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More "Usurper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strength, and when Henry the Second, great-grandson through his mother of Edgar's sister Margaret, insisted on his descent from the old kings. This distinction is important, because Harold is often called an usurper, as keeping out Edgar the heir by birth. But those who called him an usurper at the time called him so as keeping out William the heir by bequest. William's own election was out of the question. He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold; he was a foreigner ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... brethren," he began, "we have not invited you all to share our evening meal on an occasion of idle ceremony—many of you have heard the news I have to tell, and more will anticipate them. The usurper, the bloodstained oppressor of our race is at hand; he rests this night at Warwick, with a force far exceeding any that we can gather to meet him; their lances might uphold the skies, their arrows darken the heavens. All the robber barons of note are there; the butcher priest Ode, ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... gazed at this old fortress of his fathers, with the standard of the foreign invader floating above its top-mast tower. He said nothing; yet, I could tell by the heaving of his chest, what thoughts were passing in his mind, what hatred of the usurper, what impatience to stand once more on those battlements and fling open the ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Portugal by Don Miguel, and from thence had passed over to the Brazils, where he had devoted himself to the service of Don Pedro, and had followed him in that expedition which terminated in the downfall of the Usurper and the establishment of the constitutional government in Portugal. Our conversation rolled chiefly on literary and political subjects, and my acquaintance with the writings of the most celebrated authors of Portugal was hailed with surprise and ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... be call'd his lady and his love; And, for that other is a poor woman, She shall be call'd his wench and his leman: And God it wot, mine owen deare brother, Men lay the one as low as lies the other. Right so betwixt a *titleless tyrant* *usurper* And an outlaw, or else a thief errant, *wandering The same I say, there is no difference (To Alexander told was this sentence), But, for the tyrant is of greater might By force of meinie* for to slay downright, *followers And burn both house and home, and make all plain,* *level Lo, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... and they blush to obey; they like the advantages of service, but not the master; or rather, they are not sure that they ought not themselves to be masters, and they are inclined to consider him who orders them as an unjust usurper of their own rights. Then it is that the dwelling of every citizen offers a spectacle somewhat analogous to the gloomy aspect of political society. A secret and intestine warfare is going on there between powers, ever rivals ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... tendency, even republican France went on to sweep away all the traces of self-government, and this is the reason why all her revolutions could not assert liberty for her people, and why she lies now prostrate under the feet of a usurper, without glory, without merit, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... alienating the affections of the children, making the home of none effect. Where does the truth lie? Has the home been so negligent of its duty, or has the school forgotten that it is the creature of the home? Which is the usurper? That is an interesting question. We can not go into it in detail, but let me suggest that it has all come about not so much from the unwarranted assumption of the school, nor the conscious and wilful neglect of ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... easier if reform bears the not uncommon aspect of conservatism, and a nominal sovereign, whose strength, never very great, has been sapped by disuse and the habit of mechanical obedience, is placed in competition with a somewhat effete usurper. It is not, however, fair to regard Gracchus as a radical reactionary who was the first to drag a prisoned and incapable sovereign into the light of day. Had he done this, he would have been the author of a revolution ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... usurper Basiliscus took refuge with his wife and children in S. Irene, when he was overthrown in 477, and the Emperor Zeno recovered the throne. But, according to the Paschal Chronicle,[132] Basiliscus fled on that occasion to the great baptistery of S. Sophia. As that baptistery stood ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... in the English church. I was taught to adore Wellington, to hate Napoleon as an enemy of liberty, a usurper, a false emperor, a monster, a murderer. I was sent to Eton and to Oxford. I was indoctrinated with the idea that there is a moral governance in the world, that God rules over the affairs of men. I was taught these things, but I resisted them. I did not rebel so much as my mind ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... to penetrate your life as far as I can and to recognize no inner sanctum from which I am barred. He is the usurper and my love is not tame enough to submit. I am your lover because, though your words deny me, your heart invites ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... so far as Mr. Wilding in counselling such a course. We've set our hands to the plough; let us go forward in God's name. Yet I would remind you that what Mr. Wilding says is true. Had we waited until next year, we had found the usurper's throne tottering under him, and, on our landing, it would have toppled o'er ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... compelling the heroes of either line to stalk across the scene in language and fashion as they lived, as if the grave had given up the dead for the amusement and instruction of the living. Burbage, esteemed the best Richard until Garrick arose, played the tyrant and usurper with such truth and liveliness, that when the Battle of Bosworth seemed concluded by his death, the ideas of reality and deception were strongly contending in Lord Glenvarloch's imagination, and it required him to rouse himself from his reverie, so strange did the proposal at first sound ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... doubled, and did weigh me down Prostrate to the earth, methinks I could rise up Erect, with nothing but the honest pride Of telling thee, usurper, to thy teeth, Thou art a monster! Think upon my chains? How ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... excellent representation of the ancient minstrel, we were shortly given a touch of the modern usurper of the name. A gentleman was present who in the many turns of Fortune's wheel had once found himself a follower of the burnt-cork persuasion. He gave us a negro melody with a lively accompaniment on the guitar. A melancholy Spanish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the extinction of the Visconti race, the fief ought to have returned to the empire, it was in the emperor's power to bestow the duchy upon Lodovico, whose title would thus be rendered perfectly legal, while Gian Galeazzo would become the usurper, he himself, his father, and grandfather having only held the dukedom by right of a popular election, which had never been confirmed by the emperor. This, then, was the proposal which the Moro secretly made to Maximilian, whose father, the Emperor Frederic III., was at the ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... important. Discontent prevails throughout the country. The affair of Bishop Watson hath brought much odium on the usurper. He himself writhes under the tyrannical commands of the Commons, and is at issue ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... Ramsay-Stewart a chance when he came. They disliked him, and he was an upstart and a gombeen man and a usurper, and such foolishness, in the mouths of every one of them. As if it was his fault, poor gentleman, that the Misses Conyers never married, and so let ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... of Philip alone, nor in desire for honours and estates for himself, nor in racial antagonism, for had he not been allied with England in this war against the Government? He hated Philip the man, but he hated still more Philip the usurper who had brought shame to the escutcheon of Bercy. There was also at work another and deeper design to be shown in good time. Philip had retired from the English navy, and gone back to his duchy of Bercy. Here he threw ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... alive! I should take care of that! HE would not have to endure the agony of breaking loose from the cold grasp of the grave to come back to life and find his name slandered, and his vacant place filled up by a usurper. Do what I would, I could not torture him as much as I myself had been tortured. That was a pity—death, sudden and almost painless, seemed too good for him. I held up my hand in the half light and watched it closely to see if it trembled ever so slightly. ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... position and responsibilities he was bound to respect), he took into his confidence persons whom he could trust. One night—in the absence of the present proprietor, or, I should rather say, the present usurper, of the estate—the lake at Vange was privately dragged, with a result that proved the bishop's conjecture to be right. Read those valuable documents. Knowing your strict sense of honor, my son, and your admirable ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... should I be? Would you? In my country a usurper is upon the throne, kept there, held there, like a child who would fall but for its nurse's arms, by all the Powers of Europe. It is I who should be there. It is I who will be there one day. Shall I tell you? There are ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... be forgotten, that when Cromwell had repeatedly offered to release the Bishop, he refused to accept of the proffered boon, saying, "that he scorned to receive his liberty from a tyrant and usurper." His life was kindly prolonged by Providence, that as he had seen the destruction, so he might also see the happy restoration of ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... the stirring of a deep clear stream Within an Alpine hollow, when the wind Walks o'er it, was she shaken by the dream, The mystical Usurper of the mind— O'erpowering us to be whate'er may seem Good to the soul which we no more can bind; Strange state of being! (for 't is still to be) Senseless to feel, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... their eyes on him, disputed about homoousian and homoiousian, and grimaced and pretended to be very very fierce and exact to hide how much they were frightened and how little they knew, and because they did not dare to lay violent hands upon that usurper of the empire of ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... ignorance, and love of change, will follow them. Vast armies will be formed, and bloody battles fought. And after desolating their country with all the horrors of civil war, the guilty survivors will have to bend their necks to the iron yokes of some stern usurper, and like beasts of burden, to drag, unpitied, those galling chains which they have riveted ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... moment I predicted has come; I have received a warning that the usurper Edgar already marches against us; tomorrow, at the latest, he will be here; before he arrives we shall be halfway to Wessex. Let every one secure his baggage and his plunder, and let the horses be all got ready for a forced march. We have eaten the ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Mr. Muckarsie, "by Buchanan and other historians, that there was a bloody battle fought near this place, on the banks of the Almond, in the year 995, between Kennethus, natural brother and commander of the forces of Malcolm II., King of Scotland, and Constantine, the usurper of that crown, wherein both the generals were killed. About two miles