"Vassalage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bristle of moustache, and a nervous briskness of carriage, yet there was something that was unmistakably conciliatory and subservient in his bearing toward Mrs. Jameson. He stood aside for her to enter the pew, with the attitude of vassalage; he seemed to respond with an echo of deference to every rustle of her silken skirts and every heave of her wide shoulders. Mrs. Jameson was an Episcopalian, and our church is Congregational. Mrs. Jameson did not attempt to kneel when she entered, ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the invasion of their territory, and the robbery of their banks and jewelry-stores. We may profit by the suggestion, so far as the invasion goes—for that will enable us to restore them to their normal condition of vassalage, and teach them that cap in hand is the proper attitude of a servant ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... remedy. The minister was almost universally extolled as the greatest of financiers. Meanwhile both the branches of the House of Bourbon found that England was as formidable an antagonist as she had ever been. France had formed a plan for reducing Holland to vassalage. But England interposed; and France receded. Spain interrupted by violence the trade of our merchants with the regions near the Oregon. But England armed; and Spain receded. Within the island there was ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... continued union of the German and Sicilian crowns; and here she found a staunch supporter in the Pope. First with Celestine, and then with Innocent, she entered into close relations. Frederick took the old Norman oath of vassalage for his dominions; and when Innocent confirmed the title, he compelled Constance in return to surrender the ecclesiastical privileges connected with elections, legatine visits, appeals, and councils originally granted by Urban II to Count ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... war for independence once, statesmen argued, so it can justify it again. "It is curious as it is melancholy and distressing," came a broad hint from South Carolina, "to see how striking is the analogy between the colonial vassalage to which the manufacturing states have reduced the planting states and that which formerly bound the Anglo-American colonies to the British empire.... England said to her American colonies: 'You shall not trade with the rest of the world ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... of the Conservators replied: "We accept with pleasure the homage of fidelity, of vassalage, and of respect, the expression of which you renew to-day in the name of the entire Jewish community, and, assured that you will respect the laws and orders of the Senate, and that you will pay, as in the past, the tribute and the dues which are incumbent ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... heard no more. His ears burned and his brain throbbed. He had become conscious of but one all-absorbing thought, the fact of his vassalage to a world-embracing political system, working in the name of the Christ. Not a new thought, by any means—indeed an old one, often held—but now driven home to him most emphatically. He forgot his clerical ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... bringing it more and more under the dominion of a foreign foe. The realm of France had now reached its lowest depth of disaster, its king uncrowned, its fairest regions overrun,—here by the English, there by the Burgundians,—the whole kingdom in peril of being taken and reduced to vassalage. Never before nor since had the need of a deliverer been so vitally felt. The deliverer chosen of heaven was the young peasant girl who walked that summer noon in her father's ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... took place the meeting of Napoleon and Marie Louise with a crowd of sovereigns, great and small. These sovereigns tried to make out of their different courts subordinate circles of the first court, and rivalled with one another in vassalage. One wanted to be the cup-bearer of the ensign of Brienne; another, his butler. Charlemagne's history was put under contribution by the erudition of the German chancellor's officers. The higher they were, the more eager their demands. As Bonaparte said in Las Cases, a lady of the Montmorencys ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... table was very like to the noise made on the verge of the Boer War. And your procedure seems to me as unaccountable as would have seemed the antics of those mobs if England had been plainly doomed to disaster and to vassalage. My guest here to-night, in the course of his very eloquent and racy speech, spoke of the need that he and you should preserve your 'free and independent manhood.' That seemed to me an irreproachable ideal. But I confess I was somewhat taken aback by my friend's scheme for realising ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... serfdom. I think they even once exchanged a wink, but of this I am not sure. There is nothing like experience to expand one's ideas, and I made up my mind to re-examine the whole of my notions of Muscovite vassalage. M. Jerome seemed less struck by these circumstances than myself—being probably too much absorbed in contemplation of our hostess—but even he could not avoid exclaiming, 'that if that were the way in which serfs were treated, he should ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... resistance. Of the great empires which the modern age has brought into being, the Russian would have survived as a helpless and blinded mammoth; the French Empire would have vanished, and the proud and noble land of France would have sunk into vassalage and despair; the British Empire would assuredly have dissolved into its component parts, for its strength is still too much concentrated in the motherland for it to be able to hold together once her power was broken. After a few generations, that will no longer ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... Christ—direct the whole solemnity. Among this joyful and holy company, there is no hint that any part of public worship is left to "a vote of the congregation." This "new song" was unintelligible by the votaries of the beast; nor could they learn it while in that servile vassalage. They only who were "redeemed from the earth," as well as "from among men," were capable of learning it. As this song related to the royal prerogatives of Jesus Christ, and those who "dwelt on the earth" had transferred their allegiance to Antichrist, ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... We were persuaded that the people of the South had been wrought up by artful and ambitious leaders to wild alarm that the new Administration would visit outrages upon them and try to turn them into a state of vassalage. Utterly unconscious as we were of any purpose to trespass upon or reduce their fullest constitutional rights, we knew how grossly our intentions were misrepresented to them. We applied the same measure to the distance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... the chevalier who never comes, of the serf for the chatelaine, of the rose for the nightingale, of Rudel for the Lady of Tripoli. Another element of extravagance came in with the feudal spirit: Provencal love is full of the very forms of vassalage. To be the servant of love, to have offended, to taste the subtle luxury of chastisement, of reconciliation—the religious spirit, too, knows that, and meets just there, as in Rousseau, the delicacies of the earthly love. Here, under this strange complex of conditions, as in some medicated air, ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... humane and patriotic cause? If necessary, why might not the marine of other lands be chartered? Strange indeed it is if shipping enough could be found half a century ago to reduce hundreds of thousands of this race in a single year to a wretched vassalage, and in this age of augmented light, and wealth, and improvement in every art, enough cannot be found for the single benevolent object before us!'