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More "Defensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at Detroit were paying money for scalps. Knowing that all the irruptions of savages into Kentucky were encouraged and set on foot from Kaskaskia, Vincennes and Detroit, he suddenly resolved upon the bold project of capturing these strongholds. This would put the British upon the defensive, relieve the frontiers of Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and in the end add a vast territory to the domain of the republic. In the accomplishment of all these designs the soil of Kentucky was to be used as a base ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... advantage in maintaining a powerful political influence over the barbarians. Thus it was that the French, few in number, covered almost the breadth of the continent with their formidable alliances; and these alliances were the offensive and defensive armor in which they trusted, but they were also their peril. Close alliance with one savage clan involved war with its enemies. It was an early misfortune of the French settlers that their close friendly relations with their Huron neighbors embattled against them the fiercest, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... sovereign, freed themselves from the Russian guarantee; aided by Prussia, compelled the Russian troops to evacuate the country; devised a constitution, which they laid before the cabinets of London and Berlin; concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia on the 29th of March, 1790, and, on the 3d of May, 1791, carried into effect the new constitution ratified by England and Prussia, and approved of by the emperor Leopold. During the conference, held at Pilnitz, the indivisibility of Poland was ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... visitor wondered how Hugo made it pay. The observant visitor did not fail to note that there were more than a hundred cash-desks in the place, and that all the cashiers had the air of being overworked. Once the entire army of cashiers, driven to defensive action, had combined in order to demand from Hugo, not only higher pay, but an increase in their numbers. Hugo had immediately consented, expressing regret that their desperate plight had ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... them, to run short and, in the main, harmless careers; but the cruise that inflicted the greatest damage on the commerce of the Union was made by a vessel that never entered a Southern port. The blockade was not defensive, but offensive; its purpose was to close every inlet by which the products of the South could find their way to the markets of the world, and to shut out the material, not only of war, but essential ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Falstaff, as Shallow saw him, when he was a boy and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; you may see him all along the current of his mature years; his highway robberies on Gadshill; his bragging narrative to Prince Henry; his frolicsome, paternal, self-defensive lecture to the prince; his serio-comic association with the ragamuffin recruits at Coventry; his adroit escape from the sword of Hotspur; his mendacious self-glorification over the body of Harry Percy; his mishaps as a suitor to Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page; his wonderfully humorous interviews with ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... heartened the "Maroons" and they fought like wildcats. They were on the defensive and the ball stayed in their territory. But the utmost efforts of the Blues failed to make substantial gains, and when the whistle blew at the end of the quarter ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... seriously hampered British diplomacy. For how could Russia and Austria bind themselves to an Administration which might at any time be succeeded by one which was under the domination of the Prince of Wales, Fox, and Sheridan? True, offers of a defensive alliance were mooted at St. Petersburg to our ambassador, Admiral Warren. But it was obvious even to that misplaced sailor, whom Pitt soon recalled, that Russia merely aimed at securing English subsidies ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of the eleventh of June until this morning of the fourteenth, the Americans had remained on the defensive,—seven hundred against two thousand or more. Now, however, different tactics were to be used. Colonel Huntington had decided that it was time to turn the tables, and before the night was come the occupants of the graves on the crest of the hill had ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... note: in the summer of 2003 the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) began recruiting and training a New Iraqi Army (NIA) that would have a purely defensive mission and capability; in March 2004, the Iraqi Interim Government established a Ministry of Defense to create an Iraqi Armed Force; at that time the NIA was renamed the Iraqi Armed Force - Army ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... various obliquities and their compensations. But, rude as Thomas was, he was gentleman enough to confine his reply to a snort and a silence. For had he not chosen his housekeeper upon the strength of those personal recommendations of the defensive importance of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... upright, not availing myself in the least of my superiority in height, and only acting on the defensive. Calton played well enough for a gentleman; but he was no match for one who had, at the age of thirteen, beat the Life Guardsmen at Angelo's. Suddenly, when I had excited a general laugh at the clumsy success with which I warded off a most rapid attack of Calton's, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pretty nations if people no longer fight," he answered, and then trying to show a practical spirit, he added: "Never has the art of war cost more money than since war itself has become an impossibility. The present-day defensive peace is purely and simply ruining every country in Europe. One may be spared defeat, but utter bankruptcy is certainly at the end of it all. And in any case the profession of arms is done for. All faith in it is dying out, and it will soon be forsaken, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... already formidable in suggestion. Cut the second, "The Fiend in Discourse," represents him, not reasoning, railing rather, shaking his spear at the pilgrim, his shoulder advanced, his tail writhing in the air, his foot ready for a spring, while Christian stands back a little, timidly defensive. The third illustrates these magnificent words: "Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter: prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... high and mighty lords and most dear friends of ours, them of the league and city of Berne and of the great and little league of Germany, ambassadors charged to make proposals to them, if they would come to an understanding to be friends of friends and foes of foes" (make an offensive and defensive alliance). The proposal was brought before the diet of the cantons assembled at Lucerne. The King of France "regretted that the Duke of Burgundy would not leave the Swiss in peace; he promised that his advice and support, whether in men or in money, should ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... you might call good defensive," says I. "But who's this gazin' over the rail beyond—J. Dudley Simms, ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... of a good defensive position. The first requirement of a good position is a clear field of fire and view to the front and exposed flanks to a distance of 600 to 800 yards or more. The length of front should be suitable to the size of the command and the flanks should be secure. The position should have ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... carried their zeal still farther. They presented an address, in which they desired his majesty would not only perform the articles of any former treaty with the states-general, but also engage with them in a strict league offensive and defensive, for their common preservation; and invite into it all the princes and states that were concerned in the present visible danger arising from the union of Franco and Spain. They exhorted him to enter into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... course would put Sagastao and Minnehaha on the defensive, for in those days their own pride of birth was that they were Cree Indians. Faithful old Mary, herself a Cree, would of course take their part, and it was very amusing—laughable at times—to listen to the wordy strife. In these ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... have seen with domestic disturbance, and with further danger on the side of Scotland, which Charles had succeeded in agitating, concluded, on the 23rd of June, a league, offensive and defensive, with Francis, the latter engaging to send a fleet into the Channel, and to land 15,000 troops in England if the emperor should attempt an invasion from the sea.[378] For the better consolidation of this league, and to consult upon the measures which they would pursue on the great questions ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... cloak thrown over his arm, and a blue handkerchief bound round his left hand. His dress in other respects was that of a military man of the period; a long-waisted, broad-tailed coat, with a good deal of gold lace and many large buttons upon it, enormous riding boots, and a heavy sword. He had no defensive armour on, indeed, though those were days when the soldierly cuirass was not yet done away with; and on his head he only wore an ordinary hat trimmed round ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... case, if there were nothing intrinsic in the relation of the clothes to the wearer, how could a good coat at once render a pickpocket respectable; or a clean shirt pass current, as it does, with police magistrates for a clean conscience. In England, a handsome toggery is a better defensive armour, than "helm and hauberk's twisted mail." While the seams are perfect, and the elbows do not appear through the cloth, the law cannot penetrate it. A gentleman, (that is to say, a man who can pay his tailor's bill,) is above suspicion; and benefit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... of the guests, and the danger arising from the feuds into which they were divided, few of the feasters wore any defensive armour, except the light goat-skin buckler, which hung behind each man's seat. On the other hand, they were well provided with offensive weapons; for the broad, sharp, short, two-edged sword was another legacy of the Romans. Most added a wood-knife or ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... but the roaring fire and close room might account for that, and though, when the subject was mentioned, he gave a short uncomfortable cough, Albinia's mind was so far relieved, that she was in doubt with whom to be angry, and prepared to stand on the defensive, should her brother think ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the situation with solemn relish. By a defensive gallery, it appeared that he meant a lateral tunnel running parallel with the trench-line, in such a manner as to intercept any tunnel pushed ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be given him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of '87. "I have never made an effort," he says, "and never propose to make an effort; I have never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which various ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Republikeinsche zyde) an attack was being made on Her Majesty's Colonies and at the same time a mysterious reference to possibilities whereby it was strengthened in its suspicion that the independence of this Republic was being threatened. As a defensive measure it was therefore obliged to send a portion of the burghers of this Republic in order to offer the requisite resistance to similar possibilities. Her Majesty's unlawful intervention in the internal ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... by the transportation of Baird's division to near four hundred wagons, compelled us to select such positions as would enable us to protect the train, and not such as were most favorable for making an offensive or defensive fight. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... for at this moment there arrives a direct message from heaven. It comes by way of the nursery, and is a child's cry. The heart of Alice Grey stops beating for several seconds. Then it says, 'My Molly!' The nurse appears, starts, and is at once on the defensive. ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... Mexico was not looked upon with favor by the inhabitants of Rivermouth, who clearly perceived its underlying motive—the extension of slave territory. The abolition element in the town had instantly been blown to a white heat. Moreover, war in itself, excepting as a defensive measure or on a point of honor, seemed rather poor business to the thrifty Rivermouthians. They were wholly of the opinion of Birdofredom ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... locomotion, and betrayed in an unobtrusive manner a consciousness of being well dressed. His face, which was not without fine possibilities, had an air of well-bred neutrality; you could see that he assumed a defensive attitude against aesthetic impressions,—that even the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo would not have surprised him into anything like enthusiasm or abject approval. It was evident, too, that he was a little bit ashamed of his Baedeker, which he consulted only in a semi-surreptitious ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... All were clothed in their most terror-inspiring attire, with as great a proportion of feathers and skins as could be mustered. Their arms consisted of sumpitans, spears and swords, daggers, with shields and padded jackets for their defensive armour, while each man carried his provisions in a basket on his back. This time they proposed attacking a tribe some way to the north, with whom they had a ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... another people—the Russians; what designs and plans of a military strategic nature are behind your seizure of the Moon Islands. For these islands, as an integral part of an independent Esthonian Republic, or as a possession of the Federated Russian Republic would have only a defensive military importance, while in the hands of Germany they would assume offensive significance, menacing the most vital centers of our country, and ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... an audacious war on the part of the Allies. It is first a defensive war in which the Germans are the heaviest losers. On the part of the Germans it is an audacious war and its very audacity has astounded the whole world. But Germany never meant to war against the world collectively. That was the accident ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... of it before, but I will think of it now," said Warner. "In any event, we are quite sure that the President has a great task before him. We hear that the South will soon have a quarter of a million troops in the field. Her position on the defensive is perhaps worth as many more men to her. Hence let x equal her troops, let y equal her defensive, and we have x plus y, which is equal to half a million men, the number we must have before we can meet the South on ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for bread," he replied, stung to the defensive. "They always gave me bread and sometimes meat, and they let me sleep in the barns where the straw was, and once a woman took me into her house and offered me money, but I would not take it. I—I think I'd like to send her a present, if you ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... last unexpected onset; when, looking round by the dim light, she perceived him seated opposite Aunt Peggy's big chest, evidently watching it. On hearing the door open, though, he got up and raised his back, on the defensive. ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... society, disrupters of the commonwealth, subverters of government, the allies and confederates of criminals and anarchists. It is worth noting, moreover, how easily their passive resistance develops into more active forms of rebellion. Not for long was the Suffragist content to remain merely defensive in revolt; soon she emerged with whips for Cabinet Ministers, hammers for windows, and bombs for churches. Resistant Trade Unionists rapidly and generally slide into sabotage and personal violence. The No-Conscriptionists of Ireland threaten through Mr. Byrne, ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... sentiment also prevailed. The secretary of state and the attorney general conceived, that no necessity for deciding thereon existed, while the secretaries of the treasury, and of war, were of opinion that the treaty of alliance was plainly defensive, and that the clause of guarantee did not apply to a war which, having been commenced by France, must be considered as offensive on the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy till the moment of execution; and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen, who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine, of their own accord, to raise the price of their labour. Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high price of provisions, sometimes the great profit which their masters make by their work. But whether ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... trial, the death of his adherents, Horace Walpole has left the most graphic and therefore touching account that has been given; whilst he calls a 'rebellion on the defensive' a 'despicable affair.' Humane, he reverted with horror to the atrocities of General Hawley, 'the Chief Justice,' as he was designated, who had a 'passion for frequent and sudden executions.' When this savage commander gained intelligence ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... How to pass from the defensive to the offensive? How to regulate the shock? How to give orders that can be executed? How to transmit them surely? How to execute them by economizing precious lives? Such are the distressing problems that beset generals and others in authority. ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... as a permanent alliance with Russia, which shall give peace to Europe, and deter over-ambitious princes from trenching upon the possessions of other crowns. To secure this end, my sovereign thinks that nothing would be so favorable as an offensive and defensive alliance, with a guaranty of permanent boundary-lines between Russia, Prussia, Poland, and Turkey. Such an alliance, in the opinion of my sovereign, would give durable peace to Western Europe. If the conditions be acceptable to your majesty, my sovereign will make like propositions to Poland ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hands and knees and ask us to win it for them ... they offer us the sun and the moon and the stars for our help ... but the minute they've got over their fright, they start plotting to get out of their promises. They've done it before and they'll do it again. I want our Volunteers to be more than a defensive organisation. I want them to be an offensive organisation. If we don't look out very sharply well find that the English have ruined Ireland again. They've started to do it openly now. You've heard, haven't you, about the Cunard Line and Queenstown?..." ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... man, the various captains reported that their men had obeyed instructions to the letter. No acts of violence had as yet been committed by any of the American crews. The ex-sailors, though chafing at their inaction, had assumed the defensive throughout. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... was no oratory and no defiance of anybody. What had been accomplished, however, was that, in the absence of organized government, the conservative elements in the county had formed an offensive and defensive league for mutual protection, as the by-laws ran, "against frauds and swindlers, and to prevent the stealing, taking, and driving away of horned cattle, sheep, horses, and other stock from the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... struggle, and by her aid mainly contributed to the successful issue of the war. In the first part of the struggle the scene lay wholly among the low lands and cities of Holland and Zeeland, and the war was strictly a defensive one, waged against overpowering odds. After England threw herself into the strife it assumed far wider proportions, and the independence of the Netherlands was mainly secured by the defeat and destruction of the great Armada, by the capture of Cadiz and the fatal blow thereby struck at the mercantile ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... to teach the defensive; let me now recommend to you the offensive part of the art of justification. As a supplement to reasoning comes recrimination: the pleasure of proving that you are right is surely incomplete till you have proved that your adversary is ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... left upon the Montmorency. Quebec is thus secured from any advance by land. Her own guns must protect her from any attempt by sea. No vessel should or ought to pass the rock without being instantly disabled, if not sunk. By disposing our forces in this way, and remaining upon the defensive, we shall have our foes in a vice, so to speak. The risk of disembarking and trying to fight us will be immense. They will lose ten men to our one in every encounter. And if we can play this waiting game long enough, the storms of winter ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and unlawful not only all wars, whether offensive or defensive, but all preparations for war; every naval ship, every arsenal, every fortification, we regard as unchristian and unlawful; the existence of any kind of standing army, all military chieftains, all monuments commemorative of victory ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... greater advantage to know the Welsh language," says Professor TROW, "than to know French." That is, of course, if you wish to use it for defensive purposes. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... weapon of oratory—offensive and not defensive—was the bitter and coarse personality in which he so frequently indulged. Its use was held perfectly lawful in the Roman forum, whether in political debate or in judicial pleadings, and it was sure to be highly relished by a mixed audience. There is no reason to suppose that Cicero had recourse ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... alien and strange. He recalled the attitude of submission and reverence with which he had once been accustomed to enter this room, the respect with which he had heard every word of the Father; and he blamed himself bitterly that he now took rather a defensive mood, and felt an instinctive desire to escape. He reflected that he had been poisoned by the world; yet he could not wholly shut out the consciousness that he had no genuine desire to be freed from the sweet madness which had ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... and the court. The spectacle was to begin with a battle among the Christians, who to this end were arrayed as gladiators and furnished with all kinds of weapons which served gladiators by profession in offensive and defensive struggles. But here came disappointment. The Christians threw nets, darts, tridents, and swords on the arena, embraced and encouraged one another to endurance in view of torture and death. At this deep indignation and resentment seized the hearts of the multitude. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Oscar more determined to overcome his foe. His face red with passion, he showered blows upon Herbert, which the latter parried with ease. At first he acted wholly upon the defensive, but, finding that Oscar's impetuosity did not abate, suddenly closed with ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... nations, or two parties of allied nations, contending by force under the direction of a supreme executive; and secondly, it must be proclaimed, notified, or declared. And probably it must be general in its character, and not simply local or defensive. Presuming that the coming contest will be of the widest character, I shall proceed to examine its legal effects on Commerce, on ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... your thought, my honourd Lord, To wrest the hazardous fortune of the warre Into the bloudyer censure of the Law. Was it my fault that in the first assault The Canoniers were slayne, whereby our strength, Our mayne offensive strength, was quite defeated And our defensive part so much enfeebled That possibility to subsist was lost, Or by resistance to preserve one life? While there was sparke of hope I did maintayne The fight with fiery resolution And (give me leave to speake ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... remember that our talk took the absurd form of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... while the French forces were practically cut off from Europe. The French, on the other hand, had at the beginning the advantage of superior numbers, at least so far as regular troops were concerned, while for defensive purposes they possessed an excellent chain of very strong fortresses carefully prepared before the war. After the earlier operations, which cleared the French invaders out of the English colonies, the gradual reduction of these ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... leadership.] The whole of these defensive and offensive arrangements would, however, be ineffectual or incomplete in their results, if the most perfect union and concert is not established in every part, so that all should conspire to the same object, although by distinct means. In order ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... that frequently there is no other way to get rid of an enemy who presses too closely upon us, than by carrying the war into his own country; and that men are much more courageous when they act upon the offensive, than when they stand only upon the defensive. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... was demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring and stanch affection—a sympathetic interdependence, wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now watched the mare ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... of which the sick hunter spoke, they derived new information about the war. The reports were more and more accurate, but unfavorable for Fumba. The little travelers learned that he was conducting a defensive campaign, and that the Samburus under the command of their king, named Mamba, occupied a considerable expanse of the Wahima country and had captured a multitude of cows. The villagers said that the war was raging principally on the southern border of the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in the negotiation, which was against the compact that neither should treat separately, farther confirmation of their suspicion of treachery. Angria granted the Portuguese full reparation for injuries, and formed an offensive and defensive alliance with them. The English were left to shift for themselves. Full of wrath, they embarked at once, and sailed for Bombay ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... Mr. Randolph now played off on him the same arts which he himself had so often practiced on his country customers; drawing him out by questions, endeavoring to puzzle him by subtleties, assailing him with declamation, and watching continually the defensive operations of his mind. After a considerable discussion, he said, 'You defend your opinions well, sir; but now to the law and to the testimony.' Hereupon he carried him to his office, and, opening the authorities, said to ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... footing in the country was gained and is maintained by force, which knowledge, in addition to that pressure of silent enmity of which we are at all times conscious, brings our minds into a hostile attitude vis-a-vis the Chinese. We are always in a state of antagonism, be it defensive or offensive. This mutual dislike, helped by the utterly different modes of life existing amongst Europeans and Asiatics, renders all other than business intercourse not only irksome but well-nigh impossible. Their ways not being our ways we ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... attempt to seize the five members was undoubtedly the real cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal confidence with which most of the popular party were beginning to regard the King was turned into hatred and suspicion. From that moment, the Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive arms. From that moment, the city assumed the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... engage in a snow ball battle, in which generals, colonels, captains and privates all took part. They would usually divide off into two grand divisions, one line naturally becoming the attacking party, and the other the defensive. The snow balls would begin to fly hither and thither, with an occasional knock down, and sometimes an ugly wound, where some mean fellow had enclosed a rock in his snow ball. It was fun while it lasted, but after it was over the soldiers were wet, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... his humble frugal meals. It was exactly what he needed. He had no idea of assaulting Bridget. He recognized all her admirable qualities, which filled in the shortcomings of his shiftlessness with admirable exactitude. He meant to act strictly on the defensive, a system of warfare that was familiar to him. For though he had never before risen up in open revolt, he had never counted mere self-preservation as ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... one thing—a thing scarce distinguishable from any other old woman. But this transformation of a black wand into a wide-spreading tent was so obviously the result of magic, that it was self-evident they had to do with a witch in full defensive and offensive state. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... course since the conditions that produced the setting up of the defensive machinery were unhappy, I'd say that happiness will play a large part in the situation. That happiness and a normal occupation will do a great deal to maintain the status quo. Of course I would advise no return to the unhappy environment, and no shocks. Nothing, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... drama took place soon after the 10th of June. A frigate brought the orders to set all ships and cannon in defensive condition; an East Indian ship had reported the proximity of many American privateers. One of these had even been captured. The Hessian officers thereupon set all cannon in order and arranged for the distribution of the men in the ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... happened to be thirsty, would call his least-trusted counsellor to drink first from the jewelled cup, and would watch the man afterward for at least ten minutes before daring to slake his thirst; but Jaimihr had the moral advantage of an aspirant; Howrah, on the defensive, wilted under the nibbling necessity for wakefulness, while ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... from the cart. He was at once carried yards away in an irresistible rush. Impossible for him and his friends to endeavour to hold their ground: they were too vastly outnumbered; the most they could do was to hold together and use every opportunity of retreat, standing in the meanwhile on the defensive. There was no adequate body of police on the Green; the riot would take its course unimpeded by the hired servants of the capitalist State. Redgrave little by little fought his way to within sight of Mutimer; he brought with him a small but determined contingent. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... suddenly on the defensive. The Irish troops, on which he counted as a balance to the Scots, had been cut to pieces by Fairfax or by Waller, and both in the North and in the South he seemed utterly overmatched. But he was far from despairing. Before the advance of Essex he had answered Newcastle's cry for ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... nations, therefore largely military 1 Permanence of the teachings of history 2 Unsettled condition of modern naval opinion 2 Contrasts between historical classes of war-ships 2 Essential distinction between weather and lee gage 5 Analogous to other offensive and defensive positions 6 Consequent effect upon naval policy 6 Lessons of history apply especially to strategy 7 Less obviously to tactics, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... their positions were reversed. Instead of acting on the defensive, Effingston in turn became the assailant, regaining his lost ground, and forcing Sir ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... several other natives. He was suffered indeed to cover himself with a bark shield, and behaved with the greatest courage and resolution. Whether his principal adversary (the wounded man) found that he possessed too much defensive skill to admit of his wounding him, or whether it was a necessary part of his punishment, was not known with any certainty; but on the second day that Carradah had been opposed to him and his party, after having received several of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... murmuring defensive things about the Scotch. "And Scotland is such a lovely place. Even round here. Dalmeny. Cramond Brig. Hawthornden. And oh, the Pentlands! Have you not been to the Pentlands yet? Oh, but they're the grandest place in the world. There are lochs ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Stephen had practically abandoned, but Henry had no mind to do this, and a campaign during the summer in which there was some sharp fighting forced Owen, the prince of North Wales, to become his man, restored the defensive works of the district, and protected the Marcher lords in their occupation. The Christmas court was held at Lincoln; but warned perhaps by the recent ill luck of Stephen in defying the local superstition, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... to seats, but every one was placed easily and naturally. Evan, who had Miss Lavinia in charge, was alert, and rather, it seemed to me, on the defensive; but though Martin asked questions, he was comfortably soothing, and seemed to take in ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... doorway came the sounds of conflict, now nearing them, now receding. The girl, having witnessed her champion's skill, had little fear of the outcome. Only a single antagonist could face him at a time upon the narrow stairway, he had the advantage of position and of the defensive, and he was a master of the sword while they were clumsy bunglers by comparison. Their sole advantage was in their numbers, unless they might find a way to ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Deputy seem to be of a capricious kind, for on Durdles turning to look at the boy, Deputy makes a wide circuit into the road and stands on the defensive. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... conduct in putting down the insurrection in the London district and have been acknowledged in warm terms of gratitude by the misguided persons who had surrendered themselves into his hands. He received orders to act on the defensive only, and to be careful not to do any act which the American Government could justly complain of as a breach ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... seriously. "Mr. Councillor," he replied, "as to our defensive measures, we have passed the point of diminishing returns. We have more knowledge now than we are capable of employing against the plague. Had we not neglected the physical sciences as we have for the last ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... retreating and putting himself on the defensive; "you are certainly going mad. The abbe began like you, and in three days you will be like him, mad enough to tie up; but, fortunately, there are dungeons here." Dantes whirled ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... illustrious Caesar! if denial of guilt be sufficient defence, who would ever be convicted?' You have been assured that inferences drawn from probable facts eclipse the stupendous falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira! Then the same family strain inevitably crops out, in the loosely-woven web of defensive presumptive evidence—whose pedigree we trace to the same parentage. God forbid that I should commit the sacrilege of arrogating His divine attribute—infallibility—for any human authority, however exalted; or claim it for any amount of proof, presumptive ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... young cropper who could hold his own against any in the village. But he had not yet got back his breath, and was panting heavily. The assailants, six in number, were active and vigorous young men; and Bill, who was streaming with blood from several wounds, could only fight on the defensive. Luke then gave a short cry of relief as the two men who had started with him, but whom he had left behind from the speed which his intense eagerness had given him, ran up but a short minute after he had himself arrived and ranged themselves by him. ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... might now commence the attack, but my master's lessons all came clear and vivid before me, and knowing that, as the weaker, it was my duty to act on the defensive, I waited, while we watched each other cautiously, my adversary evidently expecting that I ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... giving that invitation for Sundays. She had conquered, and again breathed freely amongst the light oak of her dining-room, where she would have liked to burn some sugar to drive away the odour of perverse leanness which seemed to linger about. Moreover, she continued to remain on the defensive; and at the end of another week she felt more alarmed than ever. She only occasionally saw Florent in the evenings, and began to have all sorts of dreadful thoughts, imagining that her brother-in-law was constructing some infernal machine ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... instinct of the one animal to relate the other animal to aggressive or harmless agencies in his surroundings, accounts for this. Relatively, of course, for all these modes of description imply offensive or defensive possibilities of the stimulus for the recorder in relation to himself. The interest in stature is fundamental, and has persisted in the most civilized, nations. The relationship of height and weight, as well as of length and breadth, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... sense of dirt and debauchery, which seemed to pervade the place. Some of the leading citizens came forth with hands stuck so deep in breeches' pockets, that the shoulders seemed to have formed an offensive and defensive alliance with the arms, never again to permit the hands to emerge into daylight unless it should be in ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... back, but pulled himself together instantly, lunged, and took his man in the flesh of his upper sword arm. Iberville was bleeding from the wound in his side and slightly stiff from the slash of the night before, but every fibre of his hurt body was on the defensive. Bucklaw knew it, and seemed to debate if the game were worth the candle. The town was afoot, and he had earned a halter for his pains. He was by no means certain that he could kill this champion and carry off the girl. Moreover, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man do sell or give any Indians any piece shott or poulder, or any other armes, offensive or defensive, upon paine of being held a Traytour to the Colony, and of being hanged as soon as the facte[338] is proved, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... aggressive pro-slavery people of Missouri is not easy to describe. Hitherto they had assumed that Kansas would become a slave Territory in the natural order of events. This was the prevailing Southern opinion. At once the people of western Missouri were put upon the defensive. Blue lodges were formed for the purpose of carrying slavery into Kansas. Appeals were circulated in the slave-holding States for colonists and funds. Passions were inflamed by rumors which grew as they stalked abroad. The peaceful occupation of Kansas was at an end. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... seemed unable to spare sufficient food for the civilians, in spite of the great leakage through neutral countries, but which persisted in calling themselves victorious when they were either perpetually on the defensive or in the act of being beaten, despite their irresistible rush. The Somme Drive had not begun but there was not a nurse in Lille that did not ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... rendered you odious. The lapse of time which intervenes between this last hour, the limit of your good understanding, and the day when your wife becomes cognizant of your artifices, is nevertheless quite sufficient to permit you to institute a series of defensive operations, which we will ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... Kenelm insensible of that proud beat of the heart which is aroused by the fierce joy of combat. Tom struck out first and a blow was parried, but not returned; another and another blow,—still parried, still unreturned. Kenelm, acting evidently on the defensive, took all the advantages for that strategy which he derived from superior length of arm and lighter agility of frame. Perhaps he wished to ascertain the extent of his adversary's skill, or to try the endurance of his wind, before he ventured on the hazards of attack. Tom, galled to ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up this little barrier of age instinctively, hastily snatching at the first defensive object she could find. And he sat down as she bade him, but now that he had her permission said nothing,—nothing with his tongue, but with his clasped hands and with his eyes so much, that she covered hers with an involuntary ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... ball was brought into play. There were but seven minutes of time left, and Rockville played like demons, hurling themselves again and again at their opponents. But Dave felt that enough had been accomplished, and gave the signal to be on the defensive, and thus Rockville was held back, and the most it could do was to get the ball on Oak Hall's thirty-five yard line. And then the fateful whistle sounded, and the great game came to ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... at the Hall with Geoffrey when the townspeople were clamoring about Sir Gilbert's closing the path through the wood, and for some reason you assisted them in attacking the barricade. It had been well tarred as a defensive measure, hadn't it? Then you returned, triumphant, black from head to foot, when you thought the guests had gone, and plunged into the middle of the last of them—Maud always laughs when she talks about it. Sir Gilbert was somewhere out of sight when you related ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... their attack on broader lines, and utilize the scientific knowledge of society, which is now for the first time at the command of religion, and the forces set free by political and social democracy. We can not restrict the modern conflict with evil to the defensive tactics of a wholly different age. Wherever organized evil opposes the advance of the Kingdom of God, there is the battle-front. Wherever there is any saving to be done, Christianity ought to be in it. The intensive economic and sociological studies of the present generation of college students ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... and defensive in Miss Pillenger leaped to arms under that smile. It ran in and out among her nerve-centres. It had been long in arriving, this moment of crisis, but here it undoubtedly was at last. After twenty years an employer was going to court disaster by ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... far from support, attacked a position within reach of the whole French Army, believing it had to deal with a rearguard only. Bazaine, on the other hand, thinking that he was faced by the German main army, remained on the defensive, and lost the opportunity of defeating in detail first the 3rd and then the 10th German Corps. A few aeroplanes operating on a radius of 30 miles would have disclosed between daybreak and 10 a.m. the true position to either commander. ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... trait of the noble animal's nature better than those of many a human acquaintance, was both surprised and touched at the instinct with which he had recognized an enemy, and the fierce courage with which he stood on the defensive. In that moment of bewilderment, he thought only of Roger, whose life hung by a thread, which his silence would instantly snap. He might have seen—had there been time for reflection—that nothing would have been gained, in any case, by the animal's death; ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house Against the envy ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... by the example of one who was distinctly a leader among them, carried on such an energetic campaign against the sophomores that the latter found themselves almost continually on the defensive. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... shortly succeeded by heavy file-firing from the whole force at the camp. An attack had evidently been made, and a regular fight was going on: it was therefore to be expected that my small force would soon have to act on the defensive. Spare ammunition was quickly in readiness, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... went by without any hostile demonstration. Both sides kept on the defensive. Orso did not leave his house, and the door of the Barricini dwelling remained closely shut. The five gendarmes who had been left to garrison Pietranera were to be seen walking about the square and the outskirts of the village, in company with the ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... has the largest frontier? What is the extent of our own frontier? Why, the whole coast of the United Kingdom; and we might as well say that it would be necessary for the security of this country that we should line our whole coast with defensive works because we may be attacked at any point of that great and extensive frontier. I maintain, therefore, that there is nothing that has passed—nothing that is now passing—between the Government of the United States and our Government which justifies any man in saying that ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... Pierre (II) Chambiges, a relative of the Chambiges of Fontainebleau and Saint Germain, the Petite Galerie, a mere means of communication between the two chateaux, and not the least to be likened to a defensive structure, was begun and work thereon carried out between 1564 and 1571, though it remained for Thibaut Metezeau, in 1595-1596, to carry it on a stage ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... saturated for a depth of 1 to 2-1/2 meters, during wet season, for most of the year the surface is soft, but in part dries out in Summer. Deep trenches usually impossible, and even shallow trenches likely to be filled with water; defensive works will be principally parapets revetted on both sides. Cave shelter construction usually impracticable, unless means be provided for sinking through saturated surface zone into the dry ground underneath. Cut and cover usually ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... nation which occupies Constantinople must dominate the world. The present occupants have proved that this dictum is, to say the least, an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that if Russia possessed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, her power, for defensive and offensive purposes, would be greatly increased, and she might seriously threaten our line of communications with India through the Suez Canal. This danger, however, is very remote. So many great ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... of the regiment under Major Curry was ordered to take up a defensive position on Limit Hill and to stay there ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... may have had secret information—for they had their spies in every department—that the long-meditated disarmament had been determined upon, and immediately decided to anticipate the offensive by a strong defensive of their own choosing. At any rate, Monday found them fully prepared, ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... Like that flu thing last winter." But Ernie's voice, as he said it, was defensive. In Ernie's book, a layoff ...
— All Day Wednesday • Richard Olin
... remember, is at the end of a peninsula formed by a range of mountains, the key to which is La Ferriere. So, to make themselves safe, they would need to control both at the same time. Hence the necessity of knowing exactly the defensive position of the Citadel. How does ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... surround us made by the enemy are best met by a flank movement on the original line without change of front (cf. Section 338). Defensive flanking cover, with the front turned outwards, gives the worst conceivable direction for attack, since in case of failure one is thrown back across the line of retreat of ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... can only be useful to abridge human life, already too short for repentance, or to encourage with a feeling of safety those whom fear might otherwise prevent from risking themselves in peril. The art of forming arms, whether offensive or defensive, is alike sinful in one to whose violent and ever vehement disposition the very working upon them proves a sin and a snare. Resign utterly the manufacture of weapons of every description, and deserve the forgiveness of Heaven, by renouncing ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... who was full of fury, determined to avenge the insult to his Ambassador and to possess himself of the Princess Sabella. All the army of Farda-Kinbras could do, being so heavily outnumbered, was to act upon the defensive, and before long Mannikin won the esteem of the officers for his ability, and of the soldiers for his courage, and care for their welfare, and in all the skirmishes which he conducted he had the good fortune to vanquish ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... forenamed papers, with another intitled the remonstrance of the nobility, &c. a tract on church government, and an instruction for defensive arms, &c. the general assembly appointed him, Mr. Calderwood and Mr. Dickson, to prepare a directory for the worship of God, which not only had the desired effect, but at length brought about uniformity in all our churches. There are also some few of his sermons in print, some of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... in anticipation of the attack, and turned their curtains of fire upon the enemy in possession of captured trenches. Then France gave to the outside world another surprise. Her spirit, ever brilliant in the offensive, became cold steel in a stubborn and thrifty defensive. She was not "groggy," as the Germans supposed. For every yard of earth gained they had to pay a ghastly price; and their own admiration of French shell and valor is sufficient professional glory for either ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... even now, that all the Quakers oppose defensive war: for some of them do not; they have told me so," continued Franklin. "They oppose aggressive warfare; but let a privateer come up the river, or savages attack our town, and they will fight for their homes as hard as any ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... with people much above them socially, he yielded to her shrinking from the opportunities of social advancement that opened to them, and held aloof with her. This kept him a country person in his experiences much longer than he need have remained; and tended to that sort of defensive secretiveness which grew more and more upon him, and qualified his conduct in matters where there was no question of his knowledge of the polite world. It was not until after his wife's death, and until his daughters began to grow up into the circles where his ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... retreat in great disorder to Fort Erie. Out of a force of 5,000 men, they had lost in killed, wounded, and prisoners at least 1,500. This defeat, and the timely arrival of veteran troops from Europe, appear to have decided the British commanders to change the defensive warfare they had hitherto adopted, and the small operations they had conducted on the coast of the southern States, for offensive movements of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... place, because you could, in that case, have relieved him. It was therefore necessary, while that important victory was in suspense, to trepan you into a situation in which you could only be on the defensive, without the power of affording him assistance. The manoeuvre had its effect, and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... intolerable, but her defensive reserve and dignity attracted the gentleman more than all her dashing brilliancy, and he became more urgent. 'You cannot ask me to leave you entirely to yourselves ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... full as thoroughly as it informs his theory of language. He not only employs it wherever it might be useful: he goes out of his way to find it, he shovels it in on any and every occasion, he bemerds his readers and himself with a gusto that assuredly is not a common characteristic of defensive operations. In him, indeed, the humour of Old France—the broad, rank, unsavoury esprit gaulois—found its heroic expression; he made use of it because he must; and we can no more eliminate it from his work than we can remove the quality of imagination ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Del Quiche, within the State of Chiapas, Mexico, there exists a pyramid erected for defensive purposes, constructed of earth and terraced as it rises, of enormous proportions; upon its top is a regular fortification upon the top of which rises a pyramidal temple above the fortification. This structure is particularly described by Stephens in the work above ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend
... Palma belongs to that class of harmless innocuous bugaboos, as those will find to their cost who run against them. I am simply Olga Neville, almost twenty-three, and quite willing to help you if possible. Shall we enter into an alliance—offensive and defensive?" ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... military supplies had been stored in Southern forts. All the great powers of Europe save Russia were hostile to our republic, and would gladly have seen it rent in twain. The South, again, had the advantage in that she was to act on the defensive. ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the present I have been on the defensive," I explained. "I dislike violent measures. But from this moment I shall hold myself at liberty to ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... Of the former there would be no longer any ground for complaint; the latter would find nothing to attach upon. But if, in spite of all its justice and forbearance, the violence of some neighbouring state should force it to resist an unprovoked attack, (for hostilities strictly defensive are those only in which it would be engaged) its domestic union would double its national force; while the consciousness of a good cause, and of the general favour of Heaven, would invigorate its arm, and inspirit ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... thought so highly of themselves as to suppose they were worthy to be distinguished as objects of Catholic cruelty, had taken to defensive arms on the occasion. But it was quickly found that a breast-plate and back-plate of proof, fastened together with iron clasps, was no convenient enclosure for a man who meant to eat venison and custard; and that a buff-coat or shirt of mail was scarcely more ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... picturesque—with its flags worn away by monkish sandals, and with huge round-arched doorways opening from its inner side into great rooms roofed like cathedrals? What are the longest French windows, with the most patented latches, to narrow casements of almost defensive aspect set in embrasures three feet deep and ornamented with little grotesque mediaeval faces? To see one of these small monkish masks grinning at you while you dress and undress, or while you look up in the intervals of inspiration from your letter-writing, is a simple detail in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... was made, but furious strokes from without resounded upon the door. Robin, Marian, and the baron threw by their pilgrim's attire, and stood in arms on the defensive. They were provided with swords, and the cottager gave them bucklers and helmets, for all Robin's haunts were furnished with secret armouries. But they kept their swords sheathed, and the baron wielded a ponderous spear, which ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... Segur, who found himself openly flouted both by King and courtiers at Berlin. For Frederick William was still bent on a vigorous policy. On 7th February his Ministers signed with Prince Reuss, the Austrian envoy, a secret treaty of defensive alliance, mainly for the settlement of French affairs, but also with a side glance at Poland. The Prussian Ministers probably hoped for a peaceful but profitable settlement, which would leave them free for a decisive intervention in the Polish troubles now coming to a crisis; but Frederick ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... that she was crying until a tear splashed hot upon her hand. She did not hear the door open as Benis reentered the room, but she sprang to her feet, alert and defensive, at ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... trying to get in advance some hint from her as to what she would do with me if I put myself at her mercy. No use. Our sex may as well give up first as last before one of these quiet, resolved, little pieces of femininity, who are perfect mistresses of all the peculiar weapons, defensive and offensive, of womanhood. There was nothing for it but to surrender at discretion; but when I had done this, I was granted all the honors of war. Mrs. McIntyre received me with an old-fashioned maternal blessing, and all was ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... question, sir. Of course aggression is more costly than defence. But one trouble with us is that we rarely fight a defensive battle. Lee's strategy is defensive, but his tactics are just the reverse. The way to win this war, allow me to say, is to fight behind trees and rocks and hedges and earthworks: never to risk a man in the open except where absolutely necessary, and when ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... of religious ceremonial, the object of many of them can scarcely be conjectured. Their builders appear to have been people of a peaceful nature, and their dwellings do not generally bear evidence of defensive design. The architectural skill of the Mayas must have been of a very high order. Among the buildings which exist some are nearly perfect units of design, and seem almost to argue the use of "working drawings," as the plan and detail must have been ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... adapted to the above named structure was more strictly domestic than defensive. It was built in quadrangular form, containing only one large court, upon which opened the stately hall, chapel, and principal apartments. Though not commanding the imposing aspect and grandeur of Bereford ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... getting the levies formed up and set in motion, the Norsemen had arrived on the ground and had taken up a defensive position before the English reached it. Had the force contained a strong body of housecarls, Wulf, who had talked the matter over with the earls, would have advised that they should fight on the defensive and allow the Norsemen ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... danced around it for a | |forehand shot, which put him wide of the court. | |Calmly stepping in to meet it, Johnston crossed with| |ever-increasing pace into the opposite corner. It | |was run, run, run for McLoughlin if he wanted the | |ball. He was on the defensive, and it was a | |position, as in all of his matches, in which he does| |not scintillate. So relentlessly was the younger | |player forcing the former champion and veteran that,| |even when he had glowing opportunities to make the | |point, McLoughlin put his racquet to the ball too | |soon, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... passive import, and denote susceptibility of receiving action. 2. By the adding of ive or ory: (sometimes with a change of some of the final letters:) as, elect, elective; interrogate, interrogative, interrogatory; defend, defensive; defame, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... up the channel two or three little forts of queer construction are seen, supplementing the larger one, placed upon jutting headlands. The Moro of Santiago is now used as a prison for political offenders; its days of defensive importance ended with the period of the buccaneers, against whose crude means of warfare it was an ample protection. As we steamed past it that sunny afternoon, stimulated by the novelty of everything about us, a crowd of pallid, sorrowful faces appeared at the grated windows, watching ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... afternoon, Ollie had not tried to force his suit. While, in a hundred little ways, he had not failed to make her feel his love, he had never openly attempted the role of lover. He was conscious that to put the girl constantly upon the defensive would be disastrous to his hopes; and in this, he was wise. But the time had come when he must speak, for it was the last day of his visit. He felt that he could not go back to the city without a ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... construct are shattered in a day. The ironclad is sunk by the torpedo. How very little margin lay between this country and starvation through action of submarines! Suppose the enemy had possessed five times as many submarines from the first, would our defensive measures have prevailed? How small an extension in the enemy's power in the air would have enabled him in a single night to leave London a mass of ruins, its whole population which had not fled dying in torment from poisonous gases! ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... Hyrcanus, the observation of the Sabbatic year, as Josephus supposed, required a rest from war, as did that of the weekly sabbath from work; I mean this, unless in the case of necessity, when the Jews were attacked by their enemies, in which case indeed, and in which alone, they then allowed defensive fighting to be lawful, even on the sabbath day, as we see in several places of Josephus, Antlq. B. XII. ch. 6. sect. 2; B. XIII. ch. 1. sect. 2; Of the War, B. I. ch. 7. sect. 3. But then it must be noted, that this rest ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... permanent prize of the war which could be exhibited to the people; if one excepted two triumphs and the recognition of the merit of three officials, there was nothing else to show. It was difficult to justify the war even on defensive grounds, for it would have required a courageous advocate to maintain that the mere recognition of Jugurtha as King of Numidia would have imperilled the Roman possessions in Africa; and, if the struggle had assumed ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing—as much advantage and pleasure for themselves as possible. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... voice that morning, clear and strong above the awful din, for nature made him to command in moments of peril. In a flash we were marshalled, one force to guard the corral, one to seize and hold either bank and one to charge on the advance of the Indians down the draw. We were on the defensive, as our captain had planned we should be, and every man of us realized bitterly now how much he had done for us, in spite of our ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... I am made of money?" exclaimed Jasper, starting to his feet, and facing his companion, in the attitude and with the expression of a man who, finding himself in the presence of an enemy, assumes the defensive. ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... Slade was fighting on the defensive, that he feared to let the Three Bar succeed and set up a precedent in defiance of the signs that ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... the return of my father & my uncle, who would revenge upon the English the insult which they had made me, without their tarnishing the glory that they had merited in chastising the English & the savages, their friends, of their perfidy. We were nevertheless always upon the defensive, & we apprehended being surprised at the place where we were as much on the part of the English, as of those of the savages, their friends; that is why we resolved of coming to establish ourselves in the place where we are at present, & which is, as you see, difficult ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... Hague; that he being greater than they, we may better come and treat at Paris: so that God knows what will become of the peace! He tells me, too, as a grand secret, that he do believe the peace offensive and defensive between Spayne and us is quite finished, but must not be known, to prevent the King of France's present falling upon Flanders. He do believe the Duke of York will be made General of the Spanish armies there, and Governor ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Independence, that all prospect of a reconciliation is gone, then, and not till then, will he furnish us with arms, ammunition, and clothing: and not with them only, but he will send his fleets and armies to fight our battles for us; he will form a treaty with us, offensive and defensive, against our unnatural mother. Spain and Holland will join the confederation! Our independence will be established! and we shall take our stand among the nations ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... considering the plan advantageous, wished it to be put into effect. Accordingly envoys were immediately sent to the nation of the Germans, in order to give them the lands of Gaul together with the gold, and to make an offensive and defensive alliance. Now at that time the rulers of the Franks were Ildibert, Theudibert, and Cloadarius, and they received Gaul and the money, and divided the land among them according to the territory ruled by each one, and they agreed to ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... Sledd, of local railroad management and stock-investment fame; and Norrie Simms, president of the Douglas Trust Company, who, however, was little more than a fiscal agent. The general feeling was that Cowperwood's defensive tactics—which consisted in having the city council refuse to act—could ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... before Lords Justices. This is, no doubt, an absurd exaggeration. But M. de la Hoguette, one of the principal French officers who was present at the battle of the Boyne, informed Louvois that the Irish army occupied a good defensive position, Letter of La Hoguette ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... inquiring the reason, I was told that the clean side was reserved for strangers! Although this yard scarcely deserves the name of an arsenal, being the smallest of all which America possesses, the numerous guns and the piles of cannon-balls show that she is not unprepared for aggressive or defensive war. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... first against the "atheism," then against the "infidelity," and finally against the "indifferentism" of the university, as devoted pastors endeavoured to dissuade young men from matriculation, I took the defensive, and, in answer to various attacks from pulpits and religious newspapers, attempted to allay the fears of the public. "Sweet reasonableness" was fully tried. There was established and endowed in the university perhaps the most effective Christian ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a double line of breastworks protected by barbed wire entanglements along the whole Divisional front was a colossal task. The wire was put up, and long sections of breastwork were more or less completed, but by that time things had fortunately so altered that no further defensive work was necessary. The other important work was the improvement of billets in the forward area, which was destitute of buildings, except for a few farm houses and cottages, mostly knocked about by shell fire. With the possible prospect of having to winter here, efforts were made to improve ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... the Rue des Espagnols, the good citizens of Rouen were very much upon their guard when Pedro Nino sailed up the Seine, and only allowed him to stay in their port and revictual on very hard conditions, one of which was the entire surrender of all offensive and defensive weapons. They also insisted on mooring his three galleys in a certain spot, keeping a strict guard over them, and not allowing any of his men in Rouen ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... and the Goanese staggered out beside us on to the platform, drunk enough not to know whether Hassan was with them or not. He came out and stood beside them in a sort of alert defensive attitude. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the frontier, commissioned to raise a company of one hundred men, march with all speed to the Fork of the Ohio, and finish as soon as possible the fort commenced there by the Ohio Company. He was enjoined to act only on the defensive, but to capture or destroy whoever should oppose the construction of the works, or disturb the settlements. The choice of Captain Trent for this service, notwithstanding his late inefficient expedition, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Evidently they were in the midst of a crisis. To judge from Constance's face every imaginable woe had been piled on them by destiny without the slightest regard for their powers of resistance. Her eyes had the permanent look of worry, and there was in them also something of the self-defensive. Sophia had a bellicose air, as though the creature in the cave had squarely challenged her, and she was decided to take up the challenge. Sophia's tone seemed to imply an accusation of Constance. The general tension ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... General Pierre Berthezene (February to December 1831); A. J. M. R. Savary, duc de Rovigo (December 1831 to March 1833), General Avizard (March to April 1833), and General Voirol (April 1833 to September 1834). The French, not yet certain whether or not they would retain Algeria, remained on the defensive. At the time they occupied only the three towns of Algiers, Bona and Oran, with their suburbs, where their situation was moreover singularly precarious. The Arabs would pillage the suburbs and run ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... than what one of them did to me this morning," Ted asserted, strongly on the defensive now. "And I don't know what business it is of yours, ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... truth among the masses. The priesthood enjoy the favor of the government. But the faithful and learned adherents to orthodoxy in all parts of the empire are able to cope with their antagonists. Inspired by such men as Vinet and Monod, they do not stand merely on the defensive, but are ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... military defence. There is scarcely a week in the year that a fleet might not have occasion to take refuge from the lake-gales in a safe harbor. Deprived of this advantage, the only resort would be to take the open sea, and there buffet out the storms. On their subsiding, this defensive fleet, on attempting to resume its proper position, might find it occupied by an enemy, with all the advantages, in a combat, which ought to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... newspaper abuse then fell upon Cooper. He was not the man to realize that, in controversy, silence is sometimes the most effective weapon. He replied to every attack. Nor did he remain on the defensive. He began new hostilities. He abandoned his resolution to abandon authorship. The Monikins, a satirical novel in which men are burlesqued by monkeys, was published in 1835. In the ten volumes of travel published from 1836 to 1838 he dealt out occasional ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... The defensive works which he now built were called Fort Meigs. For the time there was no more talk of invading Canada. The service of the Kentucky and Ohio militia was expiring, and these seasoned regiments were melting away like snow. Presently Fort Meigs was left with no more than ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... fortification) up to this day; and wishing to employ his industry and energies to the like effect in future; we, of our motion and initiative, do appoint him to be governor and procurator-general over the construction and fortification of the city walls, as well as every other sort of defensive operation and munition for the town of Florence, for one year certain, beginning with the present date; adding thereto full authority over all persons in respect to the said work of reparation or pertaining to it." From this preamble ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... were even for a few hours. We should first wander through these spacious apartments. We should then stroll out on the verandah, or along the path of the little terrace garden which General Ashburnham has surrounded with a defensive wall, and from thence I should point out to you the harbour, bright as a flower-bed with the flags of many nations, the jutting promontory of Kowloon, and the barrier of bleak and jagged hills that bounds the prospect. A little later, when the sun began to sink, and the long shadows to fall ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... had trooped after the column. All exit in that direction was blockaded. But the ex-officers noted that between the houses were spaces each wide enough to hold a couple of men, and in an undertone McKay gave defensive ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... these different kinds of war influence in some degree the nature and extent of the efforts and operations necessary for the proposed end. The party who has provoked the war may be reduced to the defensive, and the party assailed may assume the offensive; and there may be other circumstances which will affect the nature and conduct of a ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... collision between two houses equally representing the people. It is less important to us than to the {80} French. Why should we not then let Lower Canada, which desires to place a barrier against aggression by the west, decide the question and make her defensive powers as strong as she likes? It would be no great stretch of liberality on our part to accord it to her.' During the debates on Confederation in the Canadian Assembly, in the following year, Macdonald derided the notion that a government would ever 'overrule the independent opinion of the Upper ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... for Great Britain to go to war merely to prove that she could put herself in a good posture for defence. The main secret of strategy, he would add, is to impose your idea of the campaign on your enemy; to take the initiative out of his hands; to throw him on the defensive and keep him nervously speculating what move of yours may be a feint and what a real attack. If the Ministry had given the Major his head, so to speak, Agincourt at least ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... help feeling that there was something in this new and delightful nature that was foreign to herself ... foreign, and even, subtly, hostile. It seemed to her that in some peculiar way he was on the defensive. Up to a certain point she could enter freely into his confidence, but after that point she knew in her heart that there was something that he denied her. Now, more than ever in her life, she wanted to feel that he was wholly ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Alexander overthrown. And surely, if modern guide-books instruct us to weep in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise over the grave of Fanny Bias, history will say a word or two in honour of Cerito, who proposed through the newspapers, last season, an alliance offensive and defensive with no less a man than Peter Borthwick, Esq. M.P., (Arcades ambo!) to relieve the distress of the manufacturing classes of Great Britain! It is true such heroines can afford to be generous; for what lord chancellor or archbishop ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... brother's courier did not, however, leave Paris till the morning of Friday. Warner's words are these:—"The courier goes to carry the news of the Decree, of fitting out 25 ships of the line, and adhering to the Family Compact in the defensive Articles, which looks so like a war that it frightens us with the apprehension of being sent packing home to you, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... reaction is at times resorted to by individuals who had always been looked upon as being far from incompetent only proves that under special stress, especially mental stress, man readily sinks to a lower cultural level and resorts to the defensive ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... them both away, the curtains were torn aside, and Marcia looked out into savage faces and great, staring, blue eyes. Three or four overlapping circlets of iron just above the hips seemed the limit of these men's defensive armour, and the skin of some animal was thrown about the brawny shoulders of such as had not replaced their barbaric mantles with the Roman military cloak; the hair of each, black or red, but always long and indescribably ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... conscious rectitude vanished. In an instant he was defensive and excited, resenting the unexpected need of the one and the distraction of the other. The sum of his episodic rambling on Brian's tongue was appalling. He was willing to concede that his imagination was wayward and romantic. But why in the name of Heaven must a man—and an ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... to run away from danger. They are slow and stately in their movements, seeming to prey solely on the slow-moving wood-borers, which they take at a great disadvantage when half buried in their burrows, and bear off in their great jaws. They appear to use their sting only as a defensive weapon; but other smaller species that hunt singly, and are very agile, use their stings to paralyse their prey. I once saw one of these on the banks of the Artigua chasing a wood-louse (Oniscus), very like our common English species, on a nearly perpendicular ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... may be able to say something which will not be open to the charge of, "Oh! Another boring book about the War!" As I conceive it, my hospital book will be an analysis of the mind and character of the British working-man with his defensive armour off, and not an attempt to give any views on military or medical reform and ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... correspondence that followed that call, the great preacher was on the defensive from the first, and in reading over two or three letters that, because of blots or errors, had to be recopied, I am fairly amazed at the temerity of some of my remarks. In one place I charge him with "standing upon his closed Bible to lift himself above sinners, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... dropped his shovel, and, having drawn the sword bayonet with which he was armed, stood quite quietly on the defensive, alertly on the watch. Evidently the shark did not quite know what to make of the strange creature on the sea bottom, for he now began to swim rapidly to and fro, making short tacks each way of a few yards only, eyeing Cunningham intently all the while. Then, before we could do anything ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Altogether, their defensive force consisted now, therefore, of the lieutenant, captain, and three other officers—for Sprott would fight, and Jack Harper was quite as good with a revolver as any of his seniors—and fifteen men, counting in Snowball, who ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... acts of culpability he mentioned evil-speaking. As we were moving slowly along in the crowd from church, Johnson jogged my elbow, and said, 'Did you attend to the sermon?' 'Yes, Sir, (said I,) it was very applicable to us.' He, however, stood upon the defensive. 'Why, Sir, the sense of ridicule is given us, and may be lawfully used[1152]. The authour of The Government of the Tongue would have us treat all ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... was one thing—a thing scarce distinguishable from any other old woman. But this transformation of a black wand into a wide-spreading tent was so obviously the result of magic, that it was self-evident they had to do with a witch in full defensive and offensive state. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... troops, which I saw, were to go "all out," and to press on as far as they could, with the absolute assurance that all the ground they gained would be held behind them by supporting troops; and having that promise, they trudged on to Hill 70. The Londoners had been ordered to make a defensive flank on the right of the Scots by capturing the chalk-pit south of Loos and digging in. They did this after savage fighting in the pit, where they bayoneted many Germans, though raked by machine-gun bullets from a neighboring copse, which was a fringe of gashed and tattered trees. But ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... at hand, natural ones had to be found. The first defense was irretrievably lost; the second line was a vague, undefined terrain extending across the hills between Biala in the west and the River Wisloka in the east. Between Tuchow and Olpiny, the Mountain Dobrotyn formed one of the chief defensive positions, being 1,800 feet high ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... a pastoral stage, living on the produce of their herds, and eating more meat than bread. They fight and undergo hardships and willingly sacrifice their lives for their country and for liberty. They wear little defensive armour, and depend mainly on their mobility; they are not much good at a close engagement, but generally victors in a running fight, relying more on their activity than on ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... protective coloration, defensive odors, and things like that. Actually, those are most important from our point of view, for Black Eyes' ability is a further ramification of that sort of thing. Your pet is not fast. It isn't strong. It can't change ...
— Black Eyes and the Daily Grind • Milton Lesser
... likely that the tower was primarily intended to be a defensive work. Whatever its original purpose, however, it is certain that it was used for bells at a very early date. In or before 1154, for he died in that year, Prior Reginald "made two bells and placed them in the greater ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... hunted maze, taxing every power of crafty, defensive vigilance, yawns a new pursuing vortex. From such menacing depths may not the eye withdraw nor step recede. This fearful presence is neither chimera of transient nightmare nor creation of evanescent day-dream. Like ever-present sprite, its boding menace pose shifts in accord ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... proudest abbeys, and their lands seized by Pagan barbarians, who settled down in them as lords of the soil, especially in Northumbria. But Alfred at least arrested their further progress, and threw them on the defensive. He knew that the recovery of the conquests which the Saxons had made was a work of exceeding difficulty. It was necessary to make great preparations for future struggles, as peace with the Danes was only a truce. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... was on his feet my sword was out, and I attacked not him only but all who were before me. The moment Leonisa saw the gleam of my sword she swooned away, which only exasperated my frantic rage. I know not whether it was that those whom I assailed contented themselves with acting on the defensive as against a raving madman, or that it was my own good luck and adroitness, or Heaven's design to reserve me for greater ills, but the fact was that I wounded seven or eight of those who came under my hand. As for Cornelio, he made such good ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... This is the instinct of great stupefaction, which is more on the defensive than it is thought to be. Who says nothing is prepared for everything. A word of yours allowed to drop may be seized in some unknown system of wheels, and your utter destruction be compassed ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... military operations by stripping the department of troops to the lowest possible defensive limit. But this was what I had so earnestly urged before, when in a subordinate position; and I was glad to do it when the responsibility rested upon me. My loss of troops to Grant was returned with interest as soon as practicable after Vicksburg had fallen, and ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... the defensive plan which the Eagle's Nest suggested. Access must be provided by means of a rope-ladder, securely fastened inside the ledge, and capable of being pulled up or let down at the will of the occupants. Then the place must be kept constantly stocked with a judicious supply of provisions, water, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... don't want me to tell? Ah, I see; for me to know it is enough; I can put it to him as a theory. I can say Oliver is not a man to be put upon the defensive, and that he is more than likely to be hunting 'the pair of us'—" All at once I ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... hung upon Religion are no more a part of Religion than the ivy that grows upon the stone wall of a fortress is a part of the nation's defensive strength. These things that men have piled about Religion belong to it no more than a pile of trash dumped at the foot of a cliff belongs to the everlasting hills. But these traditions and customs of men, with their ever multiplying confusions of doctrines ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... hypocrisy the keenest game of all. Living under the influence of Old Jimmie, and later of Barney, and of the environment in which she had been bred, these beliefs had come to be her religion. She was thoroughly orthodox, and had the defensive and aggressive fervor which is the ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... the Book of Joshua you may read the great type and example of such achievements, the symbol of every victory of good over evil, the thing that could not be done by man's best power, skill and foresight, accomplished, with God to aid, by a breath. The defensive strength of Jericho was greater, compared with the means of attack then known, than that of Sebastopol in the fifties of the last century, or of Plevna in the seventies, or of Port Arthur a few years since. Those walls were too high to be scaled, too massive to be beaten down, and they were ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... smart of the wound made me gasp for breath, but the next moment it had so raised my fury that I left off the defensive and fell upon my enemy with all my might, hitting and slashing so desperately that, do what he would, I broke down his guard and laid open his forehead over his right eye, and the blood began to trickle down ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... now grown mute again, he had full time for meditation. Therefore, on putting his foot on board his vessel, moored within cannon-shot of the island, the captain of the musketeers had already got together all his means, offensive and defensive. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from active harm. My doctor took a desponding fit about me, and scared Fanny into blue fits; but I have talked her over again. It is the change I want, and the blessed sun, and a gentle air in which I can sit out and see the trees and running water: these mere defensive hygienics cannot advance one, though they may prevent evil. I do nothing now, but try to possess my soul in peace, and continue to possess my body ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He suggested that she should remove her mackintosh. She consented. He had no idea that the effect of the removal of the mackintosh would be so startling as it was. She stood intimately revealed in her frock. The mackintosh was formal and defensive; the frock was ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... invitation for Sundays. She had conquered, and again breathed freely amongst the light oak of her dining-room, where she would have liked to burn some sugar to drive away the odour of perverse leanness which seemed to linger about. Moreover, she continued to remain on the defensive; and at the end of another week she felt more alarmed than ever. She only occasionally saw Florent in the evenings, and began to have all sorts of dreadful thoughts, imagining that her brother-in-law was constructing some infernal machine ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... disk, their portion of the body grew upward in the form of a "visceral hump." Apparently the animal could not increase much in length and retain the advantage of the protection of the shell; and the shell was the dominating structure. It had entered upon a defensive campaign. Motion, slow at the outset, became more difficult, and the protection of the shell therefore all the more necessary. The shell increased in size and weight and motion became almost impossible. The snail represents the average result ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... line of conduct. I'm no' intending to abandon the dog. I am commended here for my humanity, but the bit dog I must let starve for a technicality." Instantly, as the magistrate half rose from the bench, the landlord saw that he had gone too far, and put the court on the defensive. In an easy, conversational tone, as if unaware of the point he had scored, he asked if he might address his accuser on a personal matter. "We knew each other weel as laddies. Davie, when you're in my neeborhood again on a wet day, come in and dry yoursel' by my fire ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... king's peace is not kept and the king's writ does not run, men learn to rely on themselves. Those who protect themselves with strength, discover the efficacy of force, and soon are not content to apply it merely on the defensive. It is not surprising, therefore, to find in Erasmus' day many cases of resort to violence to remedy defective titles. Nowadays we never hear of a defeated candidate for a coveted post trying to obtain by force and right of possession ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... migration small, there have been far fewer such developments than in the United States of America. In England toleration has become an institution, and where Tory and Socialist, Bishop and Infidel, can all meet at the same dinner-table and spend an agreeable week-end together, there is no need for defensive segregations. In such an atmosphere opinion and usage change and change continually, not dramatically as the results of separations and pitched battles but continuously and fluently as the outcome of innumerable ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... by Jiminy!" urged Coutlass, but Fred was not so previous as that. We were not yet on the defensive. We counted five rifles, in addition to Schillingschen's protruding above the launch's side, and we all took cover in the hope either that they might decide we were not the dhow they waited for, or else that they might come very close out of curiosity. For Fred had ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... doubt that a revolution of opinion in Massachusetts and Connecticut is working. Two whig presses have been set up in each of those States. There has been for some days a rumor, that a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive with Great Britain, has arrived. Some circumstances have occasioned it to be listened to; to wit, the arrival of Mr. King's secretary, which is affirmed, the departure of Mr. Liston's secretary, which I know ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 'riviere des Iroquois,' so called because for a long period it had been the most direct highway leading from the villages of these bloody warriors to the heart of the colony. During the summer and autumn of 1665 the Carignan soldiers were kept busy with the construction of these necessary defensive works. The first fort was erected at the mouth of the river, under the direction of Captain de Sorel; the second fifty miles higher, under Captain de Chambly; and the third about nine miles farther ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... arrives a direct message from heaven. It comes by way of the nursery, and is a child's cry. The heart of Alice Grey stops beating for several seconds. Then it says, 'My Molly!' The nurse appears, starts, and is at once on the defensive. ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... goal tender should also be a good skater. His position requires more nerve and cool-headedness than any other position on the team because the final responsibility of all goals scored against his team is up to him. His position is largely a defensive one and his work at times very severe. The goal keeper must very rarely leave his position but must depend upon the two other defensive men the "point" and "cover point" to stop the puck when it away from the direct line of the goal. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... machinery; machine tools that were capable of performing automatically and with the utmost precision and speed any conceivable mechanical operation. He put a dozen of them to work, and before the vessel reached its destination, the new offensive and defensive weapons had been installed and thoroughly tested. He had added a third screen-generator, so that now, in addition to the four-foot hull of arenak and the repellers, warding off any material projectile, the Skylark was also ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... have borrowed from man. And this grunt, more than could possibly be conveyed by syllabic utterance, expresses impatience. Witherspoon gave this goat-like grunt, and Henry knew that he had heard of the Craigs until he was sick of their dark complexion. He knew, also, that the great merchant had not a defensive sense of humor, for humor, in the exercise of its kindly though effective functions, would long ago have put these Craigs to ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... he said, for his own amusement, upon the early forms of our present offensive and defensive weapons. Could I tell him about the first Deuber spheres and the earlier disintegrator rays and the crude atomic bombs we tried back when I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... showing in a snarl. If she had fought fair, or if she had not taken them so by surprise, she would have been powerless among them. But she had sprung at them with the suddenness of rage. She kicked, and scratched, and bit, and clawed and spat. She seemed not to feel the defensive blows that were showered upon her in turn. Her own hard little fists were now doubled for a thump or opened, like ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... thrown suddenly on the defensive. The Irish troops, on which he counted as a balance to the Scots, had been cut to pieces by Fairfax or by Waller, and both in the North and in the South he seemed utterly overmatched. But he was far from despairing. Before the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... dissuade his father from adopting that vacillating policy on which he saw him bent. But within two days after the King had irrevocably taken his final resolve, and had joined himself to the Duke of Orleans, and the other confederated princes by a league, offensive and defensive, against the Duke of Burgundy, instead of persevering in his (p. 275) opposition to that measure, or defying his father's authority, within two days he made himself a party to that league, and pledged his faith to ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... opened it, remembering Jupiter's last unexpected onset; when, looking round by the dim light, she perceived him seated opposite Aunt Peggy's big chest, evidently watching it. On hearing the door open, though, he got up and raised his back, on the defensive. ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... George felt a quick gust of pleasure and romance sweep across him. It was as though senses that had been for long on the defensive, tired, or teased merely by the world, gave way in a moment to joy and poetry. He looked from the face beside him to the pictured scene in which they stood—the soft air filled his lungs—what ailed him?—he only knew that after many weeks he was, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... difference in the bravery of Americans, when well officered. Each side cherished the delusion that it had a monopoly of courage and endurance. One Southern man was thought equal to five Northern men in a fair contest, and if the former were given the advantage of a defensive position, any odds of numbers would be taken. There was nearly, though not quite, as much boasting on the part of our own press and people. The first severe battles made an end of the greater ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... the same time, one to cover the sector at an altitude of from two thousand to three thousand metres, the other, thirty-five hundred to five thousand metres. J. B. and I were on high patrol. Owing to our inexperience, it was to be a purely defensive one between our observation balloons and the lines. We had still many questions to ask, but having been so persistently inquisitive for three days running, we thought it best to wait for Talbott, who was leading our ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... campaign the force was so large, and the work seemed so comparatively easy that the majority of the burghers never went to the firing line, but when British successes in the Free State placed the Boers on the defensive it was not so easy to remain behind in the laagers and allow others more willing to engage in the fighting. General Cronje was able to induce a much larger percentage of his men to fight than Commandant-General Joubert, ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... science of chemistry really means for mankind, to the realization that its wizardry permeates the whole life of the nation as a vitalizing, protective and constructive agent very much in the same way as our blood, coursing through our veins and arteries, carries the constructive, defensive and life-bringing materials to every ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... and her curly hair, he preserved a frozen indifference. For Camors had other anxieties, of which Madame de Tecle knew nothing. The manner of Madame Campvallon toward him had assumed a more marked character of aggressive raillery. A defensive attitude is never agreeable to a man, and Camors felt it more disagreeable than most men—being ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had no business to ask her what she was eating: no man should ask any woman such a question—and really it was no difference anyway. But Nora is always on the defensive, and fabricates when it is necessary—and when it isn't, just through habit. She will hide a letter written by her grandmother, as quickly and deftly as if it were a missive from a guilty lover. The habit of her life is one of suspicion; for, being inwardly guilty herself, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... dared him to the combat; and after a good deal of boastful altercation, which the turmoil of my spirits prevented me from remembering, my brother was compelled to draw his sword and stand on the defensive. It was a desperate and terrible engagement. I at first thought that the royal stranger and great champion of the faith would overcome his opponent with ease, for I considered Heaven as on his side, and nothing but the ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... him the object of a constant fire of vituperation. He had, however, taught all his enemies the value of spoils, and he adhered to the end to the political action he early advised a friend to adopt: "In a political warfare, the defensive side will eventually lose. The meekness of Quakerism will do in religion but not in politics. I repeat it, everything will answer ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... fought on the 26th of June, 1821, Bolivar had about sixteen hundred infantry, a thousand or more of them being British, and three thousand of llanero cavalry under Paez. The Spaniards, under La Torre, had fewer men, but occupied a very strong defensive position. This was a plain, interspersed with rocky and wooded hills, and giving abundant space for military movements, while if driven back they could retire to one strong point after another, holding the enemy at disadvantage throughout. In front there was only one defile, and their ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... have the statement of Count Bismarck, in a diplomatic circular, that he expects to remove the German frontier further west,—meaning to the Vosges Mountains, if not to the Moselle also,—and to convert the fortresses into what he calls "defensive strongholds of Germany."[Footnote: Circular of September 16,1870,—ubi supra, p. 49, Note 1.] Then, with larger view, he declares, that, "in rendering it more difficult for France, from whom all European ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... but furious strokes from without resounded upon the door. Robin, Marian, and the baron threw by their pilgrim's attire, and stood in arms on the defensive. They were provided with swords, and the cottager gave them bucklers and helmets, for all Robin's haunts were furnished with secret armouries. But they kept their swords sheathed, and the baron wielded a ponderous spear, which he pointed towards the ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... types of a chronic disease and may last for many years. The chronic form is characterized by periods of slow or rapid advance when conditions arise in the body favorable for the growth of the bacilli, and periods when the disease is checked and quiescent, the defensive forces of the body having gained the upper hand. Often the intervention of some other disease so weakens the defences of the body that the bacilli again find their opportunity. Thus typhoid fever, scarlet fever and other diseases may be followed by a rapidly fatal advance of the tuberculosis, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... life, and especially colonial politics, afford for ridicule, the author has been commendably careful to avoid, as far as possible, giving real offence. Yet her criticism is sufficiently free to be piquant, and, on the whole, as salutary as it is entertaining. 'Why need Australians always be on the defensive?' asks more than once an Englishman in one of her novels. The author seems to have put the same question to herself as an Australian, and to have decided that ultra-sensitiveness is a worse vice than affectation, ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... was conceived and executed. The service rendered by this battery has forever set at rest the question of the proper tactical use of the machine gun arm, both on the offensive and defensive. These things are now beyond the realm of theory. They are a demonstrated problem. The solution is universally ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... are invented to explain the phenomena of nature—to the positive, when at length it is recognised that human knowledge cannot pass beyond the region of phenomena. With these stages corresponds the progress of society from militarism, aggressive or defensive, to industrialism. The several abstract sciences—those dealing with the laws of phenomena rather than with the application of laws—are so arranged by Comte as to exhibit each more complex science resting on a simpler, to which it adds a ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... canton ermine added to the field Is a sure sign the man that bore these arms Was to his prince as a defensive shield, Saving him from ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... end of one of the galleries hollowed out in a prominent part of the cliff is St. George's Hall, 50 feet long by 85 feet wide, in which the governor was accustomed to give fetes. Alterations, extensions, and improvements are continually taking place in the defensive system, and new guns of the most formidable sort are gradually displacing or supplementing the old ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... rings. He washed the thick end of it in the basin; it seemed to have a spring in it, and Cluffe thought it was a sort of loaded baton. In those days robbery and assault were as common as they are like to become again, and there was nothing remarkable in the possession of such defensive weapons. Dangerfield had only run it once or twice hastily through the water, rolled it in a red handkerchief, and threw it into his drawer, which he locked. When Cluffe was shown the whip, which bore a rude resemblance to this instrument, and which Lowe ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... If the population of Edinburgh were a living, autonomous body, it would arise like one man and make night hideous with arson; the builders and their accomplices would be driven to work, like the Jews of yore, with the trowel in one hand and the defensive cutlass in the other; and as soon as one of these masonic wonders had been consummated, right-minded iconoclasts should fall thereon and make an end of it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fortresses that took years to construct are shattered in a day. The ironclad is sunk by the torpedo. How very little margin lay between this country and starvation through action of submarines! Suppose the enemy had possessed five times as many submarines from the first, would our defensive measures have prevailed? How small an extension in the enemy's power in the air would have enabled him in a single night to leave London a mass of ruins, its whole population which had not fled dying in torment from ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... of the four days' battle of Trenton are familiar to all. In spite of the overwhelming superiority of the Germans in men and artillery, the American army, spread along a twelve-mile front on the hills opposite Lambertville, made good use of their defensive position, and for three days held back the enemy from crossing the river. In fact, it was only on the evening of the third day, June 21, that von Hindenburg's engineers succeeded in completing their pontoon line to the Pennsylvania shore. Again and again the floating bridge ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... system was wicked and absurd—that every country which appeared, from whatever cause, to be growing great, should be attacked; that all the Powers of Europe should be confined to the same precise situation in which this defensive system found them.... Her (Russia's) extent of territory, scanty revenue, and thin population made her power by no means formidable to us—a Power whom we could neither attack nor be attacked by; and this was the Power against which we were going to war. Overturning the ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... however, they fought without method, and the Knight was able for a short interval, by skilful play, to sweep aside their points and to parry their blows. But it forced him to fight wholly on the defensive, and his age and wounds left no doubt as to the ultimate result. His arm grew tired, and the grip on his sword hilt weakened. . . His enemies pressed him closer and closer. . . A blow got past his guard and pierced his thigh. He had strength for only one more stroke; and ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... repeated his former definite instructions, "you will not bear arms either defensive or offensive." He said that he had tried to secure from the Trustees a formal "dispensation", either verbal or written, exempting the Moravians entirely from military duty, but they refused to give it, insisting that the Moravians must at least employ two men to represent the two town ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... no longer waste upon strangers, in your own apartments, the time which you owe us. Shall we make an offensive and defensive alliance against the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there were in the intrenchments of Cawnpore eighty-three officers of various regiments, sixty men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment, and seventy of the Thirty-second, fifteen of the First Madras Fusiliers, and a few invalid gunners; the whole defensive force consisting of about two hundred and forty men, and six guns. There were under their charge a large number of ladies and children, the wives and families of the officers and civilians at the station, sixty-four ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... indefinitely. Toryism, on the other hand, seems as steadfast in its old strongholds as ever; the Tories, I see, are quite as wedded as formerly to their political faith, but at the same time more afraid of all that is not themselves, more on the defensive, more socially exclusive; I think they mix less with "the other side" than formerly, and are less tolerant ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... disappeared once more into the jungle, with which this part of the island was overgrown. When after a few more words with the occupants of the steamer, during which Lieutenant Johnson impressed upon the ensign that the best thing to be done was to act entirely on the defensive, the little sally-party started to return, the lieutenant promising to do all he could to ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Gerard met the envoys after dark at Mr. Deane's quarters. He informed them that the government had resolved immediately to conclude with the colonies a treaty of amity and commerce; also another treaty, offensive and defensive, and guaranteeing independence, upon the conditions that the colonies would neither make a separate peace, nor one relinquishing their independence. The independence of the thirteen colonies being the king's sole purpose, no assistance would be extended for subduing Canada ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... talk about the only subject that interested him—himself. He spoke in a defensive way, as if replying to something she had said or thought. "I've not got down in the world without damn good excuse. I wrote several plays, and they were tried out of town. But we never could get into New York. I think Brent was jealous of me, and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... hesitate, the sportsmen thought they had caught him; but a minute afterwards away went the waving tail amongst the pools and the marshy grass, the zorillo, no doubt, accompanying it, though we could not see him, and fortunately without resorting to any offensive or defensive measures. While they were chasing the zorillo, and we had rode a little way off, that we might not be accidentally shot in the fog, an immense wolf came looming by in the mist, with its stealthy gallop, close to our horses, causing us to shout for the sportsmen; but our numbers frightened ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... together, and without replying, picked up his foil. I saw him measure Allen with his eye, and then they engaged a second time. For a few moments, Allen contented himself with standing on the defensive, parrying Langlade's savage thrusts with a coolness which nothing could shake and an art that was consummate. Then he bent to the attack, and touched his adversary on breast and arm and thigh, his point reaching its mark ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... had thought to act only on the defensive, but, as the days slipped by, the war spirit grew on the settlers, and they said they wanted the thing "over and done with," that they might return to their homes and prepare for the winter. It was then decided to march toward San Antonio, to see if the Mexicans ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... with the master-of-camp, Captain Juan de la Isla, and Felipe Salcedo. They reported on their return that those people were friendly, well disposed, and gentle; that they had no manner of weapon, either defensive or offensive; that they were clad in reed mats, very fine and well finished; and that the island contained many excellent fruits, fish, Castilian fowl, and millet. They reported also that the Indians were full-bearded. On this account those ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... form a natural rampart about the lesser properties in all their gradations. The same quantity of property which is by the natural course of things divided among many has not the same operation. Its defensive power is weakened as it is diffused. In this diffusion each man's portion is less than what, in the eagerness of his desires, he may flatter himself to obtain by dissipating the accumulations of others. The plunder of the few would, indeed, give but a share inconceivably small ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... day went by without any hostile demonstration. Both sides kept on the defensive. Orso did not leave his house, and the door of the Barricini dwelling remained closely shut. The five gendarmes who had been left to garrison Pietranera were to be seen walking about the square and the outskirts of the village, ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... genuine feeling and concern. She truly believed that the paths of fiction would lead to her son's spiritual as well as his material ruin, and Mark had sense enough to recognise the reality of this belief of hers, and drop the levity he had assumed for defensive purposes. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... see to it that the defensive force's supply lines were never hampered by the weather and that the precipitation over the defensive country's breadbasket ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... sensible that the Government of the Union is not less capable of punishing their crimes than it is disposed to respect their rights and reward their attachments. As this object could not be effected by defensive measures, it became necessary to put in force the act which empowers the President to call out the militia for the protection of the frontiers, and I have accordingly authorized an expedition in which the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... getting all this armament through the Customs. Lord Ragnall however had letters from the Colonial Office to such authorities as ruled in Natal, and on our giving a joint undertaking that they were for defensive purposes only in unexplored territory and not for sale, they were allowed through. Fortunate did it prove for us in after days that ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... assailant. The noise of the scuffle brought to the place Sheldrake and others of the crew. Summoning all his strength, Arlington hurled Pierce backward over a chair with such violence that the ruffian, falling on his head, was rendered senseless. The Southerner stood on the defensive, expecting to be attacked by the others, as he would have been, had not Burr strode into the room, followed by the French doctor. The colonel's sudden appearance on the scene prevented further turbulent demonstrations. The three passengers ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the mother to me, I fancy, to tell Marion occult secrets about the way I wore out my boots and how I never could think to put on thicker things in cold weather. But Marion received her with that defensive suspiciousness of the shy person, thinking only of the possible criticism of herself; and my aunt, perceiving this, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Colonel Campbell put an end to the argument by roughly saying that he wanted no more talk, and that if Colonel Furness meant fighting he had better take up his ground. This had already been marked out, and Harry immediately stood on the defensive. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... directed his glance out of the window. He saw some one in the Stockmen's National Bank reach and draw a yellow shade down the whole length of its plate-glass, big front window, although the position of the sun did not seem to warrant such a defensive movement against ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... was no access by rail from the Ohio River to the south, east of Bowling Green. The road from Paducah led nowhere. The railroads to the north from Mississippi ended, not on the Ohio, but at Columbus, on the Mississippi. Defensive earthworks had already been begun at Fort Donelson, on the left Bank of the Cumberland, Fort Henry, on the right bank of the Tennessee, twelve miles west of Fort Donelson, and at Columbus, on the Mississippi. General Johnston, with the aid of his engineers, Lieutenant Dixon and ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... are allowed to go beyond this, that is, to actual malevolence or revenge, the application is morbid. It will therefore accord better with the nature of these emotions, to give them the names of Uniting, and Defensive Affections;—the former including justice, benevolence, veracity, friendship, love, gratitude, patriotism, and the domestic affections;—the latter, ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... the fellow seemed to wind himself around me and twist all over me." But Frank had what boys know as the "power to hold his feet," and so, in spite of the cyclonic attack, he stood firm and solid merely on the defensive, until he got a home grip that suited him, and then with one quick, skillful twist he laid out his opponent so neatly on the grass that the crowd gave him quite a cheer, a difficult thing for an Indian ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... plutocrat is tormented incessantly by jealousy and suspicion; not a day passes without conflicts of interest that adroit diplomacy could turn into ferocious warfare. And in this matter of monopolizing the coal, despite Roebuck's earnest assurances to Galloway that the combine was purely defensive, and was really concerned only with the labor question, Galloway, a great manufacturer, or, rather, a huge levier of the taxes of dividends and interest upon manufacturing enterprises, could ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... from New York to Georgia was exposed to the merciless fury of the savages. In no instance were the measures of defence adopted by the different colonies, adequate to their object.—From some unaccountable fatuity in those who had the direction of this matter, a defensive war, which alone could have checked aggression and prevented the effusion of blood, was delayed 'till the whole population, of the country west of the Blue ridge, had retired east of those mountains; or ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... mem I'm no used till 't, an' it micht jummle my jeedgement," said Malcolm, who had placed himself on the defensive from the first, jealous of his own conduct as being the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... to ignore it. The moral element in George Eliot's works is due largely, no doubt, to her own moral sense; but it was greatly influenced by the fact that, in her union with Lewes, she had placed herself in a false position and was morally on the defensive ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... endeavoured to hold the country to the westward on both sides of the Hudson. The greater part of his army occupied a rocky and mountainous district known by the name of the Highlands. There he carried on a sort of Fabian warfare, ever avoiding a regular engagement, always on the defensive, and retreating when pursued. So ill-formed and ill-disciplined were the American forces at this time that he had no other resource than to act as he did. His army was still further weakened by the loss of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... the eleventh of June until this morning of the fourteenth, the Americans had remained on the defensive,—seven hundred against two thousand or more. Now, however, different tactics were to be used. Colonel Huntington had decided that it was time to turn the tables, and before the night was come the occupants of the graves on the crest of the hill ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... on a huge artificial mound, the labour of forming which must have been enormous. The reason for the construction of these mounds is not far to seek. Just as the chiefs of a mountainous country choose the loftiest peaks for their castles, so in Assyria, which was a very flat country, the extra defensive strength of elevated buildings was clearly appreciated; and as these absolute monarchs ruled over a teeming population and had a very large number of slaves, and only had to direct their taskmasters to impress labour whenever they wanted it, no difficulty existed in forming elevated platforms ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... ship who would not have risked his life to have saved that of the child. The effect of this impolitic and cruel order was decisive. The marines, with the sergeant at their head, and little Willy placed in security in the centre, their bayonets directed on the defensive, towards the captain and officers, retreated to the mutineers, whom they joined with three cheers, as the child was lifted over the barricade of hammocks, and ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... domains in which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,—did not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an offensive and defensive treaty? If they decided to act in concert, how could Sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources to withstand the double assault? The Hittites, as we know them more especially from the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... out of the camp. At length the Mussulman army, now emboldened by the inaction of the Christians, presented itself several times on the plain. Nothing would have been more easy than to attack and conquer it; but Louis had resolved to act upon the defensive, and to await the arrival of the King of Sicily, before beginning the war—a fatal resolution, which ruined everything. The Sicilian monarch, who had advised this ill-starred expedition, was destined to complete, by his delays, the evil he had begun ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... on domains in which the older powers had been accustomed to hold the upper hand,—did not all this tend to transform the convention, more commercial than military, with which up to this time they had been content, into an offensive and defensive treaty? If they decided to act in concert, how could Sapalulu or his successors, seeing that he was obliged to defend himself on two frontiers at the same moment, muster sufficient resources to withstand the double assault? The Hittites, as we know them more especially from ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... every power of crafty, defensive vigilance, yawns a new pursuing vortex. From such menacing depths may not the eye withdraw nor step recede. This fearful presence is neither chimera of transient nightmare nor creation of evanescent day-dream. Like ever-present sprite, its boding menace pose shifts in accord ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... the aimless way which makes me turn the paper over frequently in the futile hope of finding something interesting, and I could not help knowing that my neighbour's eyes were far oftener on me than on The Times. But I had no intention of leaving him, for we were members of a defensive alliance, though he knew nothing about it; two or three men I knew walked through the room and left me alone; I was, I thought, in an almost impregnable position and I closed my eyes, but before I had passed from the stage of wondering ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... operations by stripping the department of troops to the lowest possible defensive limit. But this was what I had so earnestly urged before, when in a subordinate position; and I was glad to do it when the responsibility rested upon me. My loss of troops to Grant was returned with interest as soon as practicable ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... wild and inconsequent fight; but it checked the advance of the British, who now were still more impressed with the need of reinforcements; it aroused the confidence and fighting spirit of the Americans, and it enabled Jackson to take up a defensive line behind an old canal, extending across the plain from river to swamp, and gave him time to fortify it. At once he raised a formidable barricade of mud and timber, and strengthened it with cotton-bales from the neighboring plantations. The cotton, however, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... into those cold, slightly defiant, almost defensive china blue orbs, there came a warmth, a tenderness, a friendly recognition... oh, it was very charming and very touching—and quite mortifying. It was the look of a mother to her son, of a sister to her brother. It implied trust; it implied ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... the Congress, for outside of, and in spite of the Congress, a treaty has been made which converts wonder into amazement. Back in the middle of last May (1878), England and Turkey formed an alliance, offensive and defensive. Nay, more, for Turkey cedes to England the fruitful and strategic island of Cyprus. What a triangle of strongholds—Cyprus, Malta, and Gibraltar! Shades of Bonaparte! Where is France in these days? She is renewing her strength, and is wisely ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... are thus forced—an agitation which we have hesitated to arouse while so many vital questions touching the future of the negro were awaiting settlement, and in which we are acting strictly on the defensive. Under the magnificent utterance of our brave Senator Sumner—which was an inspiration and a prophecy—we looked to see all faltering and compromise, so fatal in all our past, so fatal always and everywhere, swept like ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... beside him to the gambling-room. That which but a moment before had seemed like a wild, purposeless stampede had resolved itself into an unorganized but determined defensive. Few of the men had departed, those few who had ridden in from nearby haciendas where unwarned families waited in ignorance of the menace sweeping down upon them from ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... that followed that call, the great preacher was on the defensive from the first, and in reading over two or three letters that, because of blots or errors, had to be recopied, I am fairly amazed at the temerity of some of my remarks. In one place I charge him with "standing upon his closed Bible to lift himself above sinners, instead of going to ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... added to the field Is a sure sign the man that bore these arms Was to his prince as a defensive shield, Saving him from the force of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... and discretion, as well as his activity, have been proved by his conduct in putting down the insurrection in the London district and have been acknowledged in warm terms of gratitude by the misguided persons who had surrendered themselves into his hands. He received orders to act on the defensive only, and to be careful not to do any act which the American Government could justly complain of as a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Alfred and his men supported the assaults of the Danes, and then, being hardly pressed, the prince sent a messenger to his brother to urge that a movement should be made. The Saxons were impatient at standing on the defensive, and Alfred saw that he must either allow them to charge the enemy or ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... acted: they came at once to a resolution of getting rid of the difficulties which arose from the complication of their trade with their revenue; a step which despoiled them of their best defensive armor, and put them at once into the power of administration. They threw their whole stock of every kind, the revenue, the trade, and even their debt from government, into one fund, which they computed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a piece of it can be processed. For example, in a text-processing tool that {crunch}es a line at a time, a short line buffer can result in {lossage} as input from a long line overflows the buffer and trashes data beyond it. Good defensive programming would check for overflow on each character and stop accepting data when the buffer is full up. The term is used of and by humans in a metaphorical sense. "What time did I agree to meet you? My buffer must have ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... still did not speak, "I am lunching with my sister to-day, but I shall be home by three o'clock." She spoke with the chill civility a lady shows a stranger. Claire seldom allowed herself to be on the defensive when speaking ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... truth must be told; individual units no longer surmounted as before the demoralizing influences of the defensive campaign. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... enemies' bodies, and so we shall use them. And at need we shall have bludgeons—for the wild olive trees are good with us.[60] Some of our men have single-bladed axes at their belts with which those of us who have no defensive armour shall chop their[61] shields and make them fight on equal terms. The fight will, at a guess, come off to-morrow: for when some of the foe had fallen in with scouts of ours and pursuing them at their best speed had found them too good to catch, they bade them ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... luxurious life, and buckle on his sword in defence of American liberties. As a member of the first general Congress, although no orator, his voice was heard in favor of freedom at any loss or hazard. He was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, and did much to organize the defensive operations set on foot. When the battle of Lexington was fought, and it became clear that only the sword could settle the difficulties, Washington, at the nomination of John Adams in the Second Congress, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... and gum (c. G. cum gummi), of saffron and vinegar, defensive plaster, plaster of Paracelsus, blistering plaster, diapalma plaster, compound laudanum plaster, melilot plaster. The term "emplastrum Paracelsi", so the librarian of the Surgeon-General's Office informs me, is not given as such in the older medical dictionaries, and was probably ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... severe losses from the just indignation of the inhabitants. At length the sovereign of Hungary, disgusted with the campaign, refused to remain any longer in Palestine,—a defection which compelled the King of Jerusalem, the Duke of Austria, and the Master of the Hospitallers to take up a defensive position on the Plain of Cesarea. The knights of the other military orders, the Templar and Teutonic, seized upon Mount Carmel, which they fortified for the occasion. But their fears were relieved in the spring of the following year by the arrival of a large body of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... this day; and wishing to employ his industry and energies to the like effect in future; we, of our motion and initiative, do appoint him to be governor and procurator-general over the construction and fortification of the city walls, as well as every other sort of defensive operation and munition for the town of Florence, for one year certain, beginning with the present date; adding thereto full authority over all persons in respect to the said work of reparation or pertaining to it." From this preamble it appears that Michelangelo had been already ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... This other Eden, demi-paradise; This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... the Romans. That we met with no Angli in the great Arminian Confederacy has already been stated. When the Romans were the aggressors, the Angli lay beyond the pale of their ambition. When the Romans were on the defensive the Angli were ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... from my brother, so you can see there's no mistake, and just after it came a messenger asking me, if the machine was a success, to bring this with me across the Atlantic as fast as I could come. It is the duplicate of an offensive and defensive alliance between Great Britain and the United States, of which the details had been arranged just as this complication arose. Another is coming across by a fast cruiser, and, of course, the news will have got to Washington by ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... background, with a continual menace. It shapes the character of a people and enters into all their political and educational progress. To keep on friendly terms with a powerful next-door neighbour, or to build defensive works high enough to make hostility a safe game, is the lifework of its statesmen and its politicians. Great crises and agitations shake the nation convulsively when cowardice or treachery or laziness has allowed that boundary wall to crumble or has made a breach ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... man. "To me belongeth vengeance and recompense." Personally I blame the press for loss of life to both the Indian and the white men, for having schooled the white man erroneously. Travelers crossing the plains were always on the defensive, and ever ready to commence war on any Indian who came within the radius of their firearms. When I was a boy I read in my reader: "Lo, the cowardly Indian." The picture above this sentence was that of an Indian in war paint, holding his ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... and warfare is part of the stumbling block in the minds of men. As they see it, a nation is primarily a fighting organization; and its principal business is offensive and defensive warfare; therefore the ultimatum with which they oppose the demand for political equality—"women cannot fight, therefore ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... later the Germans, no longer on the defensive, themselves went forth from their marshy forests conquering and to conquer. For century after century they swarmed out of the dark woodland east of the Rhine, and north of the Danube; and as their force spent itself, the movement was taken up by their brethren ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... summer of 2003 the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) began recruiting and training a New Iraqi Army (NIA) that would have a purely defensive mission and capability; in March 2004, the Iraqi Interim Government established a Ministry of Defense to create an Iraqi Armed Force; at that time the NIA was renamed the Iraqi Armed Force - Army (IAF-A); plans also were put into effect to reconstitute ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... convince me that this was to prove the principal point of attack, and from my knowledge of such affairs I decided that probably the first signs of returning daylight would be the signal for a determined assault. The dark interior of such a house as this offered too many defensive advantages which ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... gleaned from the writings of Ewald, Fergusson, Bunsen, Deutsch, Max Muller, Baring-Gould, Stanley, and other scholars of Orientation, which shows that the Hebrews, like every other nation, passed through the various phases of Nomadism and Pastoralism, to that of offensive and defensive war. The same as other races, they came through the usual steps in religious progress—Fetishism, Astrolatry, Polytheism and Monotheism. During phases in their history they participated in the various forms of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... from a defensive point of view, the Mairie of the tenth Arrondissement was badly chosen. Situated in a narrow street in that short section of the Rue de Grenelle-St.-Germain which lies between the Rue des Saints-Peres and the Rue du Sepulcre, close by the ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... willingness was the spirit that was resurrecting us all. Instead of acting on the defensive, Dick was now eager to play the aggressive game. I hadn't looked for this spirit to show in him so soon, in his life outside of school. I ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... not mean it. The three were, by the entrance of the dog, instantly united into an offensive and defensive alliance. They knew well that shortly an attack from the Outside World must be delivered, and without a word spoken or a look exchanged they were agreed to defend both themselves and the dog with all the strength in their power. They had always wanted a dog; they had been ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... threatened with vengeance by Corinth, she appealed to Athens, where ambassadors from Corinth also appeared. Their arguments are stated in the speeches which are so characteristic of Thucydides. The Athenians after careful consideration decided to conclude a defensive alliance with Corcyra, for they dreaded the acquisition of her navy by Corinth. But circumstances turned this into an offensive alliance, for Corinth attacked and would have won a complete victory at sea but for timely Athenian succour. In the east Athens was even more ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... "ministers;" after whom followed the Taranteen embassy, consisting of about a dozen noble looking Indians of various ages, from thirty to seventy; and the whole was closed by two or three hundred men, completely armed with both the offensive and defensive arms of the period. The steeple-crowned hats, the slashed sleeves, the red stockings, russet boots, and rosettes on the shoes, made a combination which, if it would be quaint and grotesque in our eyes, was striking to those ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... contradictions like guns into my scattered discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... superiority inherent in the cause of Freedom, the endless resources open to a nation which shews constancy in defensive war; resources which, after a lapse of time, leave the strongest invading army comparatively helpless. Before six cities, resisting as Saragossa hath resisted during her two sieges, the whole of the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... intrenchments of Cawnpore eighty-three officers of various regiments, sixty men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment, and seventy of the Thirty-second, fifteen of the First Madras Fusiliers, and a few invalid gunners; the whole defensive force consisting of about two hundred and forty men, and six guns. There were under their charge a large number of ladies and children, the wives and families of the officers and civilians at the station, sixty-four women ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... has been the Only Bid. When the Only Offensive Declaration has been made by the Dealer. When the Only Offensive Declaration has been made by the Second Hand. When the Only Offensive Declaration has been made by the Third Hand. When the Dealer has Made a Defensive, and both the Second and Third Hands Offensive, Declarations. When the Dealer and Second Hand have made Offensive Declarations, and the Third Hand passed. When the Dealer and Third Hand have made Offensive Declarations, ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... ends. Do not go near him. Like a solitary, enraged spider he weaves this out of his own substance, out of the most cherished convictions of his brain and the deepest emotions of his heart. He trembles at the slightest touch; ever on the defensive, he is terrible,[4136] beside himself;[4137] even venomous through suppressed exasperation and wounded sensibility, furious against an adversary, whom he stifles with the multiplied and tenacious threads of his web, but still ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Inventions, I could not but imagine my self in a kind of Arsenal or Magazine, where store of Arms were reposited against any sudden Invasion. Should you be attack'd by the Enemy Side-ways, here was an infallible Piece of defensive Armour to cure the Pleurisie: Should a Distemper beat up your Head Quarters, here you might purchase an impenetrable Helmet, or, in the Language of the Artist, a Cephalic Tincture: If your main Body be assaulted, here are various ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Scyldings'-helmet: — "For fight defensive, Friend my Beowulf, to succor and save, thou hast sought us here. Thy father's combat {7a} a feud enkindled when Heatholaf with hand he slew among the Wylfings; his Weder kin for horror of fighting feared to hold him. Fleeing, he ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... declares a treaty of Colonial governors against Indian ravages the germ of democratic government, we know that it is his attachment to a theory, and not the actual circumstances, which leads to such an inference; for the very authority he cites merely indicates a defensive alliance among rulers, not a coalition of the ruled. And so when to an account of the Battle of Lexington he appends a rhetorical argument connecting that event, so meagre and simple in itself and so wonderful in its consequences, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... on a shelf of the Lepaterique Mountains, which rise abruptly in that direction, and are covered with pine forests to their summits, is distinctly visible the Indian town of Lauterique,—its position indicating clearly that it had been selected with reference to defensive purposes. We had seen its white church from El Portillo, looking like a point of silver on the dark green slope ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... of a reply. I am plunged in, past hope of a retreat; and since my fate has pointed me out for ruin, I cannot fall more gloriously. Take then, Philander, to your dear arms, a maid that can no longer resist, who is disarmed of all defensive power: she yields, she yields, and does confess it too; and sure she must be more than mortal, that can hold out against thy charms and vows. Since I must be undone, and give all away; I'll do it generously, and scorn ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... friends to her mother, if she could help it. The sentiments of life generally avoided Mrs. Boyce when they could. Marcella being all sentiment and impulse, was constantly her mother's victim, do what she would. But in her quiet moments she stood on the defensive. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... proceeded along the lines generally recommended by the masters," writes Capablanca. "The last move, however, is a slight deviation from the regular course, which brings this Knight back to B in order to leave open the diagonal for the Q, and besides is more in accordance with the defensive nature of the game. Much more could be said as to the reasons that make Kt - B the preferred move of most masters.... Of course, lest there be some misapprehension, let me state that the move Kt - B is made in conjunction with K R - ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... was free to state what these views were. He replied: "Why, sir, he retains the old notion that the world was made in six days." "Well, was it not, Judge?" "Why, certainly not," he answered, "any man at all abreast with the times knows better than that." Willing to put the Judge on the defensive whenever I could, I said; "Well, Judge, if it required more than six days, will you have the goodness to tell me just how long it did take to make it?" The Judge felt the awkward position he was in, and before he could recover I had bidden him good bye and ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... of the turnpike over which the broken army dragged its way south were heavily wooded, and the road threaded through a bewildering maze of narrow valleys, gorges, and ravines—just the type of territory made for defensive ambushes to rock reckless Yankees out of their saddles. The turnpike was to be left for the use of the rear guard of fighting men, while the wagon trains and straggling mass of the disorganized Army of the Tennessee split up to follow the dirt roads toward ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... Entered, and foul disorder; all the ground With shivered armour strown, and on a heap Chariot and charioteer lay overturned, And fiery-foaming steeds; what stood, recoiled O'er-wearied, through the faint Satanick host Defensive scarce, or with pale fear surprised, Then first with fear surprised, and sense of pain, Fled ignominious, to such evil brought By sin of disobedience; till that hour Not liable to fear, or flight, or pain. Far otherwise ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... precedency, talked so loud of coming to a battle, that Sir William Temple happened to overhear them, and gave immediate intelligence to the Ancients, who thereupon drew up their scattered troops together, resolving to act upon the defensive; upon which, several of the Moderns fled over to their party, and among the rest Temple himself. This Temple, having been educated and long conversed among the Ancients, was, of all the Moderns, their greatest favourite, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... and, standing on the defensive, desired the villain to come out: the demand was not ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... his unexpected blow, Link Merwell sprang back and stood on the defensive. Dave was not wearing any coat or vest, and he merely threw his hat to his friend. Then, as quick as lightning, he sprang forward, knocked aside Merwell's guard, and planted a telling blow on the bully's ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... fists in battery, Dave took a swift, nimble sidestep. He felt that he had to study this big fellow carefully before doing more than keep on the defensive. ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... his hand in a defensive attitude. The onrushing Venerian caught Parkinson's out-thrust fist in the pit of his stomach, and doubled up in pain. While he was thus defenseless, Parkinson placed a well-directed blow on the side of the Venerian's jaw, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... shores.[10] Some of her wars, as for example the successful struggle by which the Napoleonic domination was broken up, have been fought for the purpose of safe-guarding her independence, but they were not popular with the people at large, whose short sight did not permit them to see that a defensive war may have to be fought beyond the seas; and they had little or no effect in evoking a patriotic military spirit. Napoleon's gibe that the English were a nation of shopkeepers was not unasked ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... law and order would be battle-girt and the secret body would be on the defensive—perhaps even on the run. If it were to hold the offensive it must strike and terrorize before another day had dawned—and that was not as it ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... had settled upon Gardencourt; the days grew shorter and there was an end to the pretty tea-parties on the lawn. But our young woman had long indoor conversations with her fellow visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies often sallied forth for a walk, equipped with the defensive apparatus which the English climate and the English genius have between them brought to such perfection. Madame Merle liked almost everything, including the English rain. "There's always a little of it and never too much at once," she said; "and it never wets you and it always smells good." She ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... of great danger, as at the time of the Persian invasions (492-479 B.C.), a number of the States would combine to form a defensive league; at other times they made war on one another. The federal principle, such as we know it in the United States in our state and national governments, never came into play. At different times Athens, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... ask, with your talking English so perfectly?" she said. "You should hear me talking French when we are entertaining Ambassadors and that sort of persons. I talk it so fast that nobody can understand a word I say. That is a defensive measure, you must observe, because even if I talked it quite slowly they would understand just as little. But they think it is the pace that stupefies them, and they leave me in a curious, dazed condition. And now Miss Falbe and I are ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... with his mother, and with Mary, in the dreadful hour when they supposed him lost; and had it not been for the great perplexity occasioned by his return, she would have received him, as a relative, with open arms. But now she felt it her duty to be on the defensive,—an attitude not the most favorable for cherishing pleasing associations in regard to another. She had read the letter giving an account of his spiritual experience with very sincere pleasure, as a good woman should, but not without an internal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... facts. The rebellion in the Cape Colony was, after all, feeble, and the cause was not progressing there. Would it not be possible to conclude a federal union with the two Colonies? An offensive and defensive treaty? Friendship in trade? If all attempts in these directions came to nothing, could they not be satisfied with an "encumbered independence"? and if England did not want this, and refused to concede anything, the time would have arrived ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... fourteen, for seven years, this had been her life—a life as open to the public as the life of an actress, as easy of access as that of the stenographer in the hotel lobby. As a result, the girl had encased herself in a defensive armor of hardness and distrust, a protection which was rendered futile by the loveliness of her face, by the softness of her voice, by the deep, brooding eyes, and the fine forehead on which, like a crown, rested the black ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing—as much advantage and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the witchcraft delusion, the relations of parties became entirely changed. The prosecutors at the trials were put on the defensive, and felt themselves in peril. Parris saw his danger, and, with characteristic courage and fertility of resources, prepared to defend himself, and carry the war upon any quarter from which an attack might be apprehended. He continued, on his own responsibility, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... fury of the savages. In no instance were the measures of defence adopted by the different colonies, adequate to their object.—From some unaccountable fatuity in those who had the direction of this matter, a defensive war, which alone could have checked aggression and prevented the effusion of blood, was delayed 'till the whole population, of the country west of the Blue ridge, had retired east of those mountains; or were ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... any of the tribes of animated nature, for its food is fruits and seeds, and those are in superabundance throughout the whole year in the regions where the toucan is found. It can hardly be for the defensive, as the toucan is preyed upon by no bird in South America and, were it obliged to be at war, the texture of the bill is ill-adapted to give or receive blows, as you will see in dissecting it. It cannot be for any particular protection to the tongue, as ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... both, too, were old; but while the rude earth of the wall had no painted lustre to shed off all fadings and tarnish, and still keep fresh without, though with long eld its core decayed: the living lime and dust of the sage was frescoed with defensive ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... not engaged in real hostilities with the Miwok or Maidu for well over a century and Paiute hostilities appear to have taken the form of occasional defensive skirmishes; thus the details of war magic are vague. However, Washo tradition repeatedly mentions a month-long period during which doctors gathered and made medicine against the enemy before launching a campaign. ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... assistance was afforded by higher formations. An occasional night alarm also ordered by higher authorities discomforted everyone and did little good. Recruits were sent to Sandwich for musketry, and the Battalion assisted in digging trenches, machine gun emplacements and other defensive works on the inland side of the canal, originally constructed by French prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars, and which skirted Romney Marsh. Half the Battalion—that is four companies—was sent to assist with the London Defences near Ashford, where the men learnt to construct what the ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... belong to the side which upholds slavery." "Yes," said I, "we belong to the country where the black man is better taken care of than in any other part of the world." The churchman seeing me put on the defensive, as it were, came to my aid, and said: "Oh, we are slaveholders here; being Mahommedans, we have no prejudices that way; our only trouble is, we cannot get slaves enough. The English, who have no control over us, we being ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... questions like "How do you tell a true from a false Unicorn?"—and undertook to supplement it with a practical education, an education that would be a preparation for Life. The education had to be combined with offensive and defensive measures against a Scientist who was bent on capturing the Phoenix, but the two projects together involved exciting and hilarious adventures for ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... still turning. To a man, the various captains reported that their men had obeyed instructions to the letter. No acts of violence had as yet been committed by any of the American crews. The ex-sailors, though chafing at their inaction, had assumed the defensive throughout. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... 1586 an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded at Berwick between the King and Queen in order to protect the religion adopted in their dominions, which, in the language of the Prayer-book, they termed the 'Catholic,' and to repel, not only ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of the few branches of learning of which the parish-scholar came in for a share. That which gained him the imputation was the fact that his nature was without a particle of the aggressive, and all its defensive of as purely negative a character as was possible. Had he been a dog, he would never have thought of doing anything for his own protection beyond turning up his four legs in silent appeal to the mercy of the heavens. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... immensely strong in itself, with a perfect glacis and field of fire. Every invention of modern defensive war helped to make it stronger. In front of it was the usual system of barbed wire, stretched on iron supports, over a width of fifty yards. Behind the wire was the system of the First Enemy Main Line, from which many communication-trenches ran to the central fortress ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... a swift light upon her face. He had said, "leave us"—not "leave me." And his voice was gentle. Surely he was the kind-hearted and chivalrous rancher of his own simple letters. She began to feel a woman's sense of superiority. On the defensive, she replied: "I don't know ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive of a house." ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could be seen ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... who was closely connected with the House of Burgundy, were defeated by the duke in 1467, but he treated them with clemency; and immediately after this event, in February, 1468, he concluded with Edward IV. of England an alliance, offensive and defensive, against France. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... of his son's attitude, John Wingfield, Sr. had drawn back into the shadow, as, if in defensive instinct before the force that ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... while by no means demoralised, was discouraged and no longer had faith in its commander. There was much inevitable disappointment throughout the North that, so far from making progress in the attempt to restore the authority of the government, the national troops were on the defensive but a few miles from the national capital. The Confederate correspondence from London and from Paris gave fresh hopes for the long ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... Winkle was urged by a variety of considerations, the first of which was his reputation with the club. He had always been looked up to as a high authority on all matters of amusement and dexterity, whether offensive, defensive, or inoffensive; and if, on this very first occasion of being put to the test, he shrunk back from the trial, beneath his leader's eye, his name and standing were lost for ever. Besides, he remembered to have heard it ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... more, they are frightened of them. Should a thoughtless Locust meekly approach one of the Empusae, suspended by her four hind-legs to the trellised dome, the intruder meets with a bad reception. The pointed mitre is lowered; and an angry thrust sends him rolling. We have it: the wizard's cap is a defensive weapon, a protective crest. The Ram charges with his forehead, the Empusa ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... in on the camp, running the risk of losing several of their men in the charge, they could of course have eaten up the three hunters in a minute; but such a charge is rarely practised by Indians, who, although they are admirable in defensive warfare, and even in certain kinds of offensive movements, and although from their skill in hiding they usually inflict much more loss than they suffer when matched against white troops, are yet very reluctant to make any movement where the advantage gained must be offset by considerable ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... defense, therefore, is not passive defense only, but contains an element of "offense" as well. When the defense contains in large measure the element of offense, it is said in military parlance to be "offensive-defensive"; and the most effective defensive is this offensive-defensive. When a defending force throws off its defensive attitude entirely and advances boldly to attack, it is said to have "assumed the offensive"; but ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... totalitarianism struggles to avoid being overwhelmed by the forces of economic advance and the aspiration for human freedom, it is the free nations that are resilient and resurgent. As the global democratic revolution has put totalitarianism on the defensive, we have left behind the days of retreat. America is again a vigorous leader of the free world, a nation that acts decisively and firmly in the furtherance of her principles and vital interests. No legacy would make ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the Arts among the Lemurians, we must start with the history of the fifth sub-race. The separation of the sexes was now fully accomplished, and man inhabited a completely physical body, though it was still of gigantic stature. The offensive and defensive war with the monstrous beasts of prey had already begun, and men had taken to living in huts. To build their huts they tore down trees, and piled them up in a rude fashion. At first each separate family lived in its own clearing in the jungle, but they soon found ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... and Spanden were likewise repulsed. The concentration of the French corps d'armee began to be effected near Saafeldt, when General Benningsen changed all of a sudden his plan of campaign: passing from the offensive to the defensive, he decided to repass the Alle, in order to protect the entrenched camp of Heilsberg, and by the same movement the town of Koenigsberg, the last refuge of the resources of Prussia. The retreat of the Russians commenced on the evening of the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... freed themselves from the Russian guarantee; aided by Prussia, compelled the Russian troops to evacuate the country; devised a constitution, which they laid before the cabinets of London and Berlin; concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia on the 29th of March, 1790, and, on the 3d of May, 1791, carried into effect the new constitution ratified by England and Prussia, and approved of by the emperor Leopold. During the conference, held at Pilnitz, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... so full of historical associations at Falaise—every nook and corner of the castle telling of its nine sieges—that we are glad to be able to examine the building thoroughly from without, and to remind ourselves of the method of defensive warfare in the fifteenth century. The whole of the precincts of the castle, the walls, ramparts, and the principal towers, are (at the time we write, August, 1869) strewn with mason's work, as if a new castle of Falaise were being built; everything looks fresh and ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... ran away with him, frightened at the cannon; upon which he hastily got down; drew sword; put himself at the head of his Hanoverian Infantry [on the right wing], and stood,—left foot drawn back, sword pushed out, in the form of a fencing-master doing lunge,—steadily in that defensive attitude, inexpugnable like the rocks, till all was over, and victory gained. This is defaced by the spirit of ridicule, and not quite correct. Britannic Majesty's horse [one of those 500 fine animals] did, it is certain, at last dangerously run away with him; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Stuyvesant that the Connecticut people, in their intrigues to get possession of New Netherland, were tampering with these river Indians, endeavoring to enter into a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive with them. It was consequently deemed desirable immediately to secure a general peace with ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... encourage, the accession of new members. Very soon these southern states entered the new customs union of 1867, maintained by the northern states, and ere long they were concluding with Prussia treaties of both offensive and defensive alliance. The patriotic fervor engendered by the war with France in 1870-1871 sufficed to complete the work. Contrary to the expectation of Napoleon III., the states of the south contributed troops and otherwise co-operated vigorously with the Prussians throughout the contest, and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... a brave show of gold cloth, diamonds, laces, jewels, swords, silk stockings, lackeys, grooms, guards and crowns, kingcraft was now placed on the defensive. The cry of the people, "Liberty!" filled many ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... careful in times like these," replied Jack, turning around again and facing the crowd. "After I have been among you awhile, I shall know who my friends are. I did hear some talk of a heavy vessel that is to be added to the defensive force of the city, and which might some time go outside and scatter the blockading fleet, but I didn't go up to take a look at her. I couldn't spare the time. She'll need a crew when she is completed, ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... contemplative like a cat's, and, as every one knows, a cat's eye is the most observing of all eyes. It is quite in the order of things, since a cat's attitude toward the world is by need and experience wholly defensive. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... French soldiery, Elfride was not brave when on the defensive. So it was almost with tears in her eyes that ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... for success. All this will be decided to-day, for I am now looking for the return of two important envoys—for the return of Hardenberg, who has delivered my propositions in Vienna, and for the return of Lombard, whom I have sent to the smaller German courts to offer them an offensive and defensive alliance in opposition to Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine. I confess to you, Louisa, I await their replies tremblingly; I cannot think of any thing else; this feeling has haunted me all day, and now you know why I even forgot ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... before, the Secretary of War, in view of the formidable armaments of England, had made requisition of the several States for ninety-three thousand five hundred men for general defensive purposes, under a law of Congress enacted the previous April. The quota of Kentucky was fifty-five hundred infantry; of Tennessee, twenty-five hundred infantry; of Mississippi territory, five hundred infantry, and of Louisiana, one thousand ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... Cotton Mather, now on the defensive, "just let the village-lad try it. Why, the beauty of real bait-fishing is that it requires more skill than any other kind of angling. To present your bait to the wary old trout without frightening him; to make it move in the water so ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... the same. You understood You too, defensive and morose, Encloaked your secret puppyhood— Your ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... the general direction of the posts and arsenals of the empire. There were thirty-four cities, fifteen in the East, and nineteen in the West, in which regular companies of workmen were perpetually employed in fabricating defensive armor, offensive weapons of all sorts, and military engines, which were deposited in the arsenals, and occasionally delivered for the service of the troops. 3. In the course of nine centuries, the office of quaestor had experienced a very singular revolution. In the infancy of Rome, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Emperor sent Marshal Grouchy the next day at noon, with thirty-two thousand men to look after the enemy, but then it was quite too late. In those fifteen hours they had time to re-form, to communicate with the English, and to act on the defensive. ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... entirely independent, the incongruity and incompatibility were obvious of joining a vassal State. There was trouble if not danger lurking behind it, if such two States were to join in an actual federation. Whatever was desirable for mutual advantage might be attained without offensive and defensive alliance. The two Governments, however, knew how to manipulate matters. The closer union scheme was carried through before the Jameson incursion, and soon after that event an offensive and defensive alliance completed the federation. ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... field in which to exercise the weapons which logic had put in their hands. Here Martin and Crambe used to engage like any prizefighters. And as prize-fighters will agree to lay aside a buckler, or some such defensive weapon, so Crambe would agree not to use simpliciter and secundum quid, if Martin would part with materialiter and formaliter. But it was found, that, without the defensive armor of these distinctions, the arguments cut so deep that they fetched blood at every stroke. Their theses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... with Enver Bey. His scheme is flatly revolutionary, namely, the deposition of Abdul, a secret alliance, offensive and defensive, with us; the Germanisation of the Turkish army and navy; the fortification of the Gallipoli district according to our plans; a steadily increasing pressure on Serbia; a final reckoning with Russia which is definitely to settle the status of Albania and Serbia and leave ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the Low Countries, the Queen was more successful in robbing him of the aid of the Scots. The action of King James had been guided by his greed of the English Crown, and a secret promise of the succession sufficed to lure him from the cause of Spain. In July 1586 he formed an alliance, defensive and offensive, with Elizabeth, and pledged himself not only to give no aid to revolt in Ireland, but to suppress any Catholic rising in the northern counties. The pledge was the more important that the Catholic resentment seemed passing into fanaticism. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... selection of words proves him a scholar. His face generally wears a determined, almost fierce expression, but one is impressed with the thought that this appearance is caused by his habitually standing on the defensive as against his fellow-men. Since he has never before had an opportunity of speaking in his own defense, it is perhaps fitting that his statement should be given in his ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... a kind of an anomaly, I believe," the general answered, looking up at his daughter with a smile. "The Aztecs, you are aware, dressed chiefly in cotton. Even their defensive armor was of cotton, thickly quilted. Their ornaments were feathers, and embroidery of gold and precious stones. But wool, for some reason, they didn't wear; and yet this garment, as you can see for yourself, is pure wool; and that it is also ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... Kendall caught on his twenty-five and was stopped at the thirty. Brimfield made seven in two plunges at the left side of the opposing line and then Still fumbled. Marvin recovered and Norton kicked to Claflin's thirty. Steve and Miller upset Ainsmith where he caught. Claflin was now playing on the defensive and kicked on first down. The punt was short and Kendall got it on Claflin's forty-eight yards and made ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... interior line which the French now hold. Think of the power of the defensive with modern arms. No! The French have not had ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... than the tract itself. One hundred thousand copies of this tract were distributed in New York City alone. It is printed herewith as a specimen, both as to style and matter, of what one may call the aggressive-defensive tactics ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... wire asking them to remain neutral, thus clearly giving them to understand that the British Government intended to make war on the South African Government. This telegram was sent to the Orange Free State because they knew that the latter had made a defensive alliance with the South African Republic ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... trained and equipped was raised to contest the progress of the invaders or at least to defend the capital. Negotiations with the Protestant princes of Germany for the conclusion of an offensive and defensive alliance were opened, and to prevent a commercial boycott a proclamation was issued that except in case of wool foreigners trading in England should be obliged to pay only the duties and customs imposed upon Englishmen. But as events showed there was ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... wounded were few. For there were no withering volleys of musketry, no field-pieces playing upon the disorganised cavalry from a distance; it was a sheer combat of mounted men armed with the sword, against whose edge and point defensive armour was worn; and in consequence many of the wounds were insignificant, more injuries being received by men being dismounted ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... His attitude was defensive; he expected to be called on for explanations, to be required to soothe resentment; his mental condition was more or less that of ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... nearly a fortnight while the General placed his columns, we entered among the hills and fighting was continuous. Our passage to force was Relief's Nek, and, as we had expected, the Boers made a determined stand there. The ground lay in a naturally defensive position; a narrow plain among steep, almost precipitous, ranges, and in the plain, arresting further progress, an abruptly sunken valley, scooped out to a depth of a couple of hundred feet; as though, what must perhaps have happened, some sudden collapse down below had allowed the ground here ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... "Chronicles," published in 1675. "Above all, he very carefully observed such whose mind or aspect were featured with any chearful and debonair lineaments; for such he boded were they that would despatch him; to that purpose he always went secretly armed, both offensive and defensive; and never stirred without a great guard. In his usual journey between Whitehall and Hampton Court, by several roads, he drove full speed in the summer time, making such a dust with his life-guard, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... and lasting hatred to the white man, and particularly to the Anglo-Americans, exists among them, and, unless they coalesce, no serious difficulty need be apprehended from them. Not so, however, should they be induced to unite for purposes offensive and defensive; their strength would then become apparent, create confidence, and in all probability induce them to give vent to their long-suppressed desire to revenge past wrongs, which is restrained, as they openly and ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... linked mail; the knees and feet were defended by splints, or thin plates of steel, ingeniously jointed upon each other; and mail hose, reaching from the ankle to the knee, effectually protected the legs, and completed the rider's defensive armor. In his girdle he wore a long and double-edged dagger, which was the only offensive ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... a quick gust of pleasure and romance sweep across him. It was as though senses that had been for long on the defensive, tired, or teased merely by the world, gave way in a moment to joy and poetry. He looked from the face beside him to the pictured scene in which they stood—the soft air filled his lungs—what ailed him?