higher up the river, on the Bathgate road, is a circular mound of earth (of great antiquity, surrounded with large unpolished stones, at a considerable ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... emissaries of Rhodolph were busy, fanning the flames of discontent, and making great promises to those who would restore Rhodolph to the throne. Intolerant and odious as Rhodolph had been, his great reverses excited sympathy, and many were disposed to regard Matthias but as a usurper. Thus influenced, Matthias not only signed all the conditions, but was also constrained to carry them, into immediate execution. These conditions being fulfilled, the nobles met on the 19th of November, 1606, and elected Matthias ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... Christian forms of the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Doxology, until Oliver's army invaded Scotland, and the independent chaplains in that army thought their own dispensation was above that of Geneva. Upon this, such of the presbyterians as would recommend themselves to the Usurper, and such as had his ear, forbore those forms in the public worship, and by ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the chief commercial State in the Union. She saw the ruin of her commerce involved in the policy of Jefferson, and regarded it as an unworthy concession to the usurper of the French throne. In this emergency John Quincy Adams turned his back on Massachusetts, and threw into the uprising scale of the administration, the weight of his talents and of his already eminent fame. Massachusetts instructed ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... their own slaves, carry desolation, spread misery, deal out death among the subjects of others, atheists? Do we not witness in some of those potentates who rule over nations by divine right, (a patent of power, which every usurper claims as his own) ambitious mortals, whose exterminating fury nothing can arrest; with hearts perfectly insensible to the sorrows of mankind; with minds without energy; with souls without virtue; who neglect their most evident duties, with which they do not even deign to become acquainted; powerful ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... it in mind the more abnormally sensitive it becomes. The sound man has no knowledge of such an organ, except as a matter of theory. The body, when watched, petted, and idolized, soon assumes the character of a usurper and tyrant. Retribution is sure and inherent ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... earliest furrows on the mountain side, Soft with the deluge. Tyranny himself, Thy enemy, although of reverend look, Hoary with many years, and far obeyed, Is later born than thou; and as he meets The grave defiance of thine elder eye, The usurper trembles in his fastnesses. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... the old earl, said the pilgrim, had been so ground down by the wicked Sir Murdour and his wife, that they had risen up as one man, and, headed by Saber, had defended the Isle of Wight against the usurper. But it was greatly to be desired that the young earl should return home as fast as possible, and attack Murdour in his castle of Southampton, and for this reason had he set ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... Me close; my emerald ocean-robes flow free, And purple soar my mountains, folds on folds, With vale and plain. My bondmaid Moon to me Reveals her marbled snow in cusp and shale— Whilst in my flinty womb the valiant strife Of Fire proclaims me thine and bans the pale Usurper Death beyond my fields of Life. In Winds that wrap my path, lo, I shall sing To thee a choral eternal, Lord of Days, And Life with myriad hearts in me shall sing Thy glory to scan ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... natural and moral order of things. Orestes, as a prince, was, it is true, called upon to exercise justice, even on the members of his own family; but we behold him here under the necessity of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to work like an assassin. The memory of his father pleads his excuse; but however much Clytemnestra may have deserved her death, the voice of blood cries from within. This conflict of natural duties is represented in the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Bashaw to terms by force of arms, the Americans now resorted to what may be termed diplomacy. The reigning Bashaw of Tripoli was a usurper, having displaced his elder brother, who had fled to Upper Egypt. He had a good many friends, who, if they dared, would have been glad to replace him on his throne. The American consul, who understood all the particulars, ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... to the lowness of his origin. They know of notable instances of the nation being delivered from terrible tyranny and degrading foreign subjection, and being made gloriously great, by men of the people. They point to Kawah, the blacksmith, who headed a revolt against the monstrously cruel usurper King Zohak, using his apron as a banner, and finally overthrew and slew him, and placed Faridun, a Prince of the Peshdadian dynasty, on the throne which he might have occupied himself. This blacksmith's apron continued ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... to a hundred thousand dollars, Ray felt that it might have been worse. Had he not been dissuaded by Bolton, Ernest would have consented to share the estate with the usurper, but the lawyer represented that this would be condoning the wrong ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... contribution to make, he gave a new turn to speculation. There is something almost of magic in the ease with which he demolishes divine right and the social contract. The one is an inevitable deduction from theism, but it protects an usurper not less than an hereditary king, and gives a "divine commission" as well to a constable as to the most majestic prince. The proponents of the social contract are in no better case. "Were you to preach," he remarks, "in most parts of the world that political ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the sand, striking on his head, to his evident stupefaction. When he recovered he gave up his property without demur, and started for another venture. Then I, the deus ex machina, stepped into the epic, pitched the usurper three times as far as he had thrown my friend, then rolled the "apple of discord" directly in the path of its rightful owner, and saw him commencing his task anew, with unabated energy. A little declivity stood in his way, and it was a Sysiphus-labor to get beyond it. Time after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... degraded and despised, his arms were ever open. They had his tenderest sympathies. They had his warmest love. His heart's blood he poured out upon the ground for the human family, reduced to the deepest degradation, and exposed to the heaviest inflictions, as the slaves of the grand usurper. And yet, according to our ecclesiastics, that class of sufferers who had been reduced immeasurably below every other shape and form of degradation and distress; who had been most rudely thrust out of the family of Adam, and forced to herd with swine; who, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Arsinoe, and, as Alexandria was within easy reach of that town, he was in frequent intercourse with his own family and that of Porphyrius. Not quite three years previously, when a revolt had broken out in favor of the usurper Maximus in his native town, Constantine had assisted in suppressing it, and almost immediately afterwards he was sent to Europe to take part in the war which Theodosius had begun, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a standpoint the pure and sacred striving after light and truth, to say the least, would seem quixotic and criminal if it should venture in its feeling of justice to denounce the authoritative belief as a usurper who has taken possession of the throne of truth and maintained ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Richard Simon, had among his pupils a handsome youth, fifteen years of age, named Lambert Simnel. This lad, who was the son of a baker, and, according to Lord Bacon, was possessed of "very pregnant parts," was selected to disturb the usurper's government, by appearing as a pretender to his crown. At first it was the intention of the conspirators that he should personate Richard, duke of York, the second son of Edward IV., who was supposed to have escaped from the assassins of ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... lunatic, because he said that he was Solomon. After some time, the members of the Sanhedrin noticed his peculiar behavior, and they investigated the matter. They found that a long time had passed since Benaiah, the confidant of the king, had been permitted to enter the presence of the usurper. Furthermore the wives of Solomon and his mother Bath-sheba informed them that the behavior of the king had completely changed it was not befitting royalty and in no respect like Solomon's former manner. It was also very strange that the king never by any chance allowed his foot to be seen, for fear, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... son Algar, died within a few years of each other; and Algar's sons, Edwin and Morkar, were as yet young and timid. Old Earl Siward Biorn fought his last battle when he assisted Malcolm Canmore in overthrowing the murderous usurper, Macbeth, in Scotland. In the battle, Siward's eldest-son, of the same name as himself, was killed. The father only asked if his death-wound was in front, and when he heard it was, "I heartily rejoice," said he; "no other death is worthy of ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and credulous as he was, and filled with prejudice and suspicion against Flacius and the Jena theologians generally, whom he, being the brother of the usurper Maurice, instinctively feared as possibly also political enemies, Elector August was easily duped and completely hypnotized, as it were, by the men surrounding him, who led him to believe that they, too, were in entire agreement with Luther and merely ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Argos. For years this faithless pair lived arrogantly in the face of the people, and controlled the affairs of the kingdom. But as time went by and the child Orestes grew to be a youth, Aegisthus feared lest the Argives should stand by their own prince, and drive him away as an usurper. He therefore planned the death of Orestes, and even won the consent of the queen, who was no gentle mother! But the princess Electra, suspecting their plot, secretly hurried her brother away to the court of King Strophius in Phocis, and so saved his life. ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... to the 'time-honored custom;' for alas! good old Irish whisky is as certainly among the 'things that were,' as are the Irish kings. Some have shrewdly thought that it was the only real Irish king. Well, then, it is owing to this cousin's loyalty to the usurper, or rather pretender, that I am the family chronicler. He was wonderfully ingenious; could from the slightest hint guess at the whole story; he was equal to those naturalists who from one bone can make out the animal. With the remains of an old family tradition for his clue, he traced the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Gideon. But all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit together, in Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. "This Saracen scum, led by a bastard German,—traitor to his creed, usurper among his race,—dares it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of France, in the eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in hell, or ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... themselves being dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, both privately and publicly (49) condemning the tyranny under which they lived, and calling on patriots to assert their cause against the usurper. Upon the admission of foreigners into the senate, a hand-bill was posted up in these words: "A good deed! let no one shew a new senator the way to the house." These verses ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... time that France was divided into provinces (or dukedoms, as they were called) there reigned in one of these provinces a usurper who had deposed and banished his elder brother, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... contemplating the state in almost every variety of circumstance. Religious dispute, political contest in all its forms and degrees, from the honest exertions of party and the corrupt intrigues of faction to violence and civil war; despotism, first, in the person of a usurper, and afterwards in that of an hereditary king; the most memorable and salutary improvements in the laws, the most abandoned administration of them; in fine, whatever can happen to a nation, whether of glorious of calamitous, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast-altogether such a picture of the effects of sorrow, care, and anxiety as would have melted the hearts of the worst of his adversaries, who so mistakenly applied to him the epithets of tyrant and usurper."