—[Rev. Baxter Dickinson's Sermon ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... ground of complaint is, that no native Indian, or descendant, is allowed by us to be a man, or to make himself a man, whatever may be his disposition and capacity. They are all kept in a state of vassalage, under officers, appointed sometimes by the Governor, and sometimes by the Legislature. The spot of his own ground, which he may cultivate, is annually rented out to the Indian by an overseer; and provisions are doled out to the tribe according to the discretion ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... to the scrap-heap, and all nations shall disarm; fortresses shall be dismantled, armies disbanded, and warfare shall cease from the earth. Mine is the power. I am the will of God. The whole world shall be in vassalage to me, but it shall be ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... at all," said I; "things are better as they are. Those mountains of bread and beef, and those rivers of ale merely encouraged vassalage, fawning and idleness; better to pay for one's dinner proudly and independently at one's inn, than to go and cringe for it at a great ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... mournful in which Eugene made this profession of vassalage, and at its conclusion his eyes were veiled by tears of burning humiliation. His mother affected not to perceive his emotion, as she replied ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the King was disarmed, helpless; and as he was incapable of defending the weak against their oppressors, the feeble banded themselves under any lord who could assure them of protection. The sole token that the great nobles showed of vassalage to the Crown was that they dated their charters by the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... placed are tyrannical and unjust in the extreme; laws, we hesitate not to affirm, which are a disgrace to those who framed them, and which, if acted upon by a local magistracy, will entail upon the oft-cheated, over-patient negro some of the worst features of that degrading state of vassalage from which he has just escaped. We particularly refer to "An Act to enlarge the Powers of Justices in determining complaints between Masters and Servants, and between Masters, and Apprentices, Artificers, and others," which passed the Assembly the 3rd day of July, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and valleys, of majestic rivers and mountains, with a beautiful climate and a sunny sky. These Aryan conquerors drove before them the aboriginal inhabitants, who were chiefly Mongolians, or reduced them to a degrading vassalage. The conquering race was white, the conquered was dark, though not black; and this difference of color was one of the original causes of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Parliament, or they are totally independent"; upon which the Assembly would observe only that, "as it cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the parties in the compact that we should be reduced to a state of vassalage, the conclusion is that it was their sense that we were thus independent." With very few exceptions, everyone who was of the patriot way of thinking regarded the Assembly's reply as a complete refutation of the argument presented in Governor ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power, to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... go to King Marsilius with the terms of peace, which were that he, the Moslem, was to hold half of Spain in vassalage to Charlemagne; that the other half of the conquered territory was to be ruled by the emperor's well-beloved Roland; and that Marsilius was to journey to France at ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... romance to go down into hell with "his sweet mistress whom he so much loves," or (here perhaps most perfectly exampled) in Arnaud de Merveil's naive declaration that whatever portion of his heart belongs to God heaven holds in vassalage to Adelaide de Beziers. It is upon this darker and rebellious side of domnei, of a religion pathetically dragged dustward by the luxuriance and efflorescence of over-passionate service, that Nicolas ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... sufferance of God, the Prince of this world, and is the Author of sin, woe and death; the Tempter, the Tormentor of men, and the Tyrant of the Earth; that the Son of God, to deliver mankind from the vassalage of this monster, descended from heaven, and purchased their ransom of the Tyrant, at the price of his blood; for observe, my reader, that the idea of the death of Jesus being an atonement to God for the ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Lenni Lenape.%—These Indians were Algonquian, and lived along the Delaware River and its tributaries. But early in the seventeenth century they had been reduced to vassalage by the Five Nations, had been forbidden to carry arms, and had been forced to take the name ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... exercise over the free population of the north, the same control which an insolvent debtor frequently has over his creditor, by threatening to break and ruin him, if not allowed his own way. A repeal of the corn laws would release the free States from their present commercial and consequent political vassalage to the southern slave-holders, and thereby take from American slavery, the great citadel of its strength, and insure its overthrow by the influences which would arise to assail it ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... and imperial River, flushed with the tribute of these vassal streams! thou art thyself a tributary, and hastenest even in the pride of conquest to confess thine own vassalage! But no superior stream exults in the homage of thy servile waters; the Ocean, the eternal Ocean, alone comes forward to receive thy kiss! not as a conqueror, but as a parent, he welcomes with proud joy his gifted child, the offspring ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... against his authority broke out in Venezuela, and even in parts of Colombia itself. International complications followed. In 1827, Peru declared war against Colombia, alleging that Bolivar was attempting to place her in a state of vassalage to Colombia. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... the realm of the Almohades, the Moorish kingdom of Granada was established, and was held in vassalage to Castile, of which Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1474, became joint sovereigns. The Moors made Granada, their capital, a large and powerful city, and there in the thirteenth century they built their magnificent palace and citadel, the Alhambra, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... and came bending to the Emperor, saying, "God save you, gentle sire. Duke Segwin sendeth me to make his peace with you. He will yield you all his lands and castles in burg and city, and hold them of you henceforth in vassalage, but he now would have your presence in the city to a feast." So the Emperor was forced to go with him into the city as a prisoner, albeit he was served with the humility due to a sovereign both by Sir Guy and Duke Segwin's knights. Sir Gaire and the other captive nobles came ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Ireland—Peace between her warring Churches—Concord between her rulers and landlords on one side and her destitute and desperate Millions on the other. I wish the latter had sufficient courage and self-trust to demand and enforce emancipation from the Political and Social vassalage in which they are held; to demand not merely Tenant-Right but a restitution of the broad lands wrested from their ancestors by fire and sword—not merely equal rights with Englishmen in Church and State, but equal ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... a license to preach transform a man into a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern? Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that the CONSTITUTION, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in a state of vassalage. The male line of the Fitz-Ausculfs soon became extinct, and Gervase Paganell marrying the heiress, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Lord and that of your Majesty, with the aid of your royal arms, in the great number of infidels whom they have converted to our holy Catholic faith, and how they have been brought to render to your Majesty the due vassalage and tribute, which they have generally paid, and are paying, annually. [We have also told your Majesty] that they have engaged in all this with the spiritual affection that belongs to their profession, with singular care—both in the conservation of what ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... belonged to them, and exacted from them in return, a rent too exorbitant to be paid. Every succeeding year, therefore, has but tended to increase their obligations, and they are, at present, identified with the soil, and reduced to all intents and purposes, except in name, to as complete a state of vassalage as the serfs of Russia. If they should be in need of any trifling supply, it is to their proprietors, and to them only, that they dare have recourse, though they would be able to obtain the same articles a hundred per cent. cheaper elsewhere. To their ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... issue, That God was to be obeyed rather than men; and consequently the Bishop of Rome, who is Christ's representative, rather than an earthly prince. Neither doth it seem improbable that all Christendom would have been in utter vassalage, both temporal and spiritual, to the Roman see, if the Reformation had not put a stop to those exorbitancies, and in a good measure opened the eyes even of those princes and states who still adhere to the doctrines and discipline of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Around, thou, too, mayst join—thou, too, engage In that dread feud, twin with eternity, Which faithful angels and archangels wage Against the powers of darkness, to extend, O'er realms retained in demon vassalage, Their sovereign's pure dominion,—and to blend All worlds beneath one righteous governance, Into one kingdom which shall ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... triumphs over the lesser kings of Europe. It was his ambition to break through the traditional limits that separated the church from the state, and to bind as many as he could of the kings of Europe to the papacy by ties of political vassalage. The time-honored feudal superiority of the popes over the Norman kingdom of Sicily had been the first precedent for this most unecclesiastical of all papal aggressions. Already others of the smaller kingdoms of Europe, conspicuous among which was Portugal, had followed the example ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... numerous Galla tribes who inhabit the beautiful country extending from the south-eastern frontier of Shoa to the picturesque lake of Guaragu. But, instead of plundering these agricultural races, as his father had done, he promised them honourable treatment, a kind of mild vassalage, on the payment of a small annual tribute. The Gallas, surprised at his unexpected generosity and clemency, willingly accepted his terms, and, from former foes, enrolled themselves as his followers, and accompanied ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... Japanese Minister, Dr. Hioki, personally served on Yuan Shih-kai the now famous Twenty-one Demands, a list designed to satisfy every present and future need of Japanese policy and to reduce China to a state of vassalage. ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... whole of the present district of Williamsburg, and a part of Marion, were not altogether prepared to understand these British proclamations. They were no great politicians, had no love of blind vassalage, and naturally suspected all liberality of British origin. They wished for certain explanations before they sent in their adhesion. Not that they calculated upon resistance. This, no doubt, seemed to them as hopeless as it appeared in all other parts of the State. But their insulated position, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... power to determine what themes shall and what shall not employ your meditations? Are you the mere slave for your thoughts, compelled to follow as they, by some caprice, may direct? No intelligent mind in which the will is ruler is prepared to admit that it has been subjected to such vassalage. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... pocket-handkerchief; how to present a bouquet; how to hold a fan; how to pay a compliment; how to turn over the leaves of a music-book—in short, how to obey and anticipate every imperious wish; and how to fetch and carry, like a dog. My vassalage began from the very day when I first ventured to call upon her. Her house was small, but very elegant, and she received me in a delicious little room overlooking the Champs Elysees—a very nest of flowers, books, and birds. Before I had breathed ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... servile, abject, needy circumstances wherein the Devil keeps the Slaves, that are under his more sensible Vassalage, do suggest unto us, how woful the Devil would render all our Lives. We that live in a Province, which affords unto us all that may be necessary or comfortable for us, found the Province fill'd with vast Herds of Salvages, that never saw so much as a Knife, or a Nail, or a ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... raised into a political aristocracy by special constitutional provisions; cotton, the product of slave labor, forming the basis of our whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus subsidized; the press bought up, the pulpit reduced to vassalage, the heart of the common people chilled by a bitter prejudice against the black race; our leading men bribed, by ambition, either to silence or open hostility;—in such a land, on what shall an Abolitionist rely? On a few cold prayers, mere lip-service, and never from the heart? On a church resolution, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... this decision of the Crown was made, the services of Wyclif had been accepted by the Parliament in its resistance to the claim which Pope Urban V. had made in 1366, to the arrears of tribute due under John's vassalage. Edward III. had referred this claim to Parliament, and the Parliament had rejected it without hesitation on the ground that John had no power to bind the realm without its consent. The Parliament was the mere mouthpiece of Wyclif, who was now actively engaged in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... the present Williamsburgh, and part of Marion district, into which the British arms had not penetrated. The inhabitants of it were generally of Irish extraction; a people, who at all times during the war, abhorred either submission or vassalage. Among them, tradition has handed down the following story:—A public meeting was called, to deliberate upon their critical situation, and Major John James, who had heretofore commanded them in the field, and represented them in legislature, was selected as the person ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written embassage, To witness duty, not to show my wit: Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good conceit of thine In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... this well: to avoid immediate ruin he seized on a means of escape which was completely unexpected, but quite decisive—he gave over his kingdom in vassalage to the Pope. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... had for this place and its owners, I could not repress a feeling very much like consternation on hearing that the hereditary manor which bore my own name had apparently been taken and set on fire. It meant disgrace, defeat; and this fire was as a seal of vassalage affixed to my arms by those I called clodhoppers and serfs. I sprang up from my chair, and had I not been held back by the violent pain in my foot, I believe ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... fanciful declaimers," he continued, "who set out on the assumption that man is free-born. I am too well assured of the contrary. Man is not free-born. The earlier period of his existence, whether as a puny child or the miserable denizen of an uninformed and barbarous state, is one of vassalage and subserviency. He is not born free, he is not born rational, he is not born virtuous; he is born to become all these. And woe to the sophist who, with arguments drawn from the unconfirmed constitution of his childhood, would strive to render his imperfect, because immature, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... lover fast, through all his gruesome changes of form, she 'borrowed' him from the 'seely court,' and saved him from becoming the tribute paid every seven years to the powers that held fairydom in vassalage. ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... biting sarcasm, and pointed logic afforded amusement at the Louvre, rather than struck dismay to the hearts of those who fondly believed that the Church still held in thrall the brain of the masses, and that as for centuries the people had been content with slavery and vassalage, it was absurd to imagine they had now come to man's estate, had, Phoenix-like, arisen from the ashes of old-time sullen obedience or ignorant content, into the tumultuous atmosphere of intellectual activity. It is true, some far-seeing brains ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... by the King of Quiloa: But Yzuf, one of their governors, rebelled and usurped the government to himself, assuming the title of king. This was the same person with whom Annaya had now to contend, and whose son Solyman he established in the sovereignty, under the protection and vassalage of Portugal. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... to groan under the galling chains of our murderers? Has our blood been expended in vain? Is the only benefit which our constancy till death has obtained for our country, that it should be sunk into a deeper and more ignominious vassalage? Recollect who are the men that demand your submission, to whose decrees you are invited to pay obedience. Men who, unmindful of their relation to you as brethren; of your long implicit submission to their laws; of the sacrifice which you and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... ambition and pride give us; for in order to satisfy our ambition and pride we take upon us so many cares, which, so far as life is concerned, are superfluous, and are not the least of the accidents which our life suffers. This nation is almost wholly in vassalage to the Lutaos, and every village recognizes some chief [36] of the latter nation to whom they pay tribute; and that chief bears himself as a king among them, and makes and unmakes at his will. In the beginning, this authority ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... thought, but a slight protection. The domestic slaves of the chiefs, however, it is quite possible, and even likely, are much more completely at the mercy of their caprice and passion than the general body of the common people, whose vassalage may, after all, consist in little more than the obligation of following them to their wars, and rendering them obedience in such other matters of ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... insisted on war. No other answer could I get (from Berlin) than that it was a colossal condescension on the part of Austria not to contemplate any acquisition of territory. Sir Edward justly pointed out that one could reduce a country to vassalage without acquiring territory; that Russia would see this, and regard it as a humiliation not to be put up with. The impression grew stronger and stronger that we were bent on war. Otherwise our attitude toward a question in which ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... that Benjamin must have passed along this coast before 1167, when Thoros died at peace and on terms of vassalage to the Emperor Manuel Comnenus. Malmistras is forty-five miles from Tarsus. Both had been recaptured by Manuel in 1155. Josippon, I, chap. i, identifies ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... would be confirmed. The debate grew every day more bitter and unmannerly. The Governor could not yield; the Assembly would not. There was a complete deadlock. The Assembly requested the Governor "not to make himself the hateful instrument of reducing a free people to the abject state of vassalage."[344] As the raising of money and the control of its expenditure was in their hands; as he could not prorogue or dissolve them, and as they could adjourn on their own motion to such time as pleased them; as they paid his support, and could withhold ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... left the island, destitute as it was of wine and oil, and returned to Italy, leaving behind them taskmasters, to scourge the shoulders of the natives, to reduce their necks to the yoke, and their soil to the vassalage of a Roman province; to chastise the crafty race, not with warlike weapons, but with rods, and if necessary to gird upon their sides the naked sword, so that it was no longer thought to be Britain, but a Roman island; and all their money, whether of copper, gold, or ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... this you may suppose the doctor's pain; But presently he thought a point to gain, And take the student's place by wily art, Where, acting in disguise the lover's part, His rib he might entangle in a net, And vassalage bestow she'd ne'er forget. Our learned man was clearly in the wrong; 'Twere better far to sleep and hold his tongue; Unless, with God's assistance, he could raise A remedy that merited full praise. Whenever wives have got a candidate, To be admitted to the Cuckold's state, If thence he get ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Londoners is seen in the favourable terms he was ready to concede them. Soon after his coronation— the precise date cannot be determined—he granted them a charter,(81) by which he clearly declared his purpose not to reduce the citizens to a state of dependent vassalage, but to establish them in all the rights and privileges ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... bright ideal Shining above all visions and all dreams, As doth the Pole-star o'er the icy North; Love in its broad and fineless empery Ruling, directing all by right divine, Pressing its seal of vassalage on thought, And crushing passion with relentless heel; Love—the refiner, whose alchymic art Transmuteth very dross to purest gold, Passing emotion through the furnace heat That scorcheth up its perishable ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... thus saved from vassalage by the devotion of Moniz, is considered the first independent ruler of Portugal. Shortly after this occurrence, he defeated five Moorish rulers in the battle of Ourique, where the Portuguese claim he was favored with the appearance of a cross ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... ally itself, not with the feeble, the hated, the downtrodden Catholics, but with the powerful, the wealthy, the popular, the dominant Church of England; to trust for aid not to a foreign Prince whose name was hateful to the British nation, and whose succours could be obtained only on terms of vassalage, but to the old Cavalier party, to the landed gentry, the clergy, and the universities. By rallying round the throne the whole strength of the Royalists and High Churchmen, and by using without stint all the resources of corruption, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... marked the end of the empire of the Mongols in China. War with them still went on, but the country at large was freed from their yoke, after nearly a century of submission to Tartar rule. Elsewhere the vast empire of Genghis still held firm. Russia lay under the vassalage of the khans. Central and Southern Asia trembled at the Mongol name. And at the very time that the Chinese were rising against and expelling their invaders, Timour, or Tamerlane, the second great conqueror of his race, was setting out from Central Asia on that mighty ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a series of victories over the Moslems. To him Europe is indebted for the check he gave the Turks. He forced them to relinquish Servia and Bosnia, and in his time both provinces were placed under the vassalage of Hungary. We may go further and say that had Hunyadi's plans for hurling back the Moslem invaders been seconded by the other Christian powers, we should not have the Eastern Question upon our hands in this our ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... William had married, was regent of the kingdom. This circumstance rendered the remonstrance of the French council against his design of no effect; indeed the opposition of the council itself was faint; the idea of having a king under vassalage to their crown might have dazzled the more superficial courtiers; whilst those, who thought more deeply, were unwilling to discourage an enterprise, which they believed would probably end in the ruin of the undertaker. The emperor was in his ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... their veins, and the fair fame of this country in their keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed him to remain, to the day of his death, a hewer of wood and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... black charger when he reached the middle of the courtyard, but made no motion to dismount. The lady came slowly down the broad stone steps, followed by her feminine train, and, approaching the Elector, placed her white hand upon his stirrup, in mute acknowledgment of her vassalage. ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... to place my confidence in her justice and generosity than to trust a monarchy too feeble to establish your independency, so perilous to her distant dominions; the enemy of the Protestant faith, and fraudulently avowing an affection for the liberties of mankind while she holds her native sons in vassalage and chains." He winds up by stating his conviction that it was the generous intention of Great Britain not only to leave the rights and privileges of the colonies unimpaired, together with their perpetual exemption from taxation, but to superadd such further benefits as might be consistent with ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... take their course, to establish my authority at home, and to do something for my religion." A few days later he announced the same intentions to the States General. [71] From that time to the close of his ignominious reign, he made no serious effort to escape from vassalage, though, to the last, he could never hear, without transports of rage, that men called him ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it," said the second man, with a querulous protest, which did not, however, conceal his admiring vassalage to his friend; "that's what I'm allus telling Jim. 'Jim,' I says, 'how is folks to know you're the man that shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped three o' them Mariposa Vigilants? They didn't see you do it! They just look at your fancy style and them mustaches of yours, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... more clearly, I think, than anything else, the amazing depth and strength of the influence exerted by the Canadian preacher's Duty teaching. Our relations with the Power to which we were in effect a people in vassalage, and payers of tribute, demanded at this stage the exercise of the most cautious restraint; and finely the people responded to this demand. In his History of the Revival, Charles Corbett says, with ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... original purpose, we are facing in the public-land States west of the Mississippi the great question whether the Western people are to be predominately a people of tenants under the degrading tyranny of pecuniary and political vassalage, or free-holders and free men; and there is no exaggerating ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... was then enjoyed in any country of the world. Their institutions admitted of great improvement, no doubt; but it was natural that a people so circumstanced should be unwilling to exchange their condition for the vassalage of "Moors ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... been for a long period of years in a state of vassalage to that of Bern; all the posts and offices of Government were filled by Bernois and the Vaudois were excluded from all share in the government, and from all public employments of consequence. When the Sun of Revolution, after gloriously rising in America, had shone in splendour ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... showed himself to all others, grovelled himself as an abject devotee at the feet of a haughty confessor. Amongst the populace of Klosterheim this feature of his character, confronted with the daily proofs of his entire vassalage to the Swedish interest, passed for the purest hypocrisy; and he had credit for no religion at all with the world at large. But the fact was otherwise. Conscious from the first that he held even the Landgraviate by a slender title (for he was no more than cousin once removed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... reduction of the Malucas Islands to the obedience of Felipe III, king of Espana, and the reduction of their kings to their former vassalage, which their predecessors rendered, and which was introduced anew by Don Pedro de Acuna, governor of the Filipinas and general of the Spanish fleet. That was a victory worthy the foresight of so pious a monarch, of the care of the dignified ministers of his supreme council, and of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... with jealousy, as an upstart. The new monarchic constitution of 1808-12, which has immortalized the names of Frederick William III., and of his ministers, Stein and Hardenberg, altered this system, and abolished the vassalage and feudal service of the peasants in those provinces that lie to the east of the Elbe. The fruits of this wise act of social reform were soon apparent, not only in the increase of prosperity and of the population, but ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... little skirmishes, for such they were on the part of the Spaniards, of greater permanent importance than those above narrated, which took place in the early part of the year 1495. They must be looked upon as the origin in the Indies of slavery, vassalage, and the system of repartimientos. We have seen that the admiral, after his first victory, sent off four ships with slaves to Spain. He now took occasion to impose a tribute upon the whole population of Hispaniola. It was thus arranged. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... Norman friends in England, always a minority, have ruled their Saxon countrymen in political vassalage up to the present day, so have we, the slave oligarchs, governed the Yankees till within a twelve-month. We framed the Constitution, for seventy years molded the policy of the Government, and placed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a family-tax. By degrees the tribute has been raised to two and one-sixteenth dollars. An adult, therefore, male or female, pays one and one-thirty-second dollar, and that from his sixteenth to his sixtieth year. Besides this, every man has to give forty days' labor every year to the State. This vassalage (polos y servicios) is divided into ordinary and extraordinary services: the first consists of the duties appertaining to a watchman or messenger, in cleaning the courts of justice, and in other light labors; the second in road-making, and similar heavier ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Constantine organized a league of Scot, Cumbrian, and Welshman with the northmen. The league was broken by AEthelstan's rapid action in 926; the North-Welsh were forced to pay annual tribute, to march in his armies, and to attend his councils; the West-Welsh of Cornwall were reduced to a like vassalage, and finally driven from Exeter, which they had shared till then with its English inhabitants, But eight years later the same league called AEthelstan again to the North; and though Constantine ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... apprentices, and other recalcitrant dependents, who were reduced to partial or perpetual slavery for the most trivial offences. The condition of these various categories of bondmen, however, was more one of serfage and vassalage, the ancient system of slavery that had culminated in the Roman Empire having been modified by the mild doctrines of Christianity and the gradual spread ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the meadow, and the cheer followed them as they went, like the moving cry of birds on the wing; and first they rode along the line of the King's men, but presently they came to the knights and soldiers of Eleanor's great vassalage, and all at once there were flowers in the air, wild flowers from the fields and autumn roses from the gardens of Nicaea, plucked early by young squires and boys, and tied into nosegays and carefully shielded from the sun, that they might be ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the countenance of Richelieu, for introducing into New France an Order less greedy of seigniories and endowments than the Jesuits, and less prone to political encroachment. [ 1 ] No favorable result followed; and the colony remained as before, in a pitiful state of cramping and dwarfing vassalage. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... oratorical paraphrases which do not prevent us from coming to the conclusion we wish. The two Emperors equally desired war; the one with the view of consolidating his power, and the other in the hope of freeing himself from a yoke which threatened to reduce him to a state of vassalage, for it was little short of this to require a power like Russia to close her ports against England for the mere purpose of favouring the interests of France. At that time only two European powers were not tied to Napoleon's fate—Sweden and Turkey. Napoleon was anxious ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... I am the last of all my race. My name Ends with me. Yonder hang my helm and shield; They will be buried with me in the grave.