what he really wanted done. This was what Fulkerson said; the fact was that he did get on with Beaton and March ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... can even the Warden of a great prison do in reprisal on a prisoner upon whom the ultimate reprisal has already been wreaked? It may be that Warden Atherton thought of some possible threat, for he began to speak. But my voice had strengthened with the exercise, and I began ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... exercised? On the 3d of March, Sir, I had not forgotten, it was impossible that I should have forgotten, the recommendation in the message at the opening of that session, that power should be vested in the President to issue letters of marque and reprisal against France, at his discretion, in the recess of Congress. Happily, this power was not granted; but suppose it had been, what would then have been the true condition of this government? Why, Sir, this condition is very shortly described. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... in those ballads of the Borders whose business is with foray and reprisal, we have none of this disturbing element. The sheer love of adventure, the chance of exchanging 'hard dunts' with the Englishmen, is inducement enough for us to follow the lead of the Douglas or Buccleuch across the Waste of Bewcastle or through ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie

... during the next day or two the anticipated calamity fell upon Louvain. The Germans without any proof insisted that sniping was going on, and the military authorities seized this pretext to put into force their threatened reprisal. The torch was thrown into convicted houses. Larger groups of citizens were led to execution. Thereupon the "brute" passion dormant in soldiers broke the bonds of discipline. Flames burst forth everywhere. Beneath the lurid glow cast upon ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... consider the Indians as an independent people." At Canseau, at Cape Sable, at Annapolis, and Passamaquoddy, English forts, fishing stations, and vessels were attacked and destroyed by the savages with all the circumstances that make up the hideous features of barbaric reprisal. Unhappy Acadia came in for her share of condemnation. Although her innocent people had no part in these transactions, yet her missionaries had converted the Abenaqui to faith in the symbol of the crucifixion, and ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... a bitter pang at the idea that an old and formerly zealous servant was about to become a victim to expediency, for the spirit of revolt, which he had hitherto endeavoured to suppress by clemency, had now risen hydra-headed, threatening to dispute his right of reprisal, and to involve the nation once more in civil war. He painfully felt, that under circumstances like these, lenity would become, not only a weakness, but a crime, and possessing, as he did, the most indubitable proofs ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... years, with the privilege of extension 14 years longer. It is issued only to a citizen or resident of the United States. A patent is now granted to an inventor for 17 years, without the privilege of extension. Any crime punishable with death is a felony. "Letters of marque and reprisal" are commissions given to persons authorizing them to seize the property of another nation By the term "high seas" is meant the open sea, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... Such a reprisal upon Mr. Metaphor's yoke-fellow, who was by no means remarkable for her beauty, could not fail to operate upon the hearers; and as for the bard himself, he was evidently ruffled by the reflection; to which, however, he, without hesitation, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... the Czar and his official household instead of doing anything towards relieving the burdens under which the people groaned, and which drove them to these bitter acts of revenge and reprisal, took all means possible to bind their chains closer yet, and to stamp out Nihilism with an ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold

... he said, very gently. "I've given you three an awful jolt. But I think you will all admit that there was something coming to you. You've put me through a pretty bad week. I decided you could endure half an hour of reprisal." ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... form of retaliation to be met with in the history of home pressing. In the American colonies, on the other hand, it was a common feature of demonstrations against the gang. Boston was specially notorious for that form of reprisal, and Governor Shirley, in one of his masterly dispatches, narrates at length, and with no little humour, how the mob on one occasion burnt with great eclat what they believed to be the press-boat, only to discover, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... fruitful source of evil to its children. Abstracted from the world, they are apt to form a false estimate of themselves and of it, and to entertain exaggerated expectations from it. Their morbid feelings are little able to support the disappointment certain to ensue, and they either rush into a reprisal of imaginary wrongs, by satire on others, or inflict torture on themselves by the belief, often erroneous, of the injuries ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... the French, newly enlisted in the Spanish troops, informed the Governor of the Havanna, that the French garrison left at Pensacola was very weak: he, in his turn, resolved to carry that fort by way of reprisal. For that purpose he caused a Spanish vessel, with that which the French had brought to the Havanna, to be armed. The Spanish vessel stationed itself behind the Isle St. Rose, and the French vessel came before the fort with ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... the world had long known concerning Tom Pargeter had only just become revealed to Tom Pargeter's wife. He hoped, he trusted, this was not so; he had no desire to owe her surrender to any ignoble longing for reprisal. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... having grown weary of the insults and oppression of its Varangian lords and warriors, killed them all. Angry at this, Yaroslaf enticed the leading Novgorodians into his palace and slaughtered them in reprisal. But at this critical interval, when his guards were slain and his subjects in rebellion, he found himself threatened by his ambitious brother. In despair he turned to the Novgorodians and begged with tears for pardon and assistance. They forgave and aided ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... troops might land on the Mexican coast by way of reprisal," replied the consul. "That would bring stubborn resistance from the Mexicans, and then, as a result, intervention would surely follow. There may be men with minds bright enough to see the difference between ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock

... of them arrived there. Thus the population avenged such incidents as the hanging by the Austrian authorities of the brother of the ex-Minister General Ve[vs]ovi['c],[27] the General having taken to the hills and his brother being executed by way of reprisal. The Austrians had now to pay the penalty of ruthlessness; on September 1, 1917, Count Clam Martini['c], the Military Governor, issued Order No. 3110 which stated that: "In consequence of the recent inquiry having revealed the fact that telegraph and telephone wires ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... One thing remained possible. The man responsible for this greatest sorrow and humiliation with which he had ever been visited should pay in full the score of reprisal. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... I did, that every girl had a perfect right to humiliate a "masher" to the extent of her ability, I once went, it's hard to admit it, but really I did go, too far in reprisal. Well, at all events, I was made to feel rather ashamed of myself. We were presenting "Alixe" at Mr. Daly's Broadway Theatre, just after the fire, and the would-be lady-killer was abroad in the land and unusually active. There was seldom a ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... fashion of making oath and not after the Norman fashion by wager of battle; their goods were to be free of all manner of customs, toll, passage and lestage; their husting court might sit once a week; and lastly, they might resort to "withernam" or reprisal in cases where their goods ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... tempest of war; into the sternness of life spent ever on the border of the grave; ruled over by an iron code, requiring at every step self-negation, fortitude, submission, courage, patience; the self-control which should take the uttermost provocation from those in command without even a look of reprisal, and the courageous recklessness which should meet death and deal death; which should be as the eagle to swoop, as the lion to rend. And he was not found wanting ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... not be satisfied then. I'll hound him till he is weary of his life! I'll make him remember the day he dared lift his hand against Evan Hartwick! I can feel his blow now! It left a mark on my cheek. That mark is not there now, but the scar is on my heart! Nothing can cure it but full and absolute reprisal! ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... trade which perforce passed under or near its walls between Egypt on the one hand and Mesopotamia and Asia Minor on the other. Never was a fairer field for hostile enterprise, or one more easily harried without fear of reprisal, and well knowing this, Assyria set herself from Ashurnatsirpal's time forward systematically to bully and fleece Syria. It was almost the yearly practice of Shalmaneser II to march down to the Middle Euphrates, ferry his army across, and levy blackmail on Carchemish ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... issuing calls for volunteers and organizing in all accustomed warlike preparations. The news of Sumter reached London on April 27, and that civil war seemed certain was known on April 29. On April 17, Davis, since the South lacked a navy, approved a proclamation offering to issue letters of marque and reprisal. On April 19 Lincoln proclaimed a Northern intention to treat as pirates any privateers acting under such letters, and also gave notice of a blockade of Southern ports, to be instituted later. Thus suddenly, so it seemed to British officials ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... everything. A forced contribution, as I've hinted at. But, Senor, I should be sorry to have you think we levy blackmail indiscriminately. He from whom they were taken is one of our bitterest enemies; equally an enemy of our country. 'Twas all in the way of reprisal; fair, as you'll admit, when you ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... time between the boldest attempts at surprise and mystical ecstasies, during which he singled out traitors who would have assassinated him or sinners who were not worthy to take part in the Lord's Supper. The king's troops ravaged the country; the Camisards, by way of reprisal, burned the Catholic villages; everywhere the war was becoming horrible. The peaceable inhabitants, Catholic or Protestant, were incessantly changing from wrath to terror. Cavalier, naturally sensible and humane, sometimes sank into despondency. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... except by force? Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force held the broken line at Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... will blockade us! Do you suppose we shall do nothing, even upon the sea? How many letters of marque and reprisal would it take to put the whole of your ships up at your wharves to rot? Will any merchant at Havre, or Liverpool, or any other portion of the habitable globe, ship a cargo upon a New England, or New York, or Philadelphia clipper, or other ship, when he knows that the seas are swarming with letters ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... each other, is a mode of attack and reprisal, which the greater part of mankind are fond of indulging. The serious philosopher should be above it, more especially in cases from which no possible good can arise, and mischief may, and where no received provocation can ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine

... teas, &c., and return home. To engage in this voyage, I was offered the berth I have mentioned, and thirty dollars a-month. The wages were of little moment to me, but the promotion and the voyage were of great account. The ship, too, carried out letters-of-marque and reprisal with her, and there were the chances of meeting some Frenchman in the European waters, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... own carriage, in which sat his mother and his wife, at the very place where, some six centuries previously, his ancestor had been taken prisoner in a fair fight. A modern writer has spoken of this murder "as an admirable reprisal upon the grandson for the writings and conduct of the grandfather." But M. Sainte Beuve observes as to this, he can see nothing admirable in the death of the duke, and if it proves anything, it is only that ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

... water, but aboard the Barang there was gratification mixed with the mate's anger, for without a doubt the schooner was shut in as completely as if she were in dry-dock with the gates closed at low tide. In truth it was but fair reprisal for the trick played on Leyden's vessel by Barry in Surabaya; but Jerry Rolfe had not been aware of that exploit, and this last coup was to him simply a piece of bald wickedness, swiftly turned ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... was the most prominent matter of public interest in the foreign relations of the British empire. It was in 1851 that the occasion for hostilities was given by the Birmese, and that the governorgeneral took measures for reprisal. Various acts of oppression and cruelty to British subjects were perpetrated by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... brought along to exchange for Indian blankets. At this point, Smith was shot. The deed was done with his own revolver, which had been passed to an Indian who asked to inspect it. The Indians readily admitted responsibility, stating that it was in reprisal for the killing of three Navajos by palefaces and they demanded two more victims before the Mormon company would be allowed to go in peace. The situation was a difficult one for Jacob, but he answered bravely, "I would not give a cent to live after I had given up two men to be murdered; ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... before we arrived in Yuen-nan a number of Chinese soldiers butchered nearly a hundred Lolos whom they had encountered outside the independent territory, and in reprisal the Lolos burned several villages almost under the walls of a fortified city in which were five hundred soldiers, massacred all the men and boys, and carried off the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... agreed that the town was too large and the armed men too numerous to warrant the safety of a longer stay. However, being in need of certain commodities, five men were despatched to the town. As days passed by, their prolonged absence caused suspicion and anxiety, so the Spaniards took in reprisal the son of the King of Luzon Island, who had arrived there to trade, accompanied by 100 men and five women in a large prahu. The prince made a solemn vow to see that the five Spaniards returned, and left two of his women and eight chiefs as hostages. Then Caraballo sent a message to the King ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... letter and Act of Parliament with a gesture of contempt, called for a guard, and was with difficulty dissuaded from throwing the messenger into a dungeon. The Council of Caledonia, in great indignation, issued letters of mark and reprisal against Spanish vessels. What every man of common sense must have foreseen had taken place. The Scottish flag had been but a few months planted on the walls of New Edinburgh; and already a war, which Scotland, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... own decision as to what she was meaning to do with him) Lucia received the information with the utmost good-humour, merely saying, "No doubt dear Mrs Quantock forgot to tell you," and did not announce acts of reprisal, such as striking Daisy off the list of her habitual guests for a week or two, just to give her a lesson. She even, before they sat down to lunch, telephoned over to that thwarted woman to say that she had met the Guru in the street, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... they wouldn't have," Smith suggested. "It looks like a reprisal aimed at us, more than any one else. All the other outsiders are old hands and can take care of themselves, but we haven't gotten acclimated—we're liable to have a bad time. And I think I know who ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... security, news comes of conflict between armed volunteers and a detachment of soldiers of the line. In newspaper columns appear stirring pictures of populace thronging the streets and stoning the soldiers as they march back to their barracks; of volleys fired in defence and reprisal; of men, women and children falling dead or wounded in the streets. And lo! the volunteers on the warpath are not Ulstermen, but Nationalists. The city given up to murderous riot is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various

... flour was stored in Michel Trudeau's shack. Some wretch set fire to it and destroyed it all. Naturally they thought it was done by John Gaviller's orders. This is their reprisal." ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... commonly happen that the common man is unable, without advice, to see that any given hostile act embodies a sacrilegious infraction of the national honour. He will at any such conjuncture scarcely rise to the pitch of moral indignation necessary to float a warlike reprisal, until the expert keepers of the Code come in to expound and certify the nature of the transgression. But when once the lesion to the national honour has been ascertained, appraised and duly exhibited by those persons whose place in the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... Gen. Jackson determined on strong measures to bring the French Government to the discharge of its obligations. He accordingly sent a message to Congress, recommending, in the event of further delay on the part of France, that letters of marque and reprisal be issued against the commerce of France, and at the same time instructed Mr. Edward Livingston, our Minister at that day at the Court of St. Cloud, to demand his passports, and retire to London. In all these steps, which resulted in ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... he had never known her dangerously full compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a smouldering ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... (causa spolii) was a civil proceeding resulting in a decree absolutoria, dismissing the defendant, or condemnatoria, ordering restoration to be made by him. In 1585 the patent of Howard, the lord high admiral, authorized him to issue letters of reprisal against Spain; and an order in council regulating the conduct of those to whom such letters were issued provided by an additional article (1859) that all prizes were to be brought in without breaking of bulk for adjudication by the Admiralty Court. The court was also ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... himself survived only six years, and was then killed, by his own wish, on his way to execution, rather than be humiliated in the city in which he had swayed. Dante, whose genius devised a more lasting form of reprisal than any personal encounter could be, has depicted him in the "Purgatorio" as on the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... antagonist, but by ridiculing him in some pasquinade,—sometimes, indeed, he did both; and when the King of Denmark maltreats the crew of an Icelandic vessel shipwrecked on his coast, their indignant countrymen send the barbarous monarch word, that by way of reprisal, they intend making as many lampoons on him as there are promontories in his dominions. Almost all the ancient Scandinavian manuscripts are Icelandic; the negotiations between the Courts of the North were conducted by Icelandic diplomatists; ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... sense in which reprisals are a necessary part of warfare. Generation after generation our forefathers fought bow to bow and sword to sword and gun to gun against equally armed and well-matched foes; this was reprisal, or, if you prefer, retaliation. And when, in more recent times, the devilish ingenuity of science invented poisonous gas, there was nothing unmanly or unchivalrous in retorting on our German enemies with the hideous weapon which they had ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... that the Bolshevists have borrowed a "Big Bertha" and are meditating a bombardment of Lisbon by way of reprisal is as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

... ever springing up fresh difficulties. Secret clubs were formed for murder and reprisal. A body called the "Yellows" had bound themselves by private oaths to keep up the memory of the religious victories of their predecessors, and to worry the clerical party in every possible way. Their pleasure was to go about insanely blowing rams'-horns, carrying flags and bearing oranges ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... York: A FIFTH class of provisions in favor of the federal authority consists of the following restrictions on the authority of the several States:1. "No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex-post-facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility. ''The ...
— The Federalist Papers

... than it ceased to exist. It was thus that in future all was destined to be burned behind him. While conquering, he had preserved: when retiring, he resolved to destroy: either from necessity, to ruin the enemy and to retard his march, every thing being imperative in war; or by way of reprisal, the dreadful consequence of wars of invasion, which in the first place authorize every means of defence, while these afterwards operate as motives to those ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... would rouse the whole of Islam to flaming wrath. They were criminals, by their own ethos, when they desecrated our dead. Moreover, they murdered whenever they could, in the cruellest and beastliest fashion. The marvel is, our actions of reprisal were so rare. Apart from this of the Cherub's, only two came within my personal knowledge. Of these two cases, one I and nearly the whole division considered savage and unjustifiable, which was also the official view. ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... where he kept himself discreetly hidden for several days. When a deputy was found, six attempts were made to serve the writ. All failed. Finally by a ruse, Mr. Whittaker was caught at his home late at night. He was aroused to a state of violent temper and made futile threats of reprisal when he learned that he must produce the suffrage prisoners at the Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the day of November ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... having recruited their finances, fortune favoured them the remainder of the campaign, and the Chevalier de Grammont, to prove that he had only seized upon the Count's effects by way of reprisal, and to indemnify himself for the losses he had sustained at Lyons, began from this time to make the same use of his money, that he has been known to do since upon all occasions. He found out the distressed, in order to relieve them; officers who had lost their equipage ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... perpetrator of this kidnapping "was" Robur the engineer, come expressly to Philadelphia to destroy in its egg the theory of the balloonists. He it was who commanded the "Albatross!" He it was who carried off by way of reprisal Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans and Frycollin; and they might be considered lost for ever. At least until some means were found of constructing an engine capable of contending with this powerful machine their terrestrial friends would never bring ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... and advantages. Correspondence was also constantly going on between the officials of various towns for the settlement of individual points of dispute, for the return of fugitive apprentices, asking that justice might be done to aggrieved citizens, and on occasion threatening reprisal. Southampton had formal agreements with more than seventy towns or other trading bodies. During a period of twenty years the city authorities of London sent more than 300 letters on such matters to the officials of some 90 other towns in England and ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... height, or in passing a thicket have the flint head of a spear driven through him, but this was only the deed, perhaps, of an enraged father or brother, not in any sense a matter of course in the way of justice, and even such attempt at reprisal was ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... she wished to live her own life—logic which she had gathered largely from Cowperwood's attitude. Haguenin did nothing about it at first, thinking to send Cecily off to an aunt in Nebraska; but, finding her intractable, and fearing some counter-advice or reprisal on the part of Cowperwood, who, by the way, had indorsed paper to the extent of one hundred thousand dollars for him, he decided to discuss matters first. It meant a cessation of relations and some inconvenient financial readjustments; but it had to be. He was just ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... stand when the curtain of fire fades before a task of regeneration that will spell economic rebirth or disaster for millions? Will fiscal punishment be meted out to neutral and foe alike? Will reason rule or revenge dictate a costly reprisal in this war after ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... really is. The retail trade is almost wholly in the hands of the Chinese, many of whom are men of great wealth and influence. There was also a small colony of Japanese, but, as a result of the boycott which the Chinese had instituted against them in reprisal for Japan's refusal to evacuate Shantung, they were unable to find markets for their wares or to obtain employment and, in consequence, were being forced to leave the island. The only American in the Celebes when we were there was the representative ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... men. Neither of the boys formed part of the escort, which was an immense relief to them for, although they were as indignant as the rest, at the murder of their wounded comrades by the Germans; and quite agreed in the justice of reprisal, still, they were greatly relieved when they found that they would not have to be ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty

... had no access to the general daily news, or I knew there would have been shoutings of triumph over Governor Magoffin. Other governors of other States followed his example. Jefferson Davis declared in a proclamation that letters of marque and reprisal would be issued. Everything wore ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... my high disapprobation of the methods he takes to come at what passes in a private family. The pretence of corrupting other people's servants, by way of reprisal for the spies they have set upon him, I tell him, is a very poor excuse; and no more than an attempt to justify ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... in the evening, when the house was quiet, she settled herself at the study table and made her first attempt at story writing, this time steering clear of the personal note that had brought such swift reprisal the night before. The occupation was absorbing; she neither desired nor missed companionship. She was not the first person to find life's stage amply filled by the puppets of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... of "reprisal" Questions—mercifully curtailed by the time-limit—was chiefly remarkable for Sir HAMAR GREENWOOD'S emphatic declaration that he was not going to accept the statements even of English newspaper correspondents against the reports of officials "for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various

... citizen who may or may not act individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organized group; and it is carried out in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal. ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... excuse for Clanton, who had deliberately dragged the Flying V Y into trouble without giving its owner a chance to determine what form retribution should take. The cowpuncher had gone back to primitive instincts and elected the blood feud as the necessary form of reprisal. He had plunged Webb and the other drovers into war without even a by-your-leave. His answer to murder had been murder. To encourage this sort of thing would be subversive of all authority ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... of old Martin, and his looking on to something which he had distinctly before him, that he communicated to them nothing of his intentions, beyond such hints of reprisal on Mr Pecksniff as they gathered from the game he had played in that gentleman's house, and the brightening of his eyes whenever his name was mentioned. Even to John Westlock, in whom he was evidently disposed to place great ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... itself to consider. It must be admitted that no such power is expressly given; nor are there any words in the Constitution which imply it. Among the powers enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, is that 'to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and to make rules concerning captures on land and water.' This certainly means nothing more than the power to commence and carry on hostilities against the foreign enemies of the nation. Another clause in the same section gives Congress ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... 1664, confirmed the governor in this course;[231] and on 2nd February 1665, three weeks before the declaration of war against Holland, a warrant was issued to the Duke of York, High Admiral of England, to grant, through the colonial governors and vice-admirals, commissions of reprisal upon the ships and goods of the Dutch.[232] Modyford at once took advantage of this liberty. Some fourteen pirates, who in the beginning of February had been tried and condemned to death, were pardoned; and public declaration was made that commissions would be granted against the Hollanders. ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... copy of a letter from the Chamber of Commerce at Liverpool to that of Bristol. The natural antipathy of the nation is such, that their passions being once fully excited, they will proceed to such acts of reprisal and mutual violence, as will occasion clamors and altercations, which no soft words can palliate. As I pretend to know something of the counsels of both nations, I know there are strong advocates for war in both. The more reasons they have to produce in favor of their system, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... he said, "I quite realise that—and that's why I admire it. If you had produced it as a real thing, and not by way of reprisal, I should think very ill of your prospects. It's like the work of an analytical chemist—I tell you what it's like, it's like the diagnosis of the symptoms of some sick person of rank in a doctor's case-book! But, of course, you ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... recruiting offices had been opened to negroes. Thereupon the Confederate government threatened to treat black soldiers as brigands, and to refuse to their white officers the protection of the laws of war. A cry went up in the North for reprisal. It was not the first time the cry had been raised. In 1862 Lincoln's spokesman in Congress, Browning, had withstood a proposal for the trial of General Buckner by the civil authorities of Kentucky. Browning opposed such a course on the ground that it would lead to a policy ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... this, Cavanagh began to question him gently. One by one he procured the names of those who voted to "deal with" the herders. One by one he obtained also the list of those named on "the Committee of Reprisal," and as the broken man delivered himself of these accusing facts he grew calmer. "I didn't know—I couldn't believe—that the men on that committee could chop and burn—" His utterance failed him again, and ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... Captain Lewis, whose patience was now exhausted, set out, determined to burn the village unless the Indians restored the robe. Fortunately, however, one of his men found the missing article hidden in a hut, and so any act of violent reprisal was ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations; to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; to raise and support armies; to provide and maintain a navy; to make rules for the government of the land and naval forces; to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... from their owners during the protracted Indian disturbances, of which Florida has been for years the theater. The Indians allege that the depredations were mutual, that they have suffered in the same degree, and that most of the property claimed was taken as reprisal for property of equal value lost by them. They could not, therefore, yield to the justice of restitution solely on their part, and probably there was no better mode of terminating the difficulty than ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... have simply seized one port as a reprisal. To send a cavalry force out into the country might bring on ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler

... from him had been carried away by one of the warriors, so that Deerfoot held only the rifle and ammunition in the way of a reprisal; but they were more than sufficient to replace the property he had lost, and he had ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... the natural outcome," Mr. Brott said, "of the things which went before. Such hideous misgovernment as generations of your countrymen had suffered was logically bound to bring its own reprisal." ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... no doubt, to find out what reprisal would be taken against her brother. I felt sure that Moa was as active as a man in any plan that was under way to capture the Grantline treasure. Miko, with his ungovernable temper, was doing things that put their plans ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... Stockholm Conference is changing a little, and several people suggest that Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD might be sent as a reprisal. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... home), and shown into our rooms. Late that night about two hundred fellows arrived from Crefeld, and Muller, finding he could not intimidate them, made such a noise that he was "choked off" by the commandant. We learnt that this place had been built as a Russian reprisal camp, but that lately Roumanian officers had been confined there. We were the first British these people had ever had to deal with. Hence ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... France. Then officers and privates began to come into Germany and were distributed in various camps. Finally, in the autumn of 1914, the British Government decided on interning a great number of Germans in Great Britain; and the German government immediately, and as a reprisal, interned all the British civilian men who, up to this time, had enjoyed comparative freedom in Berlin and other cities of the Empire. The British civilians were shut up in a race track about five miles from the centre of Berlin, called Ruhleben. ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... want of affection, to be a deliberate and unmerited disregard, to justify the reprisal ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... have either the apparatus to execute anyone or an executioner. We do not believe that a stupidly unreasoning act should incite us to equally unreasoning reprisal, for we would then be as guilty of irrationality ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell

... always keep the fact in mind that our remedy should seek, not to punish, but to cure. Personal or class enmities never yet helped the world to advance. It will be fortunate if men can be taught to see how useless such enmities are in this case; and how little revenge and reprisal can ever do ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... everywhere that week, and even forgot to carry on mutual injury and reprisal, in our desire to humble the pride of our elders. We even bethought ourselves of the words "perfectly sweet," which the old gentleman had used in connection with hoards, and looked in the sugar barrel, but quite in vain. Yet all the while we were daily going by the place where the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... as he flew over Potsdam he could not refrain from letting fall, by way of reprisal, a weighty souvenir upon the purlieus of the Imperial Palace. Dropped at a venture, there is reason to believe that it fell within measurable distance of the head-piece of the All-Highest. It ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or ...
— The United States' Constitution • Founding Fathers

... from Indianapolis upon the Holton bank. The Holtons were Democrats and the "Evening Star" was the Republican county organ. Barker disliked William Holton on personal grounds and here was his chance for reprisal. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... the Emperor might have justified a reprisal, but Maximilian was too old a statesman to listen to the voice of passion, where policy alone ought to be heard. He had not derived from the truce the advantages he expected. Far from tending to accelerate ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... very far down the coast before he sighted the cutter, and soon he brought the Arrow within hailing distance. He communicated the news to the officers on board, and a sort of council of war took place immediately. Together, they were not long in forming a plan of reprisal. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler

... 1816, I was given to understand that Mr. Croker was not only a coadjutor in the attacks of the Courier in 1814, but the author of some lines tolerably ferocious, then recently published in a morning paper. Upon this I wrote a reprisal. The whole of the lines I have forgotten, and even the purport of them I scarcely remember; for on your assuring me that he was not, &c. &c., I put them into the fire before your face, and there ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... California corporations, the Spring Valley Water Company, "cooked" a dividend of its own about this time, resulting in disaster to a number of guileless investors who were on the wrong side of the subsequent crash. This afforded an inviting opportunity for reprisal. With Goodman's consent he planned for the California papers, and the Bulletin in particular, a punishment which he determined to make sufficiently severe. He believed the papers of that State had forgotten his earlier offenses, and the result would ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... mercy, from the mistaken motives on which he acted, as well as from the generosity he had displayed towards his accomplice. "This man," they said,—"the brave, the resolute, the generous, was executed to death without mercy for stealing a purse of gold, which in some sense he might consider as a fair reprisal; while the profligate satellite, who took advantage of a trifling tumult, inseparable from such occasions, to shed the blood of twenty of his fellow-citizens, is deemed a fitting object for the exercise ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... in Relation to Piracy and Offenses against the Law of Nations; War; Marque and Reprisal; Public Defense; District ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... laden with arms and ammunition, stranded on the coast not far from Kalmar. The monarch's officers hurried to the spot, and seized what ammunition they could find. This stroke, however, was in some degree offset by a reprisal which Norby managed to secure upon the coast of Bleking. Matters now appeared so serious that the king addressed himself to Norby. "We find," he said, "that a part of the ammunition taken from the wreck off Kalmar is our own. All the rest of it you may have, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... however meek, or however bowed down with sorrow, will bear unmoved a gratuitous mention of his debts; it seems to wound him with all the rancor of insult, and to enrage him with the hopelessness of adequate retort or reprisal. It is an indignity, like taunting a ghost with cock-crow, or exhorting a clergyman to repentance. He flung himself all at once into the conversation, to bar and baffle any renewed allusion to that subject, and it was accident rather than intention which made him grasp Nehemiah ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... seeking them in a peculiar way, and declared perpetual, but having an obligation no stronger than that of a treaty, and practically dissoluble at the will of the parties. Thus, the States issued letters of marque and reprisal; Congress determined on peace and war, but the States were depended on to accept the former and carry on the latter when declared. Congress might ascertain the number of ships and men to be furnished, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... quarrel from which they could both retreat, if they would, as easily as from any other dispute; she had not realized it as a final, an almost irrevocable act on his part, which could only be met by reprisal on hers. All those points of law which had been so sharply enforced upon her must have fallen blunted from her longing to be at one with him; she had, perhaps, not imagined her defence in open court, except as a sort of ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... on a low hill by the edge of the marsh, planted palisades, built barracks, and named the new work Fort Lawrence. Slight skirmishes between them and the French were frequent. Neither party respected the dividing line of the Missaguash, and a petty warfare of aggression and reprisal began, and became chronic. Before the end of the autumn there was an atrocious act of treachery. Among the English officers was Captain Edward Howe, an intelligent and agreeable person, who spoke ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... second point," said Somerset. "For I observed you to employ the word 'indiscriminate.' Now, surely, a scavenger's barrow and a child (if child there were) represent the very acme and top pin-point of indiscriminate and, pardon me, of ineffectual reprisal." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... all present looked at each other with indications of marked displeasure. Sir Aymer was highly offended, but saw it was no time to indulge in reprisal. He bowed until the feather which was in his barret-cap mingled with his horse's mane, and without reply—for he did not even choose to trust his voice in reply at the moment—headed a considerable body of cavalry by the straightest road back to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... the Sea King, in reprisal, Lashed the harbor with his west wind Till the breakers leaped in frenzy, Overturning boats and claiming ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell

... people are invariably cruel, rapacious, murderous. That in cases of Balkan massacres and outrages the Bulgarian people have not been always the victims, and have not been always blameless, I know. It is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that something survives of the traditions of cruelty and reprisal existing in the Balkans of the Middle Ages. In this Balkan peninsula there is always a smell of blood in the nostrils, a mist of blood in the eyes. The Bulgarians have taken their part in many incidents which seem to deny the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... had taken at times to glowering at Tom, when his rudeness passed bounds, in a way which made that young man at once uncomfortable and angry, and at times provoked him to clownish attempts at reprisal. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... acting under letters of marque and reprisal are called privateers, and the captured vessels are ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... (Wilsdruf, 19th November). "The Austrians are packing off to Bohemia,—where, in reprisal for the incendiary operations they have done in my countries, I have burnt them two big magazines. I render the beatified Hero's retreat as difficult as possible; and I hope he will come upon some bad adventures within a few days." [OEuvres ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... smile and of the paraphrasing. In reprisal—though she would not have admitted it was that—she kept her own missives from Elfrida to herself whenever it occurred to her to check the generous impulse of sharing the pleasure they gave her, which was not often, after all. It was the seldomer because she could not help feeling ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... Indians to invade such state, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay, till the united states in congress assembled can be consulted: nor shall any state grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the united states in congress assembled, and then only against the kingdom or state and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... the other two were so close that there was no time for Dave to recover. Instinctively he jabbed a short back-stroke with the end of the axe-handle, and caught one of his assailants in the belly. Sickened, and daunted by this unexpected form of reprisal, the brute hunched itself with a startled yelp and ran off with its tail between its legs. At the same moment, dropping the axe, Dave caught the other wolf fairly by the throat. The gripping hand was a kind of weapon that the beast had never learned to guard against, and it was ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... foot can wander; he is exposed to the inhospitable desert and the burning sky. He must be prepared to defend his property against the roving bands of plunderers, and proceed at the head of a detachment of troops. Confiding in the strength of his forces, and in reprisal of attacks, he is too often tempted to add the gains of robbery to those of merchandise. He is a slave dealer, and organizes expeditions to seize his unfortunate victims. As the value of his goods is much heightened by conveyance across the desert, in a few successful journeys ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... that was in Massachusetts. Our first overt act of war, was Mr. Henry's embodying a force of militia from several counties, regularly armed and organized, marching them in military array, and making reprisal on the King's treasury at the seat of government, for the public powder taken away by his Governor. This was on the last days of April, 1775. Your formal battle of Lexington was ten or twelve days before that, and greatly overshadowed in importance, as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... of being the other. But"—he was smiling ominously again—"we are wasting time, Mr. Dale. I am willing to expose my hand to the extent of admitting that the information you are withholding is infinitely more valuable to me than the mere wreaking of reprisal upon you for a refusal to talk. Therefore, if you will answer, I pledge you my word you will be free to leave here within five minutes. If you refuse, you are already aware of the alternative. Well, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... power, and applying the proceeds to military uses. The order of sale was issued under the names of the young Prince of Navarre, of Conde, Coligny, D'Andelot and La Rochefoucauld, and a guarantee was given by them. As a reprisal the measure was just, and as a warlike expedient nothing could be more prudent; for, while it speedily filled the coffers of the Huguenot army, it cut off one great source of the revenues of the court, which had been authorized both by the Pope and by the clergy itself to lay ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... in M. Guillaume's presence, however little the lady or the Captain had suspected it. The surprise he gave was a reprisal for that which he had suffered when, after the Captain's exit, he had recovered his full faculties and heard a furtive movement within the hut. It was the inspiration and the work of a moment to raise himself with an exaggerated effort and a purposed noise, and to take his departure with a tread ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... happen in a world turmoil, when everything was fluid. Anyhow, they got away with it, for a certain group, Extrapolators, had to be free to extrapolate without fear of reprisal." ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... innocent were, after a while, confounded with the guilty in indiscriminate punishment. The complaints of the merchants kindled a violent flame throughout the nation, which soon after broke out in the House of Commons, and was communicated from that body to the ministry. Letters of reprisal were granted, and a war ensued, which in its consequences overthrew all the alliances that but twenty years before had been formed with sanguine expectations of the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... place for delay. They made graves for the dead, pallets for the wounded. At sunrise the train moved on, grim, grave, dignified and silent in its very suffering. There was no time for reprisal or revenge. The one idea as to safety was to move forward in ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... act of valor, had the headless bodies that had been left in the neighboring village interred at once, that it might not be discovered that they were decapitated. The Prussians returned thither the following day. The mayor and seven prominent inhabitants were shot on the spot, by way of reprisal, as ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... sou for any of these republicans if they chance to fall into the clutches of King WILLIAM. It is reported that he has issued an order for the strangulation of all French children between the ages of three and five, in reprisal for the treacherous blowing up ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various

... sufficient proof of the healthfulness of the place. First, for ourselves (thanks be to God) we had not a man sick two days together in all our voyage; whereas others that went out with us, or about that time on other voyages (especially such as went upon reprisal,) were most of them infected with sickness, whereof they lost some of their men, and brought home a many sick, returning notwithstanding long before us. But Verazzano, and others (as I take it, you may read in the Book of Discoveries), do more particularly ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... the werwolf, but distinct, was the vampire, supposed to be a dead person who rose from the dead to suck the blood of the living during sleep. By way of reprisal the living dug up, exorcised, and mutilated the supposed vampires. This was called vampirism. The name vampire was then transferred to the living person who had so treated a corpse. All profanation of the corpse, whatever its origin, is now frequently ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the merchandise. Thus did he obey the order given him that there should be no sack, but that he should bring it as he had found it, with all fidelity; since it was not taken as an absolute prize, but by way of reprisal, as I have written in another letter. In regard to the said Diego Lopez Lobo not being a Castilian citizen but a Portuguese (which has been the rock of offense to auditors and citizens, and the motive which has induced the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... and gentle Cardinal Bergerot, whose heart was open to all the woes of the lowly and the poor. This filled the young priest with despair; he could accept the denunciation of the Bishop of Tarbes acting on behalf of the Fathers of the Grotto, for that only fell on himself, as a reprisal for what he had written about Lourdes; but the underhand warfare of the others exasperated him, filled him with dolorous indignation. And from that puny old man before him with the slender, scraggy neck of an aged bird, he had suddenly seen ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... translucent perfect confidence: their impulses, caprices, desperations, tricks of concealment, trip a heart-whole friendship. Well, to-morrow, if not to-day, the tripping may be expected! Lady Dunstane resigned herself sadly to a lowered view of her Tony's character. This was her unconscious act of reprisal. Her brilliant beloved Tony, dazzling but in beauty and the gifted mind, stood as one essentially with the common order of women. She wished to be settled, Mr. Warwick proposed, and for the sake of living at The Crossways she accepted him—she, the lofty scorner of loveless marriages! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Three billion people watching the home fleet take off, knowing the skies were open for all the hell that a savage enemy could send! On Earth, the World Senate hadn't permitted the building of one battleship, for fear of reprisal. ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey

... party swelled an exceeding bitter, angry cry; the grim, deadly exasperation of men goaded to the point of recklessly attempting ruthless reprisal upon their hidden enemy. With a total disregard of personal safety many of them sprang up out of cover, as if to charge upon their ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... in the ballad is a piece of history, and belongs originally to the beginning of the sixteenth century. Andrew Barton was one of three sons of John Barton, a Scots trader whose ship had been plundered by the Portuguese in 1476; letters of reprisal were granted to the brothers Barton, and renewed to them in 1506 'as no opportunity had occurred of effectuating a retaliation.' It seems, however, that this privilege was abused, at least by Andrew, who was reported in June 1511 to Henry VIII. as seizing English ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... sought him by months of patient wanderings, pursued through all the depths of the Illyrian forests, and the difficulties of the Alpine passes. It is not easy to find words commensurate to the energetic hardihood of a slave—who, by way of answer and reprisal to an edict which consigned him to persecution and death, determines to cross Europe in quest of its author, though no less a person than the master of the world—to seek him out in the inner recesses of his capital city and his private palace—and there to lodge a dagger in ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... large, who submit with difficulty to the verdict of absolving juries, will rise with indignation at this evidence of a jury prepared to exercise a vindictive power, and actually make the law the agent of reprisal. I have failed in all—utterly failed. Some reproach me as faint-hearted and craven; some condescend to treat me as merely mistaken and misguided; and some are bold enough to hint that, though as a military authority I stand without ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... he must be taken; but spied a Dutch sloop turning to get into the road, and saw her, at the evening, anchor at the west end of the island. In the night he sent two canoes aboard the sloop, took her, and went away in her, making a good reprisal, and leaving his own empty ship ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... too true, and I knew it, but, manlike, I must take some reprisal from the truth. "Your mother told me," I said, "that you have a great knack of hurting ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris

... afraid of him, and of what he might do to her father if he had the chance; for his nature was small and mean, so small and so mean that, though he might not risk a reprisal which would bring him within the reach of the law, he would not hesitate at any small, mean act of spite which might injure his victim, yet would not reflect on himself. Since knowing of her father's trouble, she had been more afraid of Oily Dave than ever, for there ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... white one, serenaded us, and came near enough to our camp-fire to seize a small terrier belonging to one of the party. The poor animal, unused to the dangers around, had the temerity to run out and bark at the pack—he soon after gave one agonizing yelp, and we never saw him again. As a reprisal, three of the party fired, and brought one of the wolves to the ground; he was of great size, and, I should say, could have carried away a sheep, or a good sized hog (of which they are very fond), with ease. We could not, however, skin ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell



Words linked to "Reprisal" :   retaliation



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