(18) ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... tendency to lawlessness[6] and bare-faced usurpation; while parties have ceased to deal with the question for other than purposes of political capital. Even this fruitful mine is well-nigh exhausted. A few more years, and the usurper and the man of violence will be left in undisputed possession of his blood-stained inheritance. No man will attempt to deter him from sowing broadcast the seeds of revolution and death. Brave men are powerless to combat this organized brigandage, complaint ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... are dispersed or destroyed, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice, Genoa, Rome, Naples, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or pestilence; they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than the government they are under."[619] From the usurper Cosmo down to the imbecile Gaston, we look in vain for any of those unmixed qualities which should raise a patriot to the command of his fellow-citizens. The Grand Dukes, and particularly the third Cosmo, had operated so entire a change in the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... in the time of the rebellion in England several good cavalier families went thither with their effects to escape the tyranny of the usurper, or acknowledgment of his title. And so again, upon the Restoration, many people of the opposite party took refuge there, to shelter themselves from the king's resentment. But Virginia had not many of these last, because that country was famous for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... recorded as having uttered any similar claim that woman should be subject to man, or that in teaching she would be a usurper. The dominion of woman over man or of man over woman makes no part of the sayings of the Nazarene. He spoke to the individual soul, not recognizing sex as a quality of spiritual life, or as determining the sphere of action of ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... rights in this strange fashion. The other was of the contrast between my own coming at that moment and the visit which I had paid there, only a few evenings previously, when Hollins had regarded me with some disfavour and the usurper had been so friendly. Now Hollins was lying dead in the old ruin, and the other man was a fugitive—and where ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... all treaties, insulted you in Thrace? Does he not, at this instant, straiten and invade your confederates, whom you have solemnly sworn to protect? Is he not an implacable enemy? a faithless ally? the usurper of provinces, to which he has no title nor pretence? a stranger, a barbarian, a tyrant? and indeed, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... choose competent and faithful representatives for every department. It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... mean revenge; and the very helplessness of his enemies disarmed his severity. Contented with the more noble triumph of conducting the Palatine Frederick with the pomp of a victor into the very palace of the prince who had been the chief instrument of his ruin and the usurper of his territories, he heightened the brilliancy of his triumphal entry by the brighter splendor of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the impulse of the ungovernable pain which the other's presence had been, he had bidden him leave Africa at once; now he almost wished he had bid him stay. There was a weary, unsatisfied longing for some touch of love or of gratitude from this usurper, whom he had raised in his place. He would have been rewarded enough if one sign of gladness that he lived had broken through the egotism and the stricken fear of the man whom he remembered as a little golden-headed child, with the hand of their dying mother lying in benediction ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of bearing and grace of manner that seem strange in one of such low station. Suddenly he is recognised by an exiled Russian noble as Demetrius, the son of Ivan the Terrible who was supposed to have been murdered by the usurper Boris. His identity is still further established by a strange cross of seven emeralds that he wears round his neck, and by a Greek inscription in his book of prayers which discloses the secret of his birth and the story of his rescue. He himself feels that the blood of kings beats in his ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... commanding the King of Prussia to return at once to his own kingdom, and to make apologies to the King of Poland for his late insults. It is possible that, in his haughty pride, Frederick will take no notice of this command. But it will be otherwise with the generals and commandants of this usurper. They have been commanded by the emperor to leave their impious master, and not to be the sharers ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Angelique's health, though it grew heavier with her years; but it made her old in patient endurance and sympathetic insight while she was a child. She sat pitying and excusing her elder's whims when she should have been playing. The oldest story in humanity is the story of the house tyrant,—that usurper often so physically weak that we can carry him in our arms, yet so strong that he can tumble down the pillars of family peace many times ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... narrower principles. Dennis and Rhymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or kings, but he ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... to have clung to Shelley's mind to the end, and made him rebellious against everything bearing the paternal name. He assailed the Father of the Hebrew theocracy with amazing bitterness, and joined Prometheus in cursing and dethroning Zeus, the Olympian usurper. With him, tyrant and father were synonymous, and he has drawn the old Cenci, in the play of that name, with the same fierce, unfilial pencil, dipped in blood and wormwood. Shelley was by nature, self-instruction, and inexperience of life, impatient and full of impulse; and the sharp and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... landlord—who desired to build the arch right in front of his inn-door—permission to set up any pole or support against the privet hedge. In fact, he and Captain Runacles had sworn very heartily to sit indoors, pull down their blinds and withhold their countenances from the usurper. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... have been engraved very shortly before the final fall of the old royal house, for the first certain date of the usurper Narasimha ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... down a few miserable smugglers. I want you to come out of this place with me at once, to become once more the companion of my little Adela, who sends her message by me that she is waiting to take you by the hand. Come: leave the wretched usurper's chains, and be free if you would be a man. Adela says—Hark! There ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... authority with St. Paul, and his very image has been profanely looked on with the reverence paid to Christ. BACON had fixed a new light in Europe, and others were kindling their torches at his flame. When the great usurper of the human understanding was once fairly opposed to Nature, he betrayed too many symptoms of mere humanity. Yet this great triumph was not obtained without severe contention; and upon the Continent even blood has been ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... wilt prove, by taking the liberty of making two objections; and they are only to the last page but one. Perhaps you will think that my first objection does show that I am too much biassed. I own I am sorry to see my father compared to Sylla. The latter was a sanguinary usurper, a monster; the former, the mildest, most forgiving, best-natured of men, and a legal minister. Nor, I fear, will the only light in which you compare them, Stand The test. Sylla resigned his power voluntarily, insolently: perhaps timidly. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... as the good-natured demon had foretold, everything was changed. His father and mother were both dead, a usurper sat on the throne, and had put a price on Bahrâmgor's head should he ever return from his mysterious journey. Luckily no one recognised the young Prince (so much had he changed during his residence in Demonsland) save ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... sufficiently odious to illustrate him by comparison. Language has been tortured to find epithets sufficiently strong to paint him in description. Imagination has been exhausted in her efforts to deck him with revolting and inhuman attributes. Tyrant, despot, usurper; destroyer of the liberties of his country; rash, ignorant, imbecile; endangering the public peace with all foreign nations; destroying domestic prosperity at home; ruining all industry, all commerce, all manufactures; annihilating confidence between man and man; delivering ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... a kind of generosity which hardly amounts to more than justice (although they were purchased) from a recusant usurper to a dear friend—not that I am a usurper exactly; well, from a representative of the new aristocracy of internationality to a representative of the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Alexandria, to be trodden down by elephants made fierce with the blood of grapes, and of their deliverance by Divine Providence. Some fiction is certainly mixed with this recital, but it may well be that during the rule of the stupid and cruel usurper Ptolemy Physcon (c. 120 B.C.E.) the protection of the royal house was for political reasons removed for a time from the Jews. Josephus[16] relates that the anniversary of the deliverance was celebrated as a festival ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... and without shoes, would strive to go out with honest George Monk.' After the death of Cromwell he was offered the crown, but he refused, 'holding it a greater honour to be an honest subject than a great usurper.' ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... hopes. When he learned that the tricolored flag had taken the place of the white one, and heard of the enthusiasm that had seized the French for the men and deeds of the Empire; when he heard the Austrian ministers continually saying that Louis Philippe was a mere usurper who could reign but a short time; when his grandfather, the Emperor Francis, who was the incarnation of prudence and wisdom, said to him one day, "If the French people should want you, and the Allies were to give their consent, I should not oppose ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... satisfied with berating him; they also conspire against him. What means shall they take to overthrow the power of this unlawful ruler?—for in the eyes of the housekeeper he is a usurper, and in those of Berta's father, a tyrant;—turn him out of the house? This is the one thought of the conspirators. But how? This is the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... Langara, king of Camboja, asks for aid from the Spaniards; and Dasmarinas sends for this purpose an expedition under command of Gallinato. The Spaniards slay the usurper of the Cambojan throne; this dignity is offered to Gallinato, but he refuses it, and Ruiz and Velloso replace the rightful heir on the throne. Dasmarinas himself undertakes another expedition to Camboja, at his own ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... dead, yet liveth. Nay, ask no names, yet mark me this—the world's amiss, boy. Pentavalon groans beneath a black usurper's heel, all the sins of hell are loose, murder and riot, lust and rapine. March you eastward but a day through the forest yonder and you shall see the trees bear strange fruit in our country. The world's amiss, messire, yet here sit you wasting your days, a foolish brush stuck ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... that I have left my native country for ever. I told you that I was a lady of Grand Cairo; but since you have shewn me so much favour, I should be much in the wrong in concealing the truth from you: I am a sultan's daughter. A usurper has possessed himself of my father's throne, after having murdered him, and I have been forced to fly ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... Scipio.—A usurper exalted on the highest throne of the universe is not so glorious as I was in that obscure retirement. I hear, indeed, that you, Caesar, have been deified by the flattery of some of your successors. But the impartial judgment of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... a war before long it will not be their fault. What with their swagger and bombast, what with their claims for indemnification, what with Ireland and Fenianism, and what with Canada, I have strong apprehensions. With a settled animosity towards the French usurper, I believe him to have always been sound in his desire to divide the States against themselves, and that we were unsound and wrong in "letting I dare not wait upon I would." The Jamaica insurrection is another hopeful piece of business. That platform-sympathy with ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Chancellor about me. So that on all hands, by God's blessing, I find myself a very rising man. By and by comes my Lord Peterborough in, with whom we talked a good while, and he is going tomorrow towards Tangier again. I perceive there is yet good hopes of peace with Guyland,—[A Moorish usurper, who had put himself at the head of an army for the purpose of attacking Tangier.—B.]—which is of great concernment to Tangier. And many other things I heard which yet I understand not, and so cannot remember. My Lord and Lord Peterborough going out to the Solicitor General about ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the story of his wrongs, it reminded me of the injustice practised on myself, and the colored race generally. Does a colored man by hard labor and patient industry, acquire a good location, a fine farm, and comfortable dwelling, he is almost sure to be looked upon by the white man, as an usurper of his rights and territory; a robber of what he himself should possess, and too often does wrong the colored man out of,—yet, I am happy to acknowledge many ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... justice. On the 30th of December, 1845, General Herrera resigned the Presidency and yielded up the Government to General Paredes without a struggle. Thus a revolution was accomplished solely by the army commanded by Paredes, and the supreme power in Mexico passed into the hands of a military usurper who was known to be bitterly hostile ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... Sharvan was keeping watch and ward over the tree, a cruel king was reigning over the lands that looked towards the rising sun. He had slain the rightful king by foul means, and his subjects, loving their murdered sovereign, hated the usurper; but much as they hated him they feared him more, for he was brave and masterful, and he was armed with a helmet and shield which no weapon made by mortal hands could pierce, and he carried always with him two javelins that never missed their mark, and were ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... edged away to the farther side of the doorway. Experience had accustomed the ancient trader to despots, but in this cheery youngster of a Gringo the regal title was not clear, which simply made tyranny the more irksome. The Gringo was the veriest usurper. He did not justify his sway by the least ferocity. He never uttered a threat. Where, then, was his right to the sceptre he wielded so nonchalantly? Were there only some tangible jeopardy to his pelt, Murguia would have been more resigned. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... until late in the eighteenth century, I believe, scarcely a critic showed that he perceived anything specially interesting in the character. Hanmer, in 1730, to be sure, remarks that 'there appears no reason at all in nature why this young prince did not put the usurper to death as soon as possible'; but it does not even cross his mind that this apparent 'absurdity' is odd and might possibly be due to some design on the part of the poet. He simply explains the absurdity ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... power which it would not be easy to destroy; and even supposing such a design were entertained, it could not be accomplished. I have heard you say it is wished you should act the part of Monk; but you well know the difference between a general opposing the usurper of a crown, and one whom victory and peace have raised above the ruins of a subverted throne, and who restores it voluntarily to those who have long occupied it. You are well aware what you call ideology ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which, after all, may be no greater than our own. She was kind to her nephew; and if she had any scruples of conscience about her husband's taking the young Prince's crown, consoled herself by thinking that the King, though a usurper, was a most respectable man, and that at his death Prince Giglio would be restored to his throne, and share it with his cousin, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... keep thy throne in my heart. If the usurper LOVE once more drive thee from it, thou wilt never again ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... quality. He thinks his thoughts in his own way, and "the style is the man" never more truly than with him. One of his family letters mentions the execution of Charles I. as a "horrid murther," and another speaks of Cromwell as a usurper; but nowhere in anything intended for the public eye is there an indication that he lived in the most tumultuous and heroic period of English history. Not a word shows that Shakespeare was of the generation ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... it is here—it is here, in this exalted refuge—here, if anywhere, will resistance be made to the storms of political phrensy and the silent arts of corruption; and if the Constitution be destined ever to perish by the sacrilegious hands of the demagogue or the usurper, which God avert, its expiring agonies will be ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... boisterous songs on the cliffs in summer evenings. Whenever an Indian mother leaves her infant, one of these pleasant cannibals devours it straightway, and takes its place, crying piteously. When the poor woman returns and seeks to pacify her child, the little usurper falls ravenously upon her. Fire-arms, knives, and stones are all powerless; and when the screams of the woman bring the men to her help, the destroyer runs away and leaves her in a dying condition. She always dies before morning. When little children play at a distance from camp, these fairies seek ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... the perpetual Mexican problem in a new and difficult light. The Wilson Administration came into power a few days after Huerta had seized the Mexican Government. The first difficulty presented to the State Department was to determine its attitude toward this usurper. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... leapt up; and then, as if discovery of the usurper in her room had come, a cloud swept over the face of the moon like a mighty hand and darkness crowded him in. But the cloud sailed on and the light drove out the gloom again. Then it was that Jolly Roger saw the Old Man in the Moon was up and awake tonight, for never had he seen his face more ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... old memories, that yet Break in upon the golden dream I knew, While she—she lived: and I have said adieu To that fair one, and to her sister Peace, That lieth in her grave. When wilt thou cease To feed upon my quiet!—thou Despair! That art the mad usurper, and the heir, Of this heart's heritage! Go, go—return, And bring me back oblivion, and an urn! And ye, pale stars, may look, and only find, The wreck of a proud tree, that lets the wind Count o'er its blighted ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... you not guess?" he replied. "It is very simple, however. When the lawful master, on his return, sleeps beneath the bed-coverings of the usurper, it is delightful, the first night, not so pleasant on the second. Everything here reminds me too forcibly of Monsieur Lacheneur. It seems to me that I am in his house; and the thought is unendurable. So I have had them collect everything belonging to him and to his daughter—everything, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... figures of monkeys would give the possessor a power over the divs and jinns, and having them at his command, he could easily overset the usurper, ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... English were specially active. From their shores, well-equipped and plentifully supplied with money, sailed many who were desirous of gaining the great stake,—obdurate Chouans and fanatical royalists who regarded as an act of piety the crime that would rid France of the usurper. What gave most cause for alarm in these reports, usually unworthy of much attention, was the fact that all of them were agreed on one point—Georges Cadoudal had disappeared. Since this man, formidable by reason of his courage and tenacity of purpose, had declared war ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... prevarications! Horatio Paget and I watch each other like two cunning fencers, with a stereotyped smile upon our lips and an eager restlessness in our eyes, and who shall say that one or other of our rapiers is not poisoned, as in the famous duel before Claudius, usurper of Denmark? My dear one's letter is all sweetness and love. She is coming home; and much as she prefers Yorkshire to Bayswater, she is pleased to return for my sake—for my sake. She leaves the pure atmosphere of that simple country home to become the central point in a network of intrigue; ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... No woman, except his relatives and dependants, will tolerate egoism in a man. Borrow was an egoist. If not permitted to lead the conversation, he frequently wrapped himself in a gloomy silence and waited for an opportunity to discomfit the usurper of the place he seemed to consider his own. Among his papers were found after his death a large number of letters from poor men whom Borrow had assisted. His friend the Rev. Francis Cunningham once wrote to him a letter protesting against his assisting Nonconformist ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... an immense deal of trouble by their restless spirit of intrigue; besides which, for nearly twenty years the Imperial power was in the hands of a famous usurper, named Wang Mang (pronounced Wahng Mahng), who had secured it by the usual means of treachery and poison, to lose it on the battle-field and himself to perish shortly afterwards in a revolt of his own soldiery. But the most remarkable of all events connected with ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a political gladiator, ready for a "set-to" in any crowd,—he is beaten in his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and persistent attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers solemnly secured to Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could be more complete, no condemnation could ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... prince, and remained in their houses, while those of the opposite faction had withdrawn. Cortes sent for those chiefs next morning, from whom he learnt, that they considered their present prince, Coanacotzin, as an usurper, he having murdered his elder brother, Cuicutzcatzin, who had been placed on the throne by Montezuma and Cortes, and that Coanacotzin owed his elevation to the favour of Guatimotzin, the present sovereign of Mexico. They pointed out ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... that Charlie were but here! The base usurper then might fear— As loud the din fell on his ear Of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Washington. This was how it happened that he abandoned his project of leading his friends and fellow-citizens in their determined assault upon the serried ranks of capital, backed though they were by "the bristling bayonets of a usurper." For several days his deluded disciples looked for him in vain. The telegraphic despatches of the Associated Press told briefly of another crank demanding audience at the White House, claiming to represent ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... Captive Usurper, Hurled down from the throne, Lay buried in torpor, Forgotten and lone; I broke through his slumbers, 20 I shivered his chain, I leagued him with numbers— He's Tyrant again! With the blood of a million ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... isle we drifted with the morn, Of which Alcina keeps a mighty share; By that usurper from a sister torn, Who was her father's universal heir: For that she only was in wedlock born, And for those other two false sisters were (So well-instructed in the story, said One who rehearsed the tale) in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... final object what is summed up in its motto of "Afrika voor de Afrikaners."[8] The whole of South Africa belongs by just right to the Afrikaner nation. It is the privilege and duty of every Afrikaner to contribute all in his power towards the expulsion of the English usurper. The States of South Africa to be federated ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... quite an army. Here he was met by two American ships, and with their help he bombarded the town, and took it by assault, driving the wild Arabs who were defending it back to the mountains. Now Eaton was in a situation to dictate his own terms to the usurper Yusef Bey, since he had brought Hamet Caramelli triumphantly into his own city of Derne, and had driven all enemies before him. He had laid his plans to march on Tripoli, drive off the usurper, and deliver his poor captive countrymen at the edge of the sword, when suddenly his successful career was ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... been made possible. China knows that in spite of all coquetting with both the extreme radical and military parties which is going on daily in Peking and the provinces the secret object of Japanese diplomacy is either the restoration of the Manchu dynasty, or the enthronement of some pliant usurper, a puppet-Emperor being what is needed to repeat in China the history of Korea. Japan would be willing to go to any lengths to secure the attainment of this reactionary object. Faithful to her "divine mission," she is ceaselessly stirring up trouble and hoping that ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... Castlewood died full of years, and within a few months after he had been advanced to his honours. He was succeeded by his eldest son, the before-named George; and left issue besides, Thomas, a colonel in the king's army, that afterwards joined the Usurper's government; and Francis, in holy orders, who was slain whilst defending the house of Castlewood against the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... offices; they were to be permitted to establish factories, become agriculturists, and either attend the schools and colleges of the empire on the same footing as subjects of the Christian faith, or, if they desired, found and maintain schools of their own. The approach of the great Usurper and the crushing defeat the Russians sustained at the battle of Friedland (June 4, 1808) also favored the advance of the Jews. As the short, but troublous, reign of Paul and his wars with Turkey, Persia, Prussia, Poland, and Sweden had impoverished the country and depleted the treasury, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... power, but the sword? His hold upon France is the sword, and he has no other. Is he connected with the soil, or with the habits, the affections, or the prejudices of the country? He is a stranger, a foreigner, and an usurper; he unites in his own person everything that a pure Republican must detest; everything that an enraged Jacobin has abjured; everything that a sincere and faithful Royalist must feel as an insult. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... in subjection. A short time previous to our arrival, he had been making some inroads upon his neighbour, and Mr. Hazaart was collecting a force to oppose and drive him back. Whilst we were at Coepang several rajahs had arrived from the country to tender their services in marching against the usurper whom the Resident, in his description of him to me, designated by the name of Bonaparte. For this protection on the part of the Dutch, every rajah pays an annual tribute, according to the extent of his territories; ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... King ordained by God and for a land which cannot flourish under the usurper. My loyalty to throne, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... measures were repudiated by Lord Amherst. Sir David took the rebuff so much to heart that he resigned his appointment. Within two months after his retirement the old soldier died in bitterness of soul. The sequel vindicated his judgment. In defiance of the British Government, the usurper of Bhurtpore rallied around him all the dissatisfied spirits of the Mahrattas, Pindarees, Jats and Rajputs. Lord Amherst was forced to retreat to Vera. The British army under Lord Combermere crossed the border and ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... king, Prince Amuba," Jethro said; "it is not a matter of your choice. Besides, it is evident that for the good of the people it is necessary that the present usurper should be overthrown and the lawful dynasty restored. Besides this, it is clear that you cannot live in peace and contentment as you say; you might at any moment be recognized and your life forfeited. ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... of his youth, and enable him to view with patience a humiliation of Scotland, which blighted her honor, menaced her existence, and consigned her sons to degradation or obscurity. The latter was the choice of Wallace. Too noble to bend his spirit to the usurper, too honest to affect submission, he resigned himself to the only way left of maintaining the independence of a true Scot; and giving up the world at once, all the ambitions of youth became extinguished in his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... imperial court as if it were by mere accident, and he was welcomed with marks of favour and splendour which had never been even mentioned as being fit for any one of the Frankish race. There was no word of ancient enmity or of former wars, no mention of Bohemond as the ancient usurper of Antioch, and the encroacher upon the empire. But thanks to Heaven were returned on all sides, which had sent a faithful ally to the imperial assistance at a moment of such ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... as late as the nineteenth of August and probably still there when Randolph's letter of the fourteenth of July, much delayed, arrived.[511] If angry before, he was now incensed; for he knew for a certainty at last that Hindman had been a sort of usurper in the Trans-Mississippi District and, with power emanating from no one higher than Beauregard, had never legally possessed a flicker of authority for doing the many insulting things that he had arrogantly done to him.[512] Next, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... forces by surprise, defeated them and seized the kingdom. The dethroned King, who had been severely wounded in battle, was cast in prison, where he soon died; but his widow, the Queen, managed to escape from the palace before the usurper could ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... said young Golightly; "'tis my father's. Since he became a tyrant and usurper, and forced me to join a corsair's band, I've begun by ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the day-book and ledger of his hate—which at the proper time he will ask you to discharge. Every way we look we see even-handed nature administering her laws of compensation. Grandeur has a heavy tax to pay. The usurper rolls along like a god, surrounded by his guards. He dazzles the crowd—all very fine; but look beneath his splendid trappings and you see a shirt of mail, and beneath that a heart cowering in terror ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... "possession." To dislodge its garrison, however, more vigorous measures were called for; and desperate though they continued to grow, the Boers had no bayonets, without which it was hardly possible for them to achieve their purpose. Long Tom at Kamfers Dam was too far off to communicate with the proud usurper; it had perforce to content itself with the city streets, into which the shells kept falling for some hours in the forenoon—until positively the last of the missiles ended its blaze with a groan at eleven o'clock! That the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... natural proportions. In {253} the story of Lycurgus the lawgiver is held to have behaved fairly when he bound the Spartans to obey his laws until he returned—intimating a short absence—he intending never to return. And Vishnoo, when he asked the usurper for three steps of territory as a dwarf, and then enlarged himself until he could bring heaven and earth under the bargain, was thought clever, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... is bitterly self-condemnatory, but Marian has scarcely caught that. The "Lady Rylton" has struck upon her ears, and hurt her to her heart's core! Oh, that she could destroy—blot out that small usurper! ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Shrivel their fingers to the bone if they dethrone our Aztec Eagle and flourish their stars and stripes above our fort! O California! That thy sons and thy daughters should live to see thee plucked like a rose by the usurper! And why? Why? Not because these piratical Americans have the right to one league of our land; but because, Holy Evangelists! they want it! Our lands are rich, our harbours are fine, gold veins our ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... went wild—not looking into future years to see what they were going wild about. Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner, who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... defy the foreign usurper! a rueful chair should it be for her: but hush, John Graham! Hold your tongue, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... When the King was restored, you then, in a trice, Called me Charly the Second; and, by way of device, Said the old whiskered Turk had Oliver’s face, Though you know to be conquered he ne’er had the disgrace. Three such persons as these on one horse to ride, A Hero, Usurper, and King, all astride:— Such honours were mine; though now forced to retire, Perhaps my next change may be still something higher, From a fruitwoman’s market, I may leap to a spire. As the market ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the smart of rancor, a renewal of her anger at what she had learnt of that agreement which was to be signed on the morrow and which would despoil her. That enemy who was in her home and worked against her, a revolt of her whole being urged her to exterminate him, and thrust him out like some usurper, all ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... slaves during the Scanderoon voyage; and in 1664 he was forbidden the Court. The reason is not definitely known. Charles may have only gradually, but at last grimly, resented, the more he learnt of it, Digby's recognition of the usurper. ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... Mexico, the election of a President and Congress under its provisions, and the inauguration of the President. Within one short month, however, this President was expelled from the capital by a rebellion in the army, and the supreme power of the Republic was assigned to General Zuloaga. This usurper was in his turn soon compelled to retire and give place ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... throughout Great Britain. The associations connected with the Crown in Ireland are not many. From the day on which Dutch William beat English James at the Boyne in circumstances not calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of Irish Catholics for either the lawful king or the usurper, no Sovereign set foot in Ireland till George IV. visited the country in 1824. The main function of Ireland as regards the monarchs of that time was that its pension list served to provide for the maintenance of Royal favourites as to whose income they wished no questions to be ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Benbows were both made prisoners, and Colonel Thomas Benbow with the Earl of Derby and several other gallant noblemen. To my grief, I heard soon afterwards that Colonel Thomas Benbow was shot with the Earl and several others, for engaging in what the usurper pleased to call rebellion; but of my friend Colonel John Benbow I could for a long time hear nothing, and had ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... complaisance enough to make the passage with nothing but a Christian name, I believe. In truth, it was by a mere accident that I turned usurper in this way. He took the state-room for me, and being required to give a name, he gave his own, as usual. When I went to the docks to look at the ship, I was saluted as Mr. Sharp, and then the conceit took me of trying how it would wear for a month or six weeks. I would give the world ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... return from Brighton, a man of respectable appearance went near the Queen's carriage, held up his fist, and made use of most insulting language towards Her Majesty and the Duchess of Kent, declaring that the Queen was an usurper, and he would have her off her Throne before a week was out. He was afterwards arrested, and turned out to be Mr. John Goode, a gentleman of large property in Devonshire, who had been previously in custody on 24th of May (Her Majesty's birthday) ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... past the choir into that lofty and once famous place where for centuries the greatest and holiest shrine in England stood. All about were still grouped the tombs of Princes; Edward, the Black Prince, the hero of Crecy, Henry IV., the usurper, Cardinal Chatillon; but of the shrine itself, of the body it held up to love and honour and worship there was nothing, no word even, no sign at all to tell that ever such a thing had been, only an emptiness and a space and a ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... make my heart rejoice, and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me and continue it. So she and I to the King's playhouse, and there sat to avoid seeing Knepp in a box above where Mrs. Williams happened to be, and there saw "The Usurper;" a pretty good play, in all but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly. The play done, we to White Hall; where my wife staid while I up to the Duchesse's and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in the chair of the Consul. Yet in that time, which now seemed so full of peaceful glories, he had never at heart been loyal to the great king; in his view, as in that of the nobles generally, Theodoric was but a usurper, who had abused the mandate intrusted to him by the Emperor Zeno, to deliver Italy from the barbarians. When his own kinsmen, Boethius and Symmachus, were put to death on a charge of treachery, Maximus burned with hatred of the Goth. He regarded with ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... get out of the service of such a miserable usurper. If it were not for the terrible upset to Lady Gowan, I should be ready to ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... of title; illegitimacy. loss of right, disfranchisement, forfeiture. usurpation, tort, violation, breach, encroachment, presumption, assumption, seizure; stretch, exaction, imposition, lion's share. usurper, pretender. V. be undue &c adj.; not be due &c 924. infringe, encroach, trench on, exact; arrogate, arrogate to oneself; give an inch and take an ell; stretch a point, strain a point; usurp, violate, do violence to. disfranchise, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... France, the battle and peace of Waterloo having ended the purpose for which he had been appointed by Louis XVIII., through the orders of the Marchal Duc de Feltre, minister at war, to raise recruits from the faithful who wished to quit the usurper. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... to rule, the usurper, religion, must be ejected; hence atheism was fundamental to his entire system. He did not suppose by any means that it would become a popular faith, because it presupposed too much learning and reflection, but it seemed ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... during the period of his residence in Hereford Square. No woman, except his relatives and dependants, will tolerate egoism in a man. Borrow was an egoist. If not permitted to lead the conversation, he frequently wrapped himself in a gloomy silence and waited for an opportunity to discomfit the usurper of the place he seemed to consider his own. Among his papers were found after his death a large number of letters from poor men whom Borrow had assisted. His friend the Rev. Francis Cunningham once wrote to him a letter protesting ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Matilda or Maud, the daughter of Henry I; the rule of succession being (where women are admitted at all) that the daughter of a son shall be preferred to the son of a daughter. So that Stephen was little better than a mere usurper; and the empress Maud did not fail to assert her right by the sword: which dispute was attended with various success, and ended at last in a compromise, that Stephen should keep the crown, but that Henry the son of Maud should succeed him; as he afterwards ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Son of Banquo, who was murdered by the order of the Usurper Macbeth, to avoid the like Fate, fled to North Wales, where he was kindly and hospitably entertained by Prince Gryffydd ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... of devotion to their creed—of which, indeed, it formed a chief part. It was their fixed belief in the divine right of the legitimate princes of the House of Rurik to reign, that had kept them patient, even under the rigors of Ivan's rule; and Boris knew well enough that no usurper, however strongly intrenched in their affections he might be, could hope to win those superstitiously loyal people to his support against any prince of the right line, however brutal, unjust, and despotic that prince might be. He knew, in brief, that so ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... Haddon cared nothing for an enterprise that had no flavour of mystery, and was wont to invest his most commonplace undertakings with a romantic significance. For the time being he was a wronged aboriginal king, leading the remnants of his tribe to wreak a deadly vengeance on the white usurper. A short conference was held in ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Pepin, was the beginning of the temporal power of the popes in Italy. So when Pepin resolved to assume the crown, Pope Zacharias in gratitude sanctioned the audacious act, by sending his representative to place the symbol of power upon the head of this faithful son and usurper! (A.D. 751.) ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... He was liberated upon giving bail, but had no sooner reflected on this liberation than he came to the conclusion that it was wrong, by offering security, to recognize the authority of magistrates appointed by a usurper, as he held William to be, and voluntarily surrendered himself to his judges. Of course he was again committed, but this time to the King's Bench, and would doubtless in a few years have made the tour of the London prisons, if his enemies had not been tired of trying him. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... and oven destroyed several forts, while committing everywhere robberies and murders. In consequence, when you shall receive this, it will be your duty to take such measures as may be necessary against the aforesaid rascally usurper, and, if possible, crush him completely should he venture to attack the fort confided to ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... reasonably be expected from it, England might still enjoy, under her legitimate ruler, a larger measure of happiness and tranquillity than she could expect from the administration of the best and ablest usurper. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... usurping lords who seized on the government of the free Lombard cities, had no regard for any rule of government save sheer tyranny — but a natural lord, and no usurper, ought not ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... affirming Authoritie usurpt, from God not giv'n: He gave us onely over Beast, Fish, Fowl Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but Man over men He made not Lord; such title to himself 70 Reserving, human left from human free. But this Usurper his encroachment proud Stayes not on Man; to God his Tower intends Siege and defiance: Wretched man! what food Will he convey up thither to sustain Himself and his rash Armie, where thin Aire Above the Clouds will pine his entrails gross, And famish him of Breath, if not ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... gentle is in estate above, *because She shall be call'd his lady and his love; And, for that other is a poor woman, She shall be call'd his wench and his leman: And God it wot, mine owen deare brother, Men lay the one as low as lies the other. Right so betwixt a *titleless tyrant* *usurper* And an outlaw, or else a thief errant, *wandering The same I say, there is no difference (To Alexander told was this sentence), But, for the tyrant is of greater might By force of meinie* for to slay downright, *followers And burn both house ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... usurping king, fled on the approach of King Tecla and Ras Michael with 20,000 men. On their entry into the city, those who had sympathised with the usurper were executed in hundreds with a wanton cruelty which shocked and disgusted me. The bodies of the victims were cut in pieces and scattered about the streets, and hundreds of hyenas came down from the neighbouring mountains to feed on the human carrion. I determined to do the best I could ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... neighbourhood: one in 1526, by the Emperor Baber against Sultan Ibrahim, which resulted in the establishment of the Mogul dynasty; the second in 1556, when the Emperor Akbar beat the Hindu General of the Afghan usurper, and re-established the Moguls in power; and the third in 1761, when Ahmed Shah Durani ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... house on fire, is real power. To this Polus assents, on the ground that such acts would be punished, but he is still of opinion that evil-doers, if they are unpunished, may be happy enough. He instances Archelaus, son of Perdiccas, the usurper of Macedonia. Does not Socrates think him happy?—Socrates would like to know more about him; he cannot pronounce even the great king to be happy, unless he knows his mental and moral condition. Polus explains that Archelaus was a slave, being ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... garrison, however, more vigorous measures were called for; and desperate though they continued to grow, the Boers had no bayonets, without which it was hardly possible for them to achieve their purpose. Long Tom at Kamfers Dam was too far off to communicate with the proud usurper; it had perforce to content itself with the city streets, into which the shells kept falling for some hours in the forenoon—until positively the last of the missiles ended its blaze with a groan at eleven o'clock! ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... matter could be no secret to her,) as exceeds all credibility. If we consider the situation of things, and the prejudices of the times, Mary's consent to Babington's conspiracy appears much more natural and probable. She believed Elizabeth to be a usurper and a heretic. She regarded her as a personal and a violent enemy. She knew that schemes for assassinating heretics were very familiar in that age, and generally approved of by the court of Rome and the zealous Catholics. Her own liberty and sovereignty were connected with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... confession dans un partage deja si conteste? La repartition toute faite de localites dont la propriete est aussi hautement appreciee par la confession qui la possede qu'enviee par la confession qui voudrait l'usurper, s'opposerait du ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... XXI., the king ordains that his officers shall not henceforward seize upon, unless they pay for them, the horses and carts of freemen. The people considered this ordinance as a real liberty, though it was a greater tyranny. Henry VII., that happy usurper and great politician, who pretended to love the barons, though he in reality hated and feared them, got their lands alienated. By this means the villains, afterwards acquiring riches by their industry, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... time in Surinam. When he returned, he became zealous for episcopacy and monarchy; and at the Revolution adhered not only to the Nonjurors, but to those who refused to communicate with the Church of England, or to be present at any worship where the usurper was mentioned as king. He was, I believe, more than once apprehended in the reign of King William, and once at the accession of George. He was the familiar friend of Hicks[959] and Nelson[960]; a man of letters, but injudicious; and very curious and inquisitive, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the northern province; one through Dacia, along the course of the different rivers; another, and that the most frequented, through the Succi; and the third through Macedonia, which is known as the Acontisma. And in consequence of these precautions the usurper was deprived of all hope of becoming master of Illyricum, and lost one great resource for carrying ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... solemn array behind him. "Oh, you can hardly call this a mob," he said. "They look a little rough and ready, but I will answer for them. The two other columns that are coming up the streets parallel to this are Government troops and properly engaged in driving a usurper out of the Government building. The best thing you can do is to get down to the wharf and send the marines and blue-jackets where you think they will do the most good. I can't wait for them. And ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... short time, coming up here with our allies the Prussians. They had already opened fire on that city of despotism, which was returned faintly by the enemy; but once the balance is turned, and once a man, however great, is defeated, all seem to forsake him, and he immediately becomes an usurper, as was shown to be true in this Napoleon's case. There is not a doubt that the populace would have held to him if he had been a conqueror, but as it was, the whole city now changed its sentiments from Napoleon to Louis XVIII., who had advanced with us with about fifty ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... England, before he had done any of those acts which were justly construed into an abdication of his crown? If he was not, much trouble in Parliament might have been saved at the period these gentlemen commemorate. But King James was a bad king with a good title, and not an usurper. The princes who succeeded according to the act of Parliament which settled the crown on the Electress Sophia and on her descendants, being Protestants, came in as much by a title of inheritance as King James did. He came in according to the law, as it stood at his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hunger, or a loathsome marriage. And what availed it that she was called Morning-Star of Amen, she the only child of Pharaoh and of his royal wife, and that when she was dead they would grant her a state funeral, and inscribe her name among the lists of kings, while Abi, the foul usurper, sat upon her throne. Here on the bed lay what she was, there at the foot of it stood what she should be if the ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... are too popular a man!" broke in the Governor as fiercely. "When, upon that black day, ten years ago, the usurper's frigates entered the Chesapeake, and taking us unprepared, compelled (God forgive me!) my submission, who but Miles Carrington welcomed and entertained the four commissioners (commissioners from a Roundhead Parliament to a King's Governor!)? Who but Miles Carrington was hand in glove ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... brother from sister as completely; for Hindley hated the swarthy child who was Cathy's favourite companion. When Mrs. Earnshaw died, two years after Heathcliff's advent, Hindley had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as an intolerable usurper. So, from the very beginning, he bred ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Sforza. As, on the extinction of the Visconti race, the fief ought to have returned to the empire, it was in the emperor's power to bestow the duchy upon Lodovico, whose title would thus be rendered perfectly legal, while Gian Galeazzo would become the usurper, he himself, his father, and grandfather having only held the dukedom by right of a popular election, which had never been confirmed by the emperor. This, then, was the proposal which the Moro secretly made to Maximilian, whose father, the Emperor ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... to chafe at his lack of occupation, and to fret about their future, she went to the factory and invaded the office where the usurper, Jabez Pittinger, sat enthroned at the hallowed desk, tossing copious libations of tobacco-juice toward a huge new cuspidor. She demanded a job for Eddie and bullied Jabez into making him a bookkeeper, at a salary ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... was a city of some note, they were joined by forty or fifty partisans, well armed and mounted on good horses, all veteran soldiers who had been settled on the confiscated estates of his enemies by the great usurper Sylla, and thenceforth feeling themselves strong enough to overawe any opposition they might meet on the way, they journeyed at a slower rate in perfect confidence of success, numbering now not less than sixty ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... briefly to the history. With William the Conqueror a great change had been introduced into England: under him and his immediate successors—his son William Rufus, his nephew Henry I., the usurper Stephen, and Henry II.,—the efforts of the "English kings of Norman race" were directed to the establishment of their power on a strong foundation; but they began, little by little, to see that the only foundation was that of the unconquerable ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of union died out with the death of the Emperor, its originator. [Sidenote: Invasion of the Turks.] In the fourteenth century {138} the Turks were treacherously invited over to Europe as allies of the usurper, John Cantacuzenus (A.D. 1347-A.D. 1353), and so firm a footing did they gain, that the rightful Emperor, John Palaeologus (A.D. 1341-A.D. 1391), found himself obliged to appeal to Rome for aid, promising in return to reconcile the Greek Church to the Roman communion. The affairs ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... not probable however that James ever meant to take a course so insane. He must have known that England would never bear for a single day the yoke of an usurper who was also a Papist, and that any attempt to set aside the Lady Mary would have been withstood to the death, both by all those who had supported the Exclusion Bill, and by all those who had opposed it. There ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hand an unlucky nobleman called LORD GREY OF WERK, who of himself would have ruined a far more promising expedition. He immediately set up his standard in the market- place, and proclaimed the King a tyrant, and a Popish usurper, and I know not what else; charging him, not only with what he had done, which was bad enough, but with what neither he nor anybody else had done, such as setting fire to London, and poisoning the late King. Raising some four thousand men by these means, he marched ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... truth entered into the bodies of persons who became philosophers. Plato himself was a philosopher. The souls that had least contemplated divine truth animated the bodies of usurpers and despots. Dionysius I, who had threatened to decapitate the broad-browed philosopher, was a usurper and a despot. Plato, doubtless, was not the first to construct a system of philosophy that could be quoted against his enemies; certainly he was ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the service of such a miserable usurper. If it were not for the terrible upset to Lady Gowan, I should ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... but her self. But Henrique had seen her; he had gaz'd, and swallowed all her Beauties at his Eyes. How greedily his Soul drank the strong Poison in! But yet his Honour and his Friendship were strong as ever, and bravely fought against the Usurper Love, and got a noble Victory; at least he thought and wish'd so. With this, and a short Answer to his Letter, Henrique return'd to the longing Antonio; who, receiving the Paper with the greatest Devotion, and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... powerful motives, is, however, repugnant to the natural and moral order of things. Orestes, as a prince, was, it is true, called upon to exercise justice, even on the members of his own family; but we behold him here under the necessity of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to work like an assassin. The memory of his father pleads his excuse; but however much Clytemnestra may have deserved her death, the voice of blood cries from within. This conflict of natural duties is represented in the Eumenides in the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Rose, for the other lads looked and laughed, and in her confusion she said hastily to the young usurper, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... his companion: "I neither wish you killed, my good cousin, nor care for the earldom, nor am going over to the usurper, though, Heaven knows, you'll do no good to any one, the earldom will do no good to you, and the usurper, perhaps, may do much good to the country. But had either of the three been true, I should certainly have given you up to the Prince of Orange, instead ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope and the Spirit of triumph, emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good." In the Greek play, Zeus is an usurper in heaven who has supplanted an older and milder dynasty of gods, and Prometheus, visited in his punishment by the nymphs of ocean, knows a secret on which the rule of Zeus depends. Shelley took over these features, and grafted ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Caesar, and having given him his own sister Helen in marriage, he sent him to Gaul against the barbarians. For the barbarians whom the Emperor Constantius had hired as auxiliary forces against Magnentius, being of no use against that usurper, were pillaging the Roman cities. Inasmuch as he was young he ordered him to undertake nothing without consulting the other military chiefs.