[48] And must I think, when yielding up my breath, That thou but wait'st the closing of mine eyes, To stoop thy knee to this new feudal court, And take in vassalage from Austria's hands The noble lands, which I from God received, Free and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... no king hath daughters so dowried," answered Warwick; "and though I disdain for myself the hard vassalage of a throne, yet if the channel of our blood must pass into other streams, into nothing meaner than the veins of royalty should it merge." He paused a moment, and added with a sigh, "Would that Clarence ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and dissensions threatened the security of his suzerainty. Their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them: a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example from spreading far and wide. The empire was maintained by perpetual ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the events to be flow down from their feet like a river, the worlds are flying pebbles that They have already thrown, and Time and all his centuries behind him kneel there with bended crests in token of vassalage at Their potent feet." ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... expelled, continued to maintain himself with a few followers in the mountains, and at last effected an accommodation with the British, and was replaced on the musnud. He has since fulfilled his engagements to us with exemplary fidelity; and as his fears of compulsory vassalage to the nominally restored Affghan monarchy are now at an end, he appears likely to afford a solitary instance of a trans-Indian chief converted into a firm friend ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... was he that smote you with the spear, and put the stone further than you, and passed you in the leap. And this ring he gave me for a token, if ever you should boast yourself against me. Talk, therefore, no more of lords and vassals. My husband feigned this vassalage that he might deceive ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... happened in Germany during the war illustrates so well the vassalage to which neutral correspondents have been reduced as the humiliating pledges extorted from them by the German Government as the price of their remaining in Berlin for the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... King had resolved, on his own initiative, to remedy the encroachments that his officers had made on the rights of the Church, and would have done so sooner had he not feared the appearance of submitting to the menaces and orders of the Pope, who pretended to reduce to a condition of vassalage the most noble kingdom of France, which had never been raised but from God. Peter Flotte dwelt especially on this latter argument, and appealed in turn to the interests of the nobility and of the clergy, and to national pride. The fiery Count of Artois arose, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... and for accepting those which those kings and tyrants send them. They can make and preserve peace, declare and make war, and take vengeance on all who insult us, without awaiting any resolution from court for it. Therefore many kings have rendered vassalage and paid tribute to the governors, have recognized them as their superiors, have respected and feared their arms, have solicited their friendship, and tried to procure friendly relations and commerce ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... you would guess, I came immediately into some small portion of my kingdom. Though Darius was the patriarch, the other blacks were also fugitives from Appleby Hundred; and for the son of Roger Ireton there was instant vassalage and loyal service. But best of all, on my first evening before the handful of fire in the great fire-place, Darius brought me a package swathed in many wrappings of Indian-tanned deerskin. It contained my father's sword, and, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the two powers had for some time been imminent. Louis XIV. had become more and more exacting in his demands on the Duke of Savoy, until the latter felt himself in a position of oppressive vassalage. Louis had even intimated his intention of occupying Verrua and the citadel of Turin; and the Duke, having previously ascertained through his cousin, Prince Eugene, the willingness of the Emperor of Austria, pressed by William of Orange, to assist him in opposing the pretensions of France, he at ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... dependence, dependency; subordination; thrall, thralldom, thraldom, enthrallment, subjugation, bondage, serfdom; feudalism, feudality[obs3]; vassalage, villenage; slavery, enslavement, involuntary servitude; conquest. service; servitude, servitorship[obs3]; tendence[obs3], employ, tutelage, clientship[obs3]; liability &c. 177; constraint &c.751; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Castilians, and to serve them with all his men; since he recognized that, although his were the more numerous, they were inferior in valor to the Spaniards. The natives wished from that moment to consider the Spaniards as their seigniors, and the latter's king as their king. They offered what vassalage was right in recognition of subjection. Thereupon, they signed the treaty of peace under the most advantageous conditions. All was done by act of notary. The governor, in his Majesty's name, gave them a general ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... will then show some moderation in his covetousness. Does he wish to rule over all the countries of the North? Will he eat up all the kail in England? He shall do so, and reduce that country to a desert, before I lay my head in his hands, or show him any other kind of vassalage. Now ye shall tell him these my words,—I will defend Norway with battle-axe and sword as long as life is given me, and will pay scat to ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... war raged on a great scale between Russia and the Sultan; and, until the time arrived for throwing off their vassalage, it was necessary that Oubacha should 30 contribute his usual contingent of martial aid. Nay, it had unfortunately become prudent that he should contribute much more than his usual aid. Human experience ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Switzerland, as a whole, was dominated by feudalism. This feudalism differed somewhat from the French feudalism, for it represented a sort of overlordship of absentee feudal chiefs, which, leaving the people more to themselves, made vassalage less irksome. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... reason—and I have found them—I have been disposed not only to overlook the offence, but to forgive and forget it. Thus there are many cadets who would associate, etc., were they not restrained by the force of opinion of relatives and friends. This cringing dependence, this vassalage, this mesmerism we may call it, we all know exists. Why, many a cadet has openly confessed to me that he did not recognize us because he was afraid of ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... exaggerated by the unfounded theory you were taught to believe, that its burdens were in proportion to your exports, not to your consumption of imported articles. Your pride was roused by the assertions that a submission to these laws was a state of vassalage, and that resistance to them was equal, in patriotic merit, to the opposition our fathers offered to the oppressive laws of Great Britain. You were told that this opposition might be peaceably—might be constitutionally ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... in my own house which once was the palace of our forefathers, the Pharaohs of Egypt, by your leave I will omit them. Amen be my witness," he added bitterly, "I cannot bear to lay the letter of a foreign king against my brow in token of my country's vassalage." ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... means that you acknowledge in him some natural or social superiority, and according to democracy there are no superiorities, social or natural, and if there were such a thing as natural superiority, nature has no business to allow it. This is tantamount to proclaiming a form of vassalage—a thing which is ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... have it; one days conquest hath undone them. And sold them to their vassalage; for what Have I else toyl'd my brains, profusely emptied My moneys, but to make them slaves to Venice, That so in case the sword did lose his edge, Then art ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... character, or, as they would say, the points of a slave. They look into him shrewdly, as an old jockey does into a horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot distance, among a thousand freemen. They have a nice eye to detect shades of vassalage. They saw in the aristocratic popinjay strut of a counterfeit Democrat an itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They beheld it in 'the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made him the very tool for their purpose. The little creature has struck at the right of petition. A paltrier ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... under which he succeeded to power compelled him to submit for a time to the condition of vassalage; but no sooner had Antiochus Sidetes fallen in the Parthian war, than John shook off the yoke of Syria, and exercised the rights of an independent sovereign. He even extended his sway beyond the Jordan, reducing several important towns to his obedience; though the achievement which most gratified ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... for publication in the official journals of Paris. Soon afterward, on February thirteenth, a messenger carried to Frederick William verbal proposals for either an armistice or a separate peace on most favorable terms. In these Napoleon set forth that the relation of Prussia to Russia was mere vassalage, and that her rehabilitation as an independent power was essential to the peace of Europe, agreeing to restore her lands as far as the Elbe, and saying that as to Poland he cared nothing whatever. The confident feeling of the allies was shown by the Prussian king's prompt refusal to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... said before, in the year 1780, and he was then in the eightieth year of his age. He began his humane and glorious work in 1783, and he finished it in 1789. It took him, therefore, six years to bring his Negroes to the state of vassalage described, or to that state from whence he was sure that they might be transferred without danger in no distant time, to the rank of freemen, if it should be thought desirable. He lived one year afterwards to witness the success of his labours. He had accomplished, therefore, ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... stamp act was an usurpation of the Americans' most precious and sacred rights, the declaratory Act left them no rights at all; and contained the full grown seeds of the most despotic government ever exercised in the world. It placed America not only in the lowest, but in the basest state of vassalage; because it demanded an unconditional submission in everything, or, as the act expressed it, in all cases whatsoever: and what renders this act the more offensive, is, that it appears to have been passed as an act of mercy; truly then may it be said, that ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... profligate families, no wonder that all his sympathies were with the Stuarts and their dissipated insolent party, and all his hatred directed against those who endeavoured to check them in their proceedings, and to raise the generality of mankind something above a state of vassalage that is wretchedness. Those who were born great, were, if he could have had his will, always to remain great, however worthless their characters. Those who were born low, were always to remain so, however great their talents—though if that rule were carried ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... merchants on their way to the great fairs in Guatemala. The Huastecs are described as numerous, dwelling in walled towns, possessing quantities of maize, beans, feathers and precious stones, and painting their faces. They were signally defeated by the troops of Montezuma, but not reduced to vassalage.[24-1] ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... white lily hands. His very name fascinated me. Willie Hughes! Willie Hughes! How musically it sounded! Yes; who else but he could have been the master-mistress of Shakespeare's passion, {1} the lord of his love to whom he was bound in vassalage, {2} the delicate minion of pleasure, {3} the rose of the whole world, {4} the herald of the spring {5} decked in the proud livery of youth, {6} the lovely boy whom it was sweet music to hear, {7} and whose beauty ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... rights.—This is another victory that must be credited to the period under discussion. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was scarcely a nation that acknowledged the right of the individual to a part in government, or to personal freedom. Men were in vassalage to their immediate lord, who, in turn, was obliged to acknowledge the "divine right" of the king over him. With the exception of Switzerland, who for centuries had maintained her freedom, and of England, who had secured the rights of man only by much ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... services to Rome. He wills you then this day to marry him, And so be throned together in the sight Of all the people, that the world may know You twain are reconciled, and no more feuds Disturb our peaceful vassalage to Rome. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... authority and oppression" of which he was guilty, in "forcing profane, drunken, and otherwise corrupt officials upon Utah at the point of the bayonet,"—expressing a determination to "continue to resist any attempt on the part of the Administration to bring the people into a state of vassalage by appointing, contrary to the Constitution, officers whom the people have neither voice nor vote in electing,"—avowing the purpose not to suffer "any persons appointed to office for Utah by the Administration either to qualify for, or assume, or discharge, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... The state of vassalage in which our bishop has been kept by his wife has not tended to exalt his character in the eyes of his daughters, who assume in addressing their father too much of that authority which is not properly belonging, at any rate, to them. They ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... pacifically and under the beloved Rodolph II and his still better loved Queen Berthe, and their son Conrad, resisted the Saracen invasion and preserved for a hundred and fifty years the autonomy of their kingdom. Nobles with their serfs and freemen already divided the land, their prerogatives and vassalage long since established by the laws of Gondebaud. The Oberland, or Pays-d'en-Haut, Hoch Gau, or D'Ogo, in the German tongue, a country no longer wild but rich in fertile valleys and wooded mountain sides, was given to a Burgundian lord, under the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... servitude, inthrallment, captivity, bond service, vassalage, thralldom, subjection, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... soil of fable, and above ground is a gnarled and twisted growth of good and bad from the time of the Great Charles to the time of the Great Frederick. Between these times she had her various rulers, ecclesiastical and secular, in various forms of vassalage to the empire; but for nearly four centuries her sovereignty was in the hands of the margraves, who reigned in a constantly increasing splendor till the last sold her outright to the King of Prussia in 1791, and went to live in England on the proceeds. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dubious hour, That twilight when we first begin to see This dawning earth, to recognise, expect, And in the long probation that ensues, 515 The time of trial, ere we learn to live In reconcilement with our stinted powers; To endure this state of meagre vassalage, Unwilling to forego, confess, submit, Uneasy and unsettled, yoke-fellows 520 To custom, mettlesome, and not yet tamed And humbled down; oh! then we feel, we feel, We know where we have friends. Ye dreamers, then, Forgers of daring tales! we bless you then, Impostors, drivellers, dotards, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... I shall only mention such in general as are most worthy the remark, from which by analogy we may easily judge of the remainder. And indeed to what purpose would it be singly to recount the commonalty and rabble of mankind, who beyond all question are entirely on my side? and for a token of their vassalage do wear my livery in so many older shapes, and more newly invented modes of Folly, that the lungs of a thousand Democrituses would never hold out to such a laughter as this subject would excite; and to these thousand must be ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... rooted to the soil who are rapidly improving, who have already attained considerable influence and are marshalled by gifted leaders, (men who show themselves qualified for legislative and judicial positions), and to doom them to a state of perpetual vassalage is ...