—he only ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... three in Leinster, so that the Hibernians appear to have had their stronghold in the Northern province and the adjoining counties in Connaught and Leinster. This is exactly as one might expect, seeing the necessity for a defensive organisation against the Orangemen of Ulster. The Order took deep root in Glasgow and Liverpool on account of the convenience of access by sea ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... into particular combinations to sink the wages of labor.... These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution.... Such combinations, however, are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the workmen; who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind, combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Offensive Declaration has been made by the Dealer. When the Only Offensive Declaration has been made by the Second Hand. When the Only Offensive Declaration has been made by the Third Hand. When the Dealer has Made a Defensive, and both the Second and Third Hands Offensive, Declarations. When the Dealer and Second Hand have made Offensive Declarations, and the Third Hand passed. When the Dealer and Third Hand have made Offensive Declarations, ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... Protestantism rapidly spread. But the harsh dealings of Rudolph with the Protestants provoked resentment. In 1607 Donauworth, a free Protestant city, was seized by the Catholic Duke of Bavaria. Next year the German Protestants formed the defensive Evangelical Union. Meanwhile Rudolph's policy only reacted in favor of the Protestant nobles. In 1611 his brother Matthias supplanted him as King of Bohemia, and in 1612 Rudolph died and Matthias succeeded to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this attribution of power. Everyone had need of one's power, whereas one's own need, at the best, would have seemed to be but some trick for not communicating it. The effect of a reserve so merely, so meanly defensive would in most cases, beyond question, sufficiently discredit the cause; wherefore, though it was complicating to be perpetually treated as an infinite agent, the outrage was not the greatest of which a brave man might complain. Complaint, besides, was a luxury, and he dreaded the imputation ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... by the Governor to take immediate measures to secure the frontier.[496] Acting, no doubt, under Berkeley's influence, the Assembly resolved not to carry the conflict into the enemy's territory, but to wage a defensive war. Forts were to be erected upon the upper waters of the great rivers, and manned with regular troops as a protection to the outer plantations. To defray the cost, new and heavy taxes ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... of the Brethren, inserted a notice in the General Advertiser that they intended to reply to Rimius in detail. For these reasons, therefore, Zinzendorf, James Hutton, Frederick Neisser, and others who preferred to write anonymously, now issued a series of defensive pamphlets.133 The Count offered to lay before the public a full statement of his financial affairs; and James Hutton, in a notice in several newspapers, promised to answer any reasonable questions. It is needless to give the Brethren's ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... they all rose from their covert and sallied out into the open, to the intense astonishment of the new-comer, whose surprise was evidently mixed with a proportionate amount of alarm, for he clutched his gun more tightly at the sight of them, and stood apparently on the defensive. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the suspicions, spites, petty jealousies, vulgar curiosities, and all the indefinable little darts and daggers that fly in the social air, destroying human sympathy and good-will. Each mind could expand freely, no longer on the defensive against the rain of small stabs. There grew up a delicate, and chivalrous code among the little group who ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... forces, endeavoured to hold the country to the westward on both sides of the Hudson. The greater part of his army occupied a rocky and mountainous district known by the name of the Highlands. There he carried on a sort of Fabian warfare, ever avoiding a regular engagement, always on the defensive, and retreating when pursued. So ill-formed and ill-disciplined were the American forces at this time that he had no other resource than to act as he did. His army was still further weakened by the loss of Fort ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... remained firm—it was plain that he was the chosen plenipotentiary of his government in all the treaties that had been effected. Moreover, in his reply, the Governor had not only emphatically repudiated all insinuations of unfairness toward the red man, but he had put the chief himself on the defensive by showing that he was an interloper who sought to control the rightful possessions of others. At last, it was the stolid savage who lost his self control, and the Governor, who by his respect for the laws of the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... formed a junction with them, under the command of Agesimbrotus. This squadron they sent to the station off Zelasium, a promontory of Isthmia, very conveniently situate beyond Demetrias, in order that, if the ships of the Macedonians should attempt any movement, they might act as a defensive force. Heraclides, the king's admiral, kept his fleet there, rather with a view of laying hold of any advantage which the negligence of the enemy might afford him, than with a design of attempting any thing by open force. ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... no condition to be dealt with rationally," continued Mrs. Greyson, in a tone explanatory, but in no way defensive, "so I said whatever would ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... members was undoubtedly the real cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal confidence with which most of the popular party were beginning to regard the King was turned into hatred and suspicion. From that moment, the Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive arms. From that moment, the city assumed the appearance of ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... of them to come at what was beneath. Our spirits were beginning to rise, when an unlucky accident sent them down to zero. The hoops of one of the barrels handled were insecure, and coming off, the staves fell apart, and along with a defensive covering of slabs of salt, a neat assortment of revolver cartridges came tumbling out. The Japanese lieutenant smiled till his little ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Caledonians were gathering from all parts—from the distant Highlands and from the siege of the Strathearn forts. The Buzzard Dykes, on the lower slopes of the Hill of Blair, marks their position. At length they thought themselves strong enough to begin the attack. A defensive policy would have been wiser. But the concentrated power of a trained army—the very regularity of its motions always draws the attack of a less highly disciplined force. Probably the Caledonians deceived themselves into thinking that fear was ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... hear you, Fabius my general, not Minutius, nam [686]qui Consilio nititur plus hostibus nocet, quam qui sini animi ratione, viribus: And in such wars to abstain as much as is possible from [687]depopulations, burning of towns, massacring of infants, &c. For defensive wars, I will have forces still ready at a small warning, by land and sea, a prepared navy, soldiers in procinctu, et quam [688]Bonfinius apud Hungaros suos vult, virgam ferream, and money, which is nerves belli, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... artillery. A properly directed machine-gun barrage is far more difficult to traverse than anything the artillery can put down and the combination of artillery and machine guns, working together, whether on the offensive or defensive, represents the highest point ever attained in the effective use of ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... The girl, having witnessed her champion's skill, had little fear of the outcome. Only a single antagonist could face him at a time upon the narrow stairway, he had the advantage of position and of the defensive, and he was a master of the sword while they were clumsy bunglers by comparison. Their sole advantage was in their numbers, unless they might find a way to ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the systems of political abstraction which, at their logical best, and in the most complete unreality, are to be found in Godwin's Political Justice; but it is not beyond the mark to affirm that after his time such abstract systems were on the defensive. Therein, with all his faults, he had given Burke the clue to those truths he so profoundly saw—the sense of the State as more than a mechanical contrivance, the high regard for prescription, the sense of law as the voice of past wisdom. He was, said Burke, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... saw; and, stooping, caused to glance From his slope shield the disappointed lance. Beneath the spacious targe, (a blazing round, Thick with bull-hides and brazen orbits bound, On his raised arm by two strong braces stay'd,) He lay collected in defensive shade. O'er his safe head the javelin idly sung, And on the tinkling verge more faintly rung. Even then the spear the vigorous arm confess'd, And pierced, obliquely, king Hypsenor's breast: Warm'd in his liver, to the ground it bore The chief, his people's guardian ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... hooting, screaming, and drumming with sticks upon old logs, which is done in the latter case with equal facility by the four extremities. They do not appear ever to act on the offensive, and seldom, if ever really, on the defensive. When about to be captured, they resist by throwing their arms about their opponent, and attempting to draw him into contact with their teeth." (Savage, l. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... above named structure was more strictly domestic than defensive. It was built in quadrangular form, containing only one large court, upon which opened the stately hall, chapel, and principal apartments. Though not commanding the imposing aspect and grandeur of Bereford Castle, Chesley Manor had an air of true gentility in keeping with that of its ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... wistfully, a swift light upon her face. He had said, "leave us"—not "leave me." And his voice was gentle. Surely he was the kind-hearted and chivalrous rancher of his own simple letters. She began to feel a woman's sense of superiority. On the defensive, she replied: "I don't know ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... defensive things about the Scotch. "And Scotland is such a lovely place. Even round here. Dalmeny. Cramond Brig. Hawthornden. And oh, the Pentlands! Have you not been to the Pentlands yet? Oh, but they're the grandest place in the world. There are lochs hidden ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... what's the matter with you, Ralph Hambleton," she would say. "You're jealous." An accusation that invariably put him on the defensive. "You think all the girls are in love with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... come and invade England. The chosen English king, Harold, had marched at full speed from Sussex to Yorkshire, and met the invaders marching at their ease, without expecting any enemy, and wearing no defensive armor, as they went forth to receive the keys of the city of York. The battle was fought by the Norsemen in the full certainty that it must be lost. The banner, 'Landwaster', was planted in the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only wish for alliance offensive and defensive with England ... but would have little objection to the former ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... very much altered. One of the owls turned and faced him, whereupon he, too, lost his resolution and confined himself to threats. The two owls, for their part, seemed to consider it wise to stand on the defensive rather than to force a battle to a finish with their unwilling hosts. For some minutes, therefore, the war of threats and bad language went on, without fur or feathers actually flying. Then at last ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... is a fine opportunity, for Mr. Pye Hilary is in love, in despair, and in waiting: he expects his mistress's abigail; in negociating with whom, he conceives Tarradiddle will be a valuable assistant. Mrs. Tattle arrives. Preliminaries having been duly settled, articles offensive and defensive are entered into, to carry out a plan by which the lover shall gain an interview with the mistress; and the treaty is ratified by a liberal donation, which the Captain makes to the maid out of his friend's purse. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... with ready arrow. There was a patter of feet upon leaves in the wood beside them and then the arrow was fitted to the string, while Old Mok, strong-armed if weak-legged, raised aloft his spear. The two were seeking no conflict with wild beasts today and were but defensive and alert. They were puzzled by the sound their quick ears caught. "Patter, patter," ever beside them, but deep in the forest shade, came the sound of menacing ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... to which we are thus forced—an agitation which we have hesitated to arouse while so many vital questions touching the future of the negro were awaiting settlement, and in which we are acting strictly on the defensive. Under the magnificent utterance of our brave Senator Sumner—which was an inspiration and a prophecy—we looked to see all faltering and compromise, so fatal in all our past, so fatal always and everywhere, swept like dew before the sun. But the old fears ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Parades. 'The lessons defensive are commonly called the parades'.—Sir W. Hope's Compleat ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... mixed Government like ours, composed of Monarchy, and of controls, on the part of the higher people and the lower, is that the Prince shall not be able to violate the laws. This is useful indeed and fundamental. But this, even at first view, is no more than a negative advantage; an armour merely defensive. It is therefore next in order, and equal in importance, that the discretionary powers which are necessarily vested in the Monarch, whether for the execution of the laws, or for the nomination to magistracy and office, or for conducting the affairs of peace and ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... holders.[15] It is certainly the general opinion of the people of India that no land should be held without paying rent to Government, or providing for people employed in the service of Government, for the benefit of the people in its defensive, religious, judicial, educational, and other establishments. Nine- tenths of the land in these Nerbudda territories are held in lease immediately under Government by the heads of villages, whose leases have been renewable ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... home; and the examples of our neighbours teach us, that they are not always the happiest subjects, whose kings extend their dominions farthest. Since therefore we cannot win by an offensive war, at least a land war, the model of our government seems naturally contrived for the defensive part; and the consent of a people is easily obtained to contribute to that power which must protect it. Felices nimium, bona si sua norint, Angligenae! And yet there are not wanting malecontents amongst us, who, surfeiting themselves on too much happiness, would persuade the people that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... to make a proposal to you. Let the two powers that wish not the marriage with an Austrian archduchess conclude together a league offensive and defensive. The power France accedes to this with joy. It promises to further and support the second power in all her plans, to lend her efficient aid, that the Princess Ludovicka Hollandine may wed the ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... said, "whatever is harsh, aggressive, cynical, mean, sneering, selfish in me has been externally acquired. You scrape even a spineless mollusc too long with a pin, and the irritation produces a defensive crust. I began boy-like by being so damned credulous and impulsive and affectionate and tender-hearted that even my kid sister laughed at me; and she was only three years older than I. Then followed ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... would have seen that sight; houses little better than those of the poorest mountain village in the Southern Italy of today, black with smoke, black with dirt, blacker with patches made by shadowy windows that had no glass. A silent town, too, surly and defensive; now and then the call of the water-carrier disturbs the stillness, more rarely, the cry of a wandering peddler; and sometimes a distant sound of hoofs, a far clash of iron and steel, and the echoing yell of furious fighting men—'Orsini!' 'Colonna!'—the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... that I didn't care a hang whether the widow was a fraud or not. If the two women who had settled themselves on the Barton estate were imposters, they were extraordinarily daring and clever. My attitude toward them was wholly defensive. If women of their quality were perpetrating a fraud, I was for giving them every chance, and I had no intention of allowing Torrence to spoil the unfolding of ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... take care of herself. She knew instinctively that she lived surrounded by wolves, and, much as she admired the big frame and bold profile of Captain Haney, she had placed him among her enemies. His coming always pleased her but at the same time put her upon the defensive. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... at Roselawn a couple of days before he had a chance to do more than observe Elise Durwent as one of the party. She had been his partner at tennis and bridge, and a dozen times he had exchanged light talk with her, but there was always about her the defensive shield of impersonal cordiality. When he spoke to her it was almost in a drawl, but no matter to what a lackadaisical level he reduced his voice, her replies were always punctuated by a retort that had in it the sense of sting, as Alfio in Cavalleria ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the extreme difficulty of the ground to be covered, their strong fortifications and great gun power, any advance, especially of Negro troops, would be slow. They accordingly timed their artillery action and their defensive measures for a ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... because such places being narrow and confined, afford room for a few only; so that no enemy can there be withstood, who comes in force to the attack; which he can easily do, his design being to pass on and not to make a stay; whereas he who stands on the defensive cannot do so in force, because, from not knowing when the enemy may enter the confined and sterile tracts of which I speak, he may have to lodge himself there for a long time. But should you lose some pass which you had reckoned on holding, and on the defence of which your country and army have ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of a strenuous forenoon of trading, suddenly, without the slightest warning, both stocks began to sink in price like pigs of lead from a capsized boat. At once I was on the defensive. To prevent a wild market panic during the few minutes consumed in getting telephone connection with the State House, I had to purchase thousands of shares. I knew that something disastrous had happened, but was not prepared for the startling ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Phillips and others of his former associates denounced him as a deserter, and attributed his change of heart to mercenary motives. Douglass seems to have borne himself with rare dignity and moderation in this trying period. He realized perfectly well that he was on the defensive, and that the burden devolved upon him to justify his change of front. This he seems to have attempted vigorously, but by argument rather than invective. Even during the height of the indignation against him Douglass disclaimed any desire ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... of the rapid approach of a great war. A letter from Bunch, at Charleston, was received on May 10, depicting the united Southern will to resist Northern attack, and asserting that the South had no purpose save to conduct a strictly defensive war. Bunch was no longer caustic; he now felt that a new nation was in process of birth[159]. May 4, Monson, writing from Washington, and just returned from a trip through the South, in the course of which he had visited Montgomery, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... closed together in savage conflict. Heliobas was the taller and more powerful of the two, but Prince Ivan seemed imbued with the spirit of a hundred devils, and sprang at his opponent's throat with the silent breathless ferocity of a tiger. At first Heliobas appeared to be simply on the defensive, and his agile, skilful movements were all used to parry and ward off the other's grappling eagerness. But as I watched the struggle, myself speechless and powerless, I saw his face change. Instead of its calm and almost ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... sign requires deliberate, careful, and gentle manipulation. Sometimes the slightest of movements will be sufficient for its development, after much rougher handling has failed to discover it. Perhaps the failure in the latter case is due to a sort of defensive spasmodic rigidity caused by the pain resulting from ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... into my scattered discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... canoes removing to some distance bent their bows and plied us briskly with arrows. Those likewise who were swimming towards the ships were all armed with lances, which they concealed under water. Being now convinced of their treachery, we stood on the defensive, and in our turn attacked them so hotly that we destroyed several of their canoes and killed a considerable number of the natives. The survivors abandoned the remaining canoes, and made for the shore by swimming, after twenty of the natives were slain and many wounded. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... whom more and severer movements, in part active, are allotted. This department was under the special charge of Baron Vegesach, an admirable teacher, and withal a master of fencing with the bayonet, a branch of defensive art which the Swedes have the honour of originating. The drill of the young officers in bayonet exercise was one of the finest things of the kind I ever saw. I prospered so well under the Baron's tuition, that at the end of the second month I was able to climb a smooth mast, to run up ropes ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... unforgivable offense against the United States, Running Bear rallied his young men, and they fled the reservation and the ways and protection of the white men, and took to the mountains, where they lived by raiding the ranches in the neighborhood, and maintaining a sort of defensive partnership with Whipple's ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... hammers. The change from what may be termed the chipped to the polished stone period is very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the dog, an epoch in hunting-life. It embraces thousands of centuries. The appearance of arrow-heads indicates the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase; bone ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... there's nothing to be got from me but a pretty stout arm considering my years, and this tool, which, mayhap from long acquaintance with, I can use pretty briskly. You shall not have it all your own way, I promise you, if you play at that game. With these words he stood upon the defensive. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... soldier; it abounds with military phrases and words, some of which cannot be understood without difficulty. Ferramenta samiata is well explained by Salmasius. The former of the words means all weapons of offence, and is contrasted with Arma, defensive armor The latter ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the bell violently. Faringhea made a movement as if to stand upon the defensive; but only the old servant, with his quiet and placid mien, appeared at ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... swinging the nobbly stick in his hand, "can't come on more nor two at vunce. Be ready vith your stick—at their eyes—poke at 'em—no 'itting—" the rest was drowned in the echoing rush of heavy feet and the boom of hoarse voices. But now, seeing their quarry stand on the defensive, the pursuers checked their advance, their cries sank to growling murmurs, till, with a fierce shout, one of their number rushed forward brandishing a heavy stick, whereupon the others followed, and there, in the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... it warred for its existence it warred not less for its faith, which was Greek. Indeed, as the nation grew stronger and became conscious of its strength, the struggle began to partake something of the nature of a religious war, not alone defensive but aggressive also, against the unbeliever. While any man was free to join the brotherhood it was obligatory to believe in the Greek faith. It was this religious unity, blazed into activity by the presence across ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... French, and soon found points of pleasant contact with Monsieur Lavilette, who, despite the fact that he had coarsened as the years went on, had still upon him the touch of family tradition, which may become either offensive pride or defensive self-respect. With the Cure, Ferrol was not quite so successful. The ascetic, prudent priest, with that instinctive, long-sighted accuracy which belongs to the narrow-minded, scented difficulty. He disliked ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... both sides. All reason and sympathy disappeared, and, instead, every brutal passion had play. Politically and socially, the reactionaries were put in the saddle. Every progressive in France was placed on the defensive. Anyone who hinted of social wrong was ostracized. Caesarism ruled France, and, through les lois scelerates, every bush was beaten, every hiding-place uncovered, until every anarchist was driven out. The acts of Vaillant and Henry, like the acts of the Chicago anarchists, not only failed utterly ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... French ingenuity mentioned in the text is noticed by some authorities of the period; the siege of Leith was also distinguished by the protracted obstinacy of the besieged, in which was displayed all that the age possessed of defensive war, so that Brantome records that those who witnessed this siege, had, from that very circumstance, a degree of consequence yielded to their persons and opinions. He tells a story of Strozzi himself, from which it appears ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... be won by isolated groups of settlers fighting on the defensive along the many creeks and rivers. The decisive blow will be struck by the two armies soon to take the field. There will be plenty of powder for the men I lead and the men you are to lead. As to the back-country settlements, ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... dropped over the eyes were raised. For one saw in it a mingling at once of sharp observation and of distrust; it seemed to spring from some fiery source of personality, which at the very moment it revealed itself, yet warned the spectator back, and stood, half proudly, half sullenly, on the defensive. Such a look one may often see in the eyes of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... strong position, a position obviously chosen for defence, rarely quit it promptly for an attack," replied Waldron. "There is not one chance in ten that these gentlemen will make a considerable forward movement early in the fight. Only the greatest geniuses jump from the defensive to the offensive. Besides, we must hold the wood. So long as we hold the wood in front of their centre ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... flirt;" "that tricky attorney;" "wherever I read him, hollow vacuity yawns in my face; arrogant vanity grins at me." Surely, mere words can go no further—we must expect to hear of tomahawk and bowie-knife next. Scholars who object to the use of such weapons, whether for offensive or defensive purposes, can do nothing but what I have done for years—remain silent, select what is good in Professor Whitney's writings, and ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the stairs, every opening and shutting of the outer door. Here, too, he could keep his watch, holding himself ready to counter the movements of his enemies, should any opportunity arise for action on his part, defensive or aggressive. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... are to retire at once to the house. When we are once all together we shall be able to decide, according to the number of the enemy, as to whether we shall sally out and pepper them, or stand upon the defensive." ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... more of them, & to await the return of my father & my uncle, who would revenge upon the English the insult which they had made me, without their tarnishing the glory that they had merited in chastising the English & the savages, their friends, of their perfidy. We were nevertheless always upon the defensive, & we apprehended being surprised at the place where we were as much on the part of the English, as of those of the savages, their friends; that is why we resolved of coming to establish ourselves in the place where we are at present, & which is, as you see, difficult enough of access for ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... clearing his throat. "Brothers and sisters of the Order: I feel highly honored by the president by being thus called upon to address you. Old men for counsel is all right, if they counsel what we young men want, but I'm for war; I'm for a fight in the interests of the farmer. Not merely a defensive warfare but ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... country. It is significant that Viceroy Yuan Shih Kai, the ablest and most far-seeing statesman in China, is reported in the telegraphic despatches of February 5, 1904, as having memorialized the Throne in favour of an offensive and defensive alliance with Japan to regain Manchuria from the Russians, while the North China Daily News represents Prince Su, Prince Ching, Na Tung, President of the Wai-wu-pu, and Tieh Liang as in favour of the same policy. Mr. Holcombe ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... enveloped them on all sides with their greatly superior numbers. The fight now raged fiercely. Many of the Indians were armed with lances headed with copper tempered almost to the hardness of steel, and with huge maces and battle-axes of the same metal. Their defensive armour, also, was in many respects excellent, consisting of stout doublets of quilted cotton, shields covered with skins, and casques richly ornamented with gold and jewels, or sometimes made like those of the Mexicans, in the fantastic shape of the heads of wild animals, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... for a long time, mulling the thing over. The Staff was laying tremendous stress on the enemy's strange cloud formation, even to the extent of disclosing the secret of the new defensive device. The Easterners, too, had something novel, something that would cut off absolutely the transmission of ether waves. Nothing either side had yet produced would do that. What was happening behind that screen? Would they break through ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... which one could have judged him equally with Lord Lindsay, was a perfect contrast to his companion's. It consisted of a black velvet doublet, with a cap and a feather of the same hue fastened to it with a gold clasp; his only weapon, offensive or defensive, was a little sword, which he seemed to wear rather as a sign of his rank than for attack or defence. As to his features and his manners, they were in harmony with this peaceful appearance: his pale countenance expressed both acuteness and intelligence; his quick eye was mild, and his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... ere long, in a new study, upon the important subject which I confine myself to indicating here, and which pre-occupies the government at Washington to such a degree that it seems inclined to order defensive preparations in view of an unnatural conflict between liberal America and ourselves. Everything may happen—alas! the seemingly impossible like all else. It is not enough, therefore, to declare this impossible and monstrous, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... they were a race of builders, skillful masons and stone-cutters, erecting large edifices, pyramids, temples, and defensive works, with solid walls of stone laid in a firm mortar.[15-2] The sites of these cities were generally the summits of almost inaccessible crags, or on some narrow plain, protected on all sides by the steep and deep ravines—barrancas, as the Spaniards ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... the brigadier-general would be able to cope with the trouble now that he had so many armed troops. Soldiers patrolled the city walls (which, by the way, had to be built up so that the soldiers might be able to get decent patrol), more were stationed on the premises of the Europeans, and every defensive precaution was taken. The officials were in daily communication by telegraph with the Viceroy, and at first the riot was kept well in hand by ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... other night. I told you she wasn't a clever woman outside her work. But hasn't she a will!" I told Raffles it was very considerate of him to keep me out of it, but that it seemed to me like tying up the bag when the cat had escaped. His reply was an admission that one must be on the defensive with such a woman and in such a case. Soon after this, Raffles, looking far from well, fell back upon his own last line of defence, namely, his bed; and now, as always in the end, I could see some sense in his subtleties, since it was comparatively ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... from the savage bands Lead fire and slaughter o'er the labor'd lands; They sack the temples, the gay fields deface, And vow destruction to the Incan race. The king, undaunted in defensive war, Repels their hordes, and speeds their flight afar; Stung with defeat, they range a wider wood, And rouse fresh tribes for ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... were panic-stricken, and half of them bolted, with the kirangozi at their head, carrying off all the double-ration cloths as well as their own. At this time, the sultan, having changed tactics, as he saw us all ready to stand on the defensive, sent back his hongo; but, instead of using threats, said he would oblige us with donkeys or anything else if we would only give him a few more pretty cloths. With this cringing, perfidious appeal I refused to comply, until the sheikh, still more ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Wallace; "and that they should is most devoutly to be wished. All warfare that is not defensive is criminal; and he who draws his sword to oppress, or merely to aggrandize, is a murderer and a robber. This is the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... parents of the young friends were more than strangers to each other. On Mervyn's side, however, this estrangement was unalloyed with bitterness, and simply of that kind which the great moralist would have referred to "defensive pride." It did not include any member of Marston's family, and Charles, as often as he desired it, which was, in truth, as often as his visits could escape the special notice of his father, was a ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the ship," said Greg. "But it will be a couple of weeks yet. We just have to sit tight and wait. As soon as we have the ship we'll start in on Chambers; but until we get the ship, we just have to dig in and stay on the defensive." ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... in shaping the character of a people. Examples of this influence are not wanting. The peculiar position of the Persians, surrounded on all sides by enemies, required a martial education as a preparation for defensive and offensive measures. Physical education was dominant among the Spartans, because of serfdom which involved the absolute control of the many by the few. No less striking are the effects of physical conditions upon all peoples in stimulating mental activity and in developing moral ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... doctrines of the Quakers. They hold that the Great Spirit is displeased with all nations who wantonly engage in war; they abstain, therefore, from all aggressive hostilities. But though thus unoffending in their policy, they are called upon continually to wage defensive warfare; especially with the Blackfeet; with whom, in the course of their hunting expeditions, they come in frequent collision and have desperate battles. Their conduct as warriors is without fear or reproach, and they can never be driven to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... military disposition of the guests, and the danger arising from the feuds into which they were divided, few of the feasters wore any defensive armour, except the light goat-skin buckler, which hung behind each man's seat. On the other hand, they were well provided with offensive weapons; for the broad, sharp, short, two-edged sword was another legacy of the Romans. Most added a wood-knife ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... in his composition, which has already displayed itself in some of the rough experiences of his career; and when he saw the rebel soldier deprived of all power to make war upon him, either offensive or defensive, he could not resist the temptation to celebrate the signal strategical victory he had obtained over the picket guard. This triumphal demonstration was not very dignified, nor, under the circumstances, very ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Section 6 that in case the slave lived in a frontier community he could go to the local justice of the peace and secure a permit to keep and use guns, powder, shot and other weapons for either offensive or defensive purposes. This permission was to be indorsed by any free Negro, mulatto or Indian and did not necessarily involve the approval of the owner of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... big windy words like Deutschthum and the rest of the stuff the authorities find it convenient to fool their slaves with,—it comes to exactly that. I always, you see, think of Germany as the grabber, the attacker. Anything else, now that I've lived here, is simply inconceivable. A defensive war in which she should have to defend her homes from wanton attack is inconceivable. There is no wantonness now in the civilized nations. We have outgrown the blood stage. We are sober peoples, sober and civilian,—grown up, in fact. And ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... therefore, is of utmost importance. Break up your opponent's rhythm, never allow him to get grooved, frequently do the unexpected, so that he loses confidence in his anticipation and, subsequently, goes on the defensive. ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... attaching to them. These are the massacre of Cawnpore and the relief of Lucknow. Cawnpore, which was in the heart of the disaffected area, contained about a thousand Europeans, of whom two-thirds were women and children. The defensive post into which they had thrown themselves at the beginning of the outbreak was speedily surrounded by an overwhelming number of the mutineers, led on by the infamous Nana Sahib. The few defenders held out bravely for a time, but at last surrendered on a promise of being allowed to depart in safety. ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... castle of Tiberias. On hearing these ominous tidings Raymond of Tripoli at once laid aside all thought of private quarrels. Hastening to Jerusalem he said that the safety of his own city was a very secondary matter, and earnestly besought Guy to confine himself to a strictly defensive war, which would soon reduce the invader to the extremity of distress. The advice was wise and good; but the grand master of the Templars fastened on the very nobleness of his self-sacrifice and the disinterestedness of his counsel as proof of some sinister design ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... behind the scenes. The militarists, with considerable backing from financial and commercial groups, were bent on war, and war appeals to the men in the streets of all but the weakest countries. The mass of the people had not made up their mind for a war that was not defensive; but modern governments have ample means for tuning public opinion, and with a people so accustomed as the Germans to accept the truth from above, their rulers would have little difficulty, when once they had agreed ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... and Fox. The House of Commons voted that the war must go on. But the heart had gone out of British effort. Everywhere the people were growing restless. Even the ministry acknowledged that the war in America must henceforth be defensive only. In February, 1782, a motion in the House of Commons for peace was lost by only one vote; and in March, in spite of the frantic expostulations of the King, Lord North resigned. The King insisted that at any rate some ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... with convention or timidity. One on either side of the spike-marked old Norway log of the trail they stood, and for an appreciable interval the duel of their glances lasted,—he masterful, passionate, exigent; she proud, cool, defensive in the aloofness of her beauty. Then at last his prevailed. A faint color rose from her neck, deepened, and spread over her face and forehead. In a moment she dropped ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... case with Archbishop Stratford. That prelate, informed of Edward's indignation against him prepared himself for the storm; and not content with standing upon the defensive, he resolved, by beginning the attack, to show the king that he knew the privileges of his character, and had courage to maintain them. He issued a general sentence of excommunication against all who, on any pretext, exercised violence on the person or goods of clergymen; who infringed those privileges ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Hospital—infirmary, monastery, and castle, all in one, and with a certain Eastern grace and beauty of its own. The deep massive walls, heavy towers, and portcullised gateway, were in the most elaborate and majestic style of defensive architecture; and the main building rose to a great height, filled with galleries of small, bare, rigid-looking cells, just large enough for a knight, his pallet, and his armour. Below was a noble vaulted hall, the walls hung with well-tried hawberks, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pervasive thought currents, the more subtle and unfightable because indirect and disguised in popular appearance and influence, upon the ethical and spiritual temper of religious leaders, the very audacity of whose tasks puts them on the defensive, is vast and incalculable. At the worst, it drives man into a mechanicalized universe, with a resulting materialism of thought and life; at the best, it makes him a pragmatist with amiable but immediate objectives, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... dimly conscious. They builded better than they knew. When any teacher of the transition period was called upon to explain his manner of imparting the correct vocal action he was at once put on the defensive. No champion of the imitative faculty could be found. This lack of understanding of the basis of the empirical method, on the part of its most intelligent and successful exponents, was the first cause of the weakness of ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... mighty lords and most dear friends of ours, them of the league and city of Berne and of the great and little league of Germany, ambassadors charged to make proposals to them, if they would come to an understanding to be friends of friends and foes of foes" (make an offensive and defensive alliance). The proposal was brought before the diet of the cantons assembled at Lucerne. The King of France "regretted that the Duke of Burgundy would not leave the Swiss in peace; he promised that his advice ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... had its own ideal of perfection towards which its efforts were directed. Its aim was not attaining power, and it neglected to cultivate to the utmost its capacities, and to organise men for defensive and offensive purposes, for co-operation in the acquisition of wealth and for military and political ascendancy. The ideal that India tried to realise led her best men to the isolation of a contemplative life, and the treasures that she gained for mankind by penetrating into the ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... place. The wooden sheds at that place were set on fire and the battery was silenced. The 'Merrimac,' coated with mail and lying low in the water, looked on but took no part. Night came on, and the cannonading ceased. It was so evident that the 'Merrimac' intended to act only on the defensive, and that as long as she remained where she was no troops could be landed in that vicinity, that they were ordered to disembark. That night the President, with the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Treasury, went over on the 'Miami' to the Virginia shore, and by the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... foes. But the matter was soon settled. The two parties were quickly engaged in a fierce contest, the wild animals rushing forward with great fury, meeting the tame ones—antlers to antlers, and heads to heads. The latter, formidable-looking animals, stood generally on the defensive, each being engaged with a wild adversary, not mimicking war, but fighting desperately. As the hunting party advanced, the herd, catching sight of them, took to flight, but the combatants were too furiously engaged to observe ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... to that effect to Martin Alfonso de Sousa, then at Chaul, who communicated the event to Nuno de Cuna, and went immediately to Diu at the request of Badur, arriving on the 21st of September 1536. A league offensive and defensive was immediately entered into between Badur and the Portuguese, in which the former treaty was confirmed, except that the emporium of trade was to be transferred from Basseen to Diu: The fort was to be built where and in what manner should be judged best by the governor-general; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... company; cahoot, combine [U.S.], trust. society, association; institute, institution; union; trades union; league, syndicate, alliance, Verein[Ger], Bund[Ger], Zollverein[Ger], combination; Turnverein[Ger]; league offensive and defensive, alliance offensive and defensive; coalition; federation; confederation, confederacy; junto, cabal, camarilla[obs3], camorra[obs3], brigue|; freemasonry; party spirit &c. (cooperation) 709. Confederates, Conservatives, Democrats, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... unfrequented by the night-owls of journalism. Seeley was a beaten man, and he preferred to nurse his wounds in a morbid isolation. His gait and aspect were those of one who was stolidly struggling on the defensive, as if hostile circumstances had driven him into a corner where he was making his ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... very likely that the tower was primarily intended to be a defensive work. Whatever its original purpose, however, it is certain that it was used for bells at a very early date. In or before 1154, for he died in that year, Prior Reginald "made two bells and placed them in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... dollars have been invested in a great number of forts and guns, with all the complicated and scientific machinery and electrical appliances necessary for their use. The proper care of this defensive machinery requires men trained in its use. The number of men necessary to perform this duty alone is ascertained by the War Department, at a minimum allowance, ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... had not tried to force his suit. While, in a hundred little ways, he had not failed to make her feel his love, he had never openly attempted the role of lover. He was conscious that to put the girl constantly upon the defensive would be disastrous to his hopes; and in this, he was wise. But the time had come when he must speak, for it was the last day of his visit. He felt that he could not go back to the city ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... could see truth, she would fold her arms with you others, keep her country and her youth and her dignity. But I will be reasonable. She is, as you say, bound—bound by her alliance to Russia, and she will fight. Very well! Germany wants no more from France than what she has. Germany will fight a defensive campaign. She will push France back with one hand, in as friendly a manner as is compatible with the ethics of war. On the east she will move swiftly. She will fight Russia, and, believe me, the issue will not be long doubtful. She will conclude ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that as it may, he's been in the habit of coming there, till very recently, when all of a sudden, only a week or ten days back, to my immense surprise he ceased at once, and ever since has dropped into the defensive, exactly as he used to do. And I interpret it ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... that?" muttered George, with a defensive menace half formed in his voice. He faltered. His mood ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the prince, "the scheme which runs in my head is not one of war—aggressive or defensive—but one of peace, for the betterment of all mankind. As you know, I have begun to build a city at the Hot Swamp, so that all who are sick may go to that beautiful country and find health, as I did. And I want your help in ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... steady gray eyes concentrated as he listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, fires could be seen aglow on the hearths within; ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... dread: Deceivers, rakes, and libertines were they, And harmless beauty their pursuit and prey; As bad as giants in the ancient times Were modern lovers, and the same their crimes: Soon as she heard of her all-conquering charms, At once she fled to her defensive arms; Conn'd o'er the tales her maiden aunt had told, And, statue like, was motionless and cold: From prayer of love, like that Pygmalion pray'd, Ere the hard stone became the yielding maid, A different ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... that the occupancy of this island as a place of pleasure and recreation, as contemplated under this resolution, would be entirely inconsistent with military or defensive uses. I do not regard the control reserved in the resolution to the Secretary of War over such excavations, fillings, and structures upon the island as may be proposed as of much importance. When a park is established there, the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... continued several days. The Rebels had constructed works offensive and defensive in our front; but the greater part of their force seemed to have moved to the right. On the 22d of November, however, they returned, not having found evidently the weak place in our lines which they had sought. It was now thought they might attack our front that night; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... are constantly immoral before marriage need not expect happiness in married life. It is a great pity that Tolstoi did not let the powerful little novel speak for itself, and that he allowed himself to be goaded into an explanatory and defensive commentary by the thousands of enquiring letters from foolish readers. Much of the commentary contains sound advice, but it leads off into that reductio ad absurdum so characteristic of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... him, but it had now a sordid alloy of distrust; and though his eyes should twinkle and all his face should laugh, he would sit holding himself in his own arms, as if he had an inclination to hoard himself up, and must always grudgingly stand on the defensive. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... several difficult problems remained to be grappled with and solved before the efficiency in action of our ships could be secured. It is believed that as the result of new processes in the construction of armor plate our later ships will be clothed with defensive plates of higher resisting power than are found on any war vessels afloat. We were without torpedoes. Tests have been made to ascertain the relative efficiency of different constructions, a torpedo has been adopted, and the work of construction is now being carried on successfully. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Her defensive manner collapsed. "That was nothing," she said, laughing coldly. "Every woman has a right to do such as that. The risk ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... is not difficult. The mediaeval poets are on the defensive, as their brothers had been through all the past. To justify art, the middle ages had to show its usefulness not only to morals, but to theology. Thus Dame Rethoryke in her talk on inventio, is conducting a defense of poetry on the following ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... few indeed who still believed that the Boers would stand entirely upon the defensive so far as Natal went. They would occupy the formidable passes through the Drakensberg and await attack there, while they would invade Cape Colony at many points and raise the Boer population. However, the general opinion ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... position. It was hard to realize that human motions could be so graceful, light and easy. Then head-knives were drawn, and cuts right, and cuts left, cuts at every part of the body from the head to the ankles, were added to the motion; the man on the defensive for the moment making suitable parries ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... hardly finished the relation of this story when a great noise was heard. The dog rose up, pointed his ears, and put himself on the defensive. The cat bristled her hair and prepared to fly. But the succeeding laugh very soon was frightful: it was Anis, who fell asleep during the recital of his grandmother. It happened that the prophecy of his mother was fulfilled as to his falling into the earthen pan, where all his little person disappeared ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... willing to trust me to act with restraint, with prudence, and in the true spirit of amity and good faith that they have themselves displayed throughout these trying months; and it is in that belief that I request that you will authorize me to supply our merchant-ships with defensive arms should that become necessary, and with the means of using them, and to employ any other instrumentalities or methods that may be necessary and adequate to protect our ships and our people in their legitimate and peaceful ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... this declaration on the basis of our historic and natural right: we have been an independent state since the seventh century, and in 1526 as an independent state, consisting of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, we joined with Austria and Hungary in a defensive union against the Turkish danger. We have never voluntarily surrendered our rights as an independent state in this confederation. The Habsburgs broke their compact with our nation by illegally transgressing our rights and violating the constitution of our state, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... of the higher; but it tends for the time to give great advantage in maintaining a powerful political influence over the barbarians. Thus it was that the French, few in number, covered almost the breadth of the continent with their formidable alliances; and these alliances were the offensive and defensive armor in which they trusted, but they were also their peril. Close alliance with one savage clan involved war with its enemies. It was an early misfortune of the French settlers that their close friendly relations with ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... parties were engaged in a furious contest. Head to head, antlers to antlers, the tame deer and the wild fought with great fury. Each of the tame animals, every one of them large and formidable, was closely engaged in contest with a wild adversary, standing chiefly on the defensive, not in any feigned battle or mimicry of war but in a hard-fought combat. We now made our appearance in the open ground on horseback, advancing towards the scene of conflict. The deer on the skirts of the wood, seeing us, took to flight; but those ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... been rejoined by her old nurse, and to both servants her questions were prompt and swift. Their low replies plainly disturbed her, and she wheeled to the bishop where he still stood addressing the Gilmores and a dozen others in a manner loftily defensive. He forestalled her speech with good-natured haste. "Now, if our gay and happy young sister will ask me to do something befitting a minister of ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... protective and defensive amulets, which were fastened around the arm, waist, or neck. These amulets were styled ligamenta, ligaturae, or phylacteria, by the writers of the early Middle Ages. They were usually fashioned as gold, silver, or glass pendants. Cipher-writing and runes were commonly inscribed ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... the evening before my arrival, crossing within a very short distance of the tents, as if for the purpose of reconnoitring our position and strength; I determined, however, nothing but the last extremity should ever induce me to act on the defensive. [Note 6: "And they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the second, 'The Fiend in Discourse,' represents him, not reasoning, railing rather, shaking his spear at the pilgrim, his shoulder advanced, his tail writhing in the air, his foot ready for a spring, while Christian stands back a little, timidly defensive. The third illustrates these magnificent words: 'Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter: prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal den that thou shalt go no farther: here will I spill ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very hunger, while the dockyards were unguarded, while the ships were leaky and without rigging. It was at length determined to abandon all schemes of offensive war; and it soon appeared that even a defensive war was a task too hard for that administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames, and burned the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on the very day of that great humiliation, the King feasted with the ladies of his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... into the Indian camp; one account stating that they plunged over the river bank, injuring the men, who were afterwards killed by the Indians. Here at Ash Point, or Hollow, the command soon got sheltered in the timber, and were on the defensive; the Indians now pouring in from all sides. The Indian scouts with Reno had before now been dispersed, and were making back tracks fast as their ponies could carry them. Accounts differ as to how ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... owing to numerical weakness and lack of bombs, and retiring a short way, formed a block and a post, and occupied a shell-hole line from the first point named through the second and a little beyond it, thus forming a defensive flank in close ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward
... as they could, through places in which no regular troops could follow them. They could never starve as long as there were sheep and cattle in the country; and they might probably have carried on an offensive, instead of a defensive war. But Charles, disheartened, as men of over sanguine tempers usually are, in misfortune, to the last degree, resolved on escaping to France. He addressed a farewell letter to the Chiefs, and then commenced that long and perilous course of wanderings in which his character rose ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
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