— The Early Negro Convention Movement - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 9 • John W. Cromwell
... internal trade with Prussia, Persia, and China, especially, with the latter. Nearly the whole of her maritime commerce is in the hands of foreigners, the Russians seeming rather averse to the sea; and the state of vassalage in the peasants, which binds them to the soil, preventing the formation of seamen. Latterly, however, she has displayed considerable zeal in posecuting maritime discoveries; and as she seems disposed to extend her possessions in the north-west coast of America, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... unequal to the task and unworthy of the honor; but, having accepted it, all the wives, goods, and children of his predecessor belong to him, and he takes care to keep them in a dependent position. When any one of them becomes tired of this state of vassalage and sets up his own village, it is not unusual for the elected chief to send a number of the young men, who congregate about himself, to visit him. If he does not receive them with the usual amount of clapping of hands and humility, they, in ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... not yield to his wishes unless he became a gipsy and made her his wife. The page did so, and was so much liked by the other gipsies, that they chose him for their lord, yielded him obedience, and in token of vassalage rendered to him a portion of everything they stole, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... be no such line, the consequence is, either that the colonies are the vassals of the Parliament, or that they are totally independent. As it cannot be supposed to have been the intention of the parties in the compact, that we should be reduced to a state of vassalage, the conclusion is, that it was their sense that we were thus independent. "It is impossible," your Excellency says, "that there should be two independent Legislatures in one and the same state." May we not then further conclude, that it was their sense, that ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... fully established in England, and lands descended from father to son, and were divided up among the dependants on condition of the performance of vassalage. In this way the common people were cheerily permitted the use of what atmosphere they needed for breathing purposes, on their solemn promise to return it, and at the close of life, if they had succeeded in winning the royal ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... disposed of. The Northmen were pacified by presenting them outright with the coast lands they had most harried. Their great leader, Rolf, accepted the territory with some vague and ill-kept promise of vassalage to the French King, and with a very firmly held determination that he would let no pirates ravage his land or cross it to reach others. So the French coast became Normandy, and the Northmen learned the tongue and manners of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... of the vassalage of Denmark, but the emperor never forgot nor forgave the insult and took every opportunity in after years to stir up strife against Denmark. In 1184 he incited the pagan princes of Pomerania to invade the Danish islands with a fleet of five hundred ships. But they had old Bishop Absolon to deal ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... conducted with great state and ceremony to the royal palace. When he came in presence of Ferdinand he knelt and offered to kiss his hand, not merely in homage as his subject, but in gratitude for his liberty. Ferdinand declined the token of vassalage, and raised him graciously from the earth. An interpreter began, in the name of Boabdil, to laud the magnanimity of the Castilian monarch and to promise the most implicit submission. "Enough!" said King Ferdinand, interrupting the interpreter in ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... measures built up one upon the other, it makes use of the means that the present system offers it. It proceeds through intervening elected persons. It imagines that from a theoretical discussion there will arise such ameliorations that its vassalage will ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... spires and turrets of the metropolis, Saint Paul's, close at hand, rose in the proud pre-eminence of stupendous grandeur, like a mighty monarch surrounded 98 by tributary kings, rendering him the homage of vassalage. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... bound the tenant who accepted a fief to the lord who granted it was called vassalage. Every holder of land was the vassal of some lord. At the apex of the feudal pyramid stood the king, the supreme landlord, who was supposed to hold his land from God; below the king stood the greater lords (dukes, marquises, counts, and barons), with large estates; and below them stood the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... unjust and impolitic in itself, very uncertain in the issue, and unpromising as to any good results."—"It cannot be concealed that to engage in the present war against England is to place ourselves on the side of France, and expose us to the vassalage of States serving under the banner of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... authority over the district, which they afterwards converted into a duchy. But, though Ghibelline for several generations, the Montefeltri were too near neighbours of the Papal power to free themselves from ecclesiastical vassalage. Therefore in 1216 they sought and obtained the title of Vicars of the Church. Urbino acknowledged them as semi-despots in their double capacity of Imperial and Papal deputies. Cagli and Gubbio followed in the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth, Castel Durante was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... by virtue of the feudal system, between a multitude of princes, independent, isolated, and scarcely sovereigns in their own dominions, keeping up anything like frequent intercourse only with their neighbors, and loosely united, by certain rules or customs of vassalage, to him amongst them who bore the title of king, the France of the eleventh century existed in little more than name: Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Poitou, Anjou, Flanders, and Nivernais were the real states ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 1650, there were scarcely 5,000 free peasants. Dahlmann, III, p. 73 seq. However the severity of traeldom made way in the fourteenth century for the vornedskap (modified bondage), a milder species of vassalage. See Kolderup Rosenvinge, Grundriss der ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... twenty years of his reign, that a man of more practical temperament might have been forgiven for indulging in dreams of future success. Three obstacles stood in the way of the development of his power. These were his vassalage to the English crown, the hostility of the marcher barons, and the impatience with which the minor Welsh chieftains submitted to his authority. For five years he impatiently endured these restraints. He then took advantage of the absence of the new king ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... from the king alone. The idea involved in the statements of Sir Martin Wright, Mr. Hallam, and Mr. FREEMAN, that the VASSAL OF A LORD was then called on to swear allegiance to the KING, and that it altered the feudal bond in England, is not supported by the oath of vassalage. In swearing fealty, the vassal knelt, placed his hands between those of ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... opponent. But "The Old Whig" could not restrain his political feelings, and contemptuously described "little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets." Steele replied with his usual warmth; but indignant at the charge of "vassalage," he says, "I will end this paper, by firing every free breast with that noble exhortation ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... vassalage to the slave power displayed by northern congressmen of both parties, though forming a majority in the House during all the great days of the slavery battle. The gag history is one example. Resolutions against ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews |