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Julian's complaint to the Emperor of the inertness ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... enter upon a career of conquest rushes eagerly upon it. The harshest condemnation that has visited England because of her Indian successes has proceeded from nations who have never been backward in seizing the lands of other nations. She has been stigmatized as a usurper, and as having destroyed the independence of Indian states. The facts do not warrant these charges. She has rarely had a contest with any power which was not as much an intruder in India as herself. The Moghul dynasty was as foreign to India ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... A more legitimate title to the throne no monarch ever enjoyed. And yet the Allies, in renewing the war against him, had the unblushing effrontery to proclaim that they were contending for the liberties of the people against the tyranny of an usurper! In view of such achievements of Napoleon, we do not wonder that Lamartine, his unrelenting political foe, should say that, as a man, "Napoleon was the greatest ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Country! I have watched thee long Still ever first to rise against the wrong; To check the usurper in his giant stride, And brave his terrors and abase his pride; Foresee the insidious danger ere it rise, And warn the heedless and inform the wise; Scorning the lure, the bribe, the selfish game, Which, through the office, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... From 1660 to 1688, the Stuart rulers of England remained subservient to their cousin the Bourbon King of France and at one with him in religious faith. But after the fall of the Stuarts France bitterly denounced the new King, William of Orange, as both a heretic and a usurper, and attacked the English in America with a savage fury unknown in Europe. From 1690 to 1760 the combatants fought with little more than pauses for renewed preparation; and the conflict ended only when ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... like the Castle of Otranto, there was something in Mordaunt Court which contained a penalty and a doom for the usurper, no sooner had Vavasour possessed himself of his kinsman's estate, than the prosperity of his life dried and withered away, like Jonah's gourd, in a single night. His son, at the age of thirteen, fell from a scaffold, on which the workmen were making ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... commercial State in the Union. She saw the ruin of her commerce involved in the policy of Jefferson, and regarded it as an unworthy concession to the usurper of the French throne. In this emergency John Quincy Adams turned his back on Massachusetts, and threw into the uprising scale of the administration, the weight of his talents and of his already eminent fame. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... lady, to whom the manly and athletic form of the supposed tragedian had given apparent pleasure, assured him she had never heard the passage more impressively delivered, and that certainly, in the character of the Scottish Usurper, there was no doubt of his becoming to Mr. Kran ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... summer the caravan started and crossed the Apennines to set sail at Ostia. The date of this exodus has never been made quite clear. Perhaps Augustin and his companions fled before the hordes of the usurper Maximus, who, towards the end of August, crossed the Alps and marched on Milan, while the young Valentinian with all his Court took refuge at Aquileia. In any case, it was a trying journey, especially in the hot weather. When Monnica ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Mexico, down the usurper, and distribute the stolen wealth of him and his pampered minions among the people to whom it belongs. Every Mexican shall have a house, land, cattle. He shall be the slave of none. His children shall be fed. We shall have peace and plenty. I, Ramon ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... and making great promises to those who would restore Rhodolph to the throne. Intolerant and odious as Rhodolph had been, his great reverses excited sympathy, and many were disposed to regard Matthias but as a usurper. Thus influenced, Matthias not only signed all the conditions, but was also constrained to carry them, into immediate execution. These conditions being fulfilled, the nobles met on the 19th of November, 1606, and elected ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... now divided. The descendants of David reign at Jerusalem; the usurper and rebel Jeroboam reigns over ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... compliments, then rose and made a most flaming speech in eulogium of his friend "the heroic defender of St John d'Acre" and pointed him out to the audience as the first person who had foiled the arms of the "Usurper." ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... be king, Prince Amuba," Jethro said; "it is not a matter of your choice. Besides, it is evident that for the good of the people it is necessary that the present usurper should be overthrown and the lawful dynasty restored. Besides this, it is clear that you cannot live in peace and contentment as you say; you might at any moment be recognized and your life forfeited. ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... all is good—whence in a good Mind comes even the hallucination of pain and evil? "The thoughts of the practitioner," says Mrs. Eddy, "should be imbued with a clear conviction of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God; . . . and hence, that whatever militates against health . . . is an unjust usurper of the throne of the Controller of all mankind." [5] But if God is omnipresent, His presence must be displayed in the disease; if He is omnipotent, how can there be a usurper on His throne? If He is All, how can there be aught beside Him? These are points on which we wait in vain for enlightenment ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the lawgiver is held to have behaved fairly when he bound the Spartans to obey his laws until he returned—intimating a short absence—he intending never to return. And Vishnoo, when he asked the usurper for three steps of territory as a dwarf, and then enlarged himself until he could bring heaven and earth under the bargain, was thought clever, certainly, but ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the execution, and instead of ordering a whole squad to fire at me, order one expert marksman, if he had such a thing in his whole army, who would shoot me through the heart, that I would show you, Dupre, how a man dies under such circumstances; but the villain refused. The usurper has no soul for art, or for anything else, for that matter. I hope you two won't mind my death. I assure you I don't mind it myself I would much rather be shot than live in this confounded country any longer. But I have made up my mind ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... field, or on the quarter-deck, George Monk was the stout soldier, acquitting himself of his military duty most punctually. In his political conduct he laid himself out for titles and money, as little of the ambitious usurper as of the self-denying patriot. Such are they for whom more generous spirits, imprudently forward in revolutions, usually find that they have laboured. "Great things," said Edward Gibbon Wakefield, "are begun by men with great souls and little breeches-pockets, and ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... been made in the Persian language, in Babylonian and in the dialect of the city of Susa. To make the story plain to those who could not read at all, a fine piece of sculpture had been added showing the King of Persia placing his triumphant foot upon the body of Gaumata, the usurper who had tried to steal the throne away from the legitimate rulers. For good measure a dozen followers of Gaumata had been added. They stood in the background. Their hands were tied and they were to be executed in ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon
... of the Christian forms of the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Doxology, until Oliver's army invaded Scotland, and the independent chaplains in that army thought their own dispensation was above that of Geneva. Upon this, such of the presbyterians as would recommend themselves to the Usurper, and such as had his ear, forbore those forms in the public worship, and by degrees ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... almost regal dignity, and to intimate more and more plainly its claim upon the throne of France, as descended through the Dukes of Lorraine from Charlemagne—a title superior to that of the Valois, who could trace their origin to no higher source than the usurper Hugh Capet. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... make the passage with nothing but a Christian name, I believe. In truth, it was by a mere accident that I turned usurper in this way. He took the state-room for me, and being required to give a name, he gave his own, as usual. When I went to the docks to look at the ship, I was saluted as Mr. Sharp, and then the conceit took me of trying how it would wear for a month or six weeks. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... people themselves being dissatisfied with the present state of affairs, both privately and publicly (49) condemning the tyranny under which they lived, and calling on patriots to assert their cause against the usurper. Upon the admission of foreigners into the senate, a hand-bill was posted up in these words: "A good deed! let no one shew a new senator the way to the house." These verses were ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... land of distance and mystery, was undergoing a period of upheaval. A usurper had tried to seize the reins of government, and the French and British ships had been attacked. The British sent a force of reprisal, somewhat like that sent against the Boxer rebellion in recent years. This was in 1860; and Gordon was sent out with ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... death, and, by the assistance of the Javans who accompanied him in his flight, to take possession of the city. The king of Siam, whose son-in-law and vassal the deceased was, assembled a large force by sea and land, and compelled the usurper to evacuate Cingapura with two thousand followers, a part of whom were Cellates (orang sellat men of the Straits) accustomed to live by fishing and piracy, who had assisted him in seizing and keeping the throne during ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... forget the existence of Cepeda, one of the judges; but he seems to have entirely devoted himself to the party of the usurper, while Ortiz affected at least to retain a sense ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... importunate person. His thoughts were solicited by graver cares. He had had no time to go and see his family. His sister, whose royalist hopes were rising higher every day, though proud of her brother, regretted his recent advancement in a measure, because it put on him a prominent mark of the usurper's favour, which later on could have an adverse influence upon his career. He wrote to her that no one but an inveterate enemy could say he had got his promotion by favour. As to his career, he assured her that he looked no farther forward into the ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... are equally fixed in the public mind. Tsao Tsao, the chief antagonist of Liu Pi, is not merely a usurper: he is a curious compound of genius, fraud, and cruelty. Another conspicuous actor is Lue Pu, an archer able to split a reed at a hundred paces, and a horseman who performs prodigies on the field of battle. He begins his career by shooting his ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... of art but of morals, he was at once on the alert. It arose when they reached that portion of the tale in which the true heir to an earldom and its wealth offers to leave all in the possession of the usurper, on the one condition of his ceasing to annoy a certain lady, whom, by villainy of the worst, he had gained the power of rendering unspeakably miserable. Naturally enough, at this point Malcolm's personal interest was suddenly excited: here were elements strangely ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... faithful to him and his friends, he took from their number more than twenty thousand warriors to serve against the tyrant Eugenius who had slain Gratian and seized Gaul. After winning the victory over this usurper, he ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... of Himself. Therefore it must be demonstrated before the inhabitants of heaven, as well as of all the worlds, that God's government was just, His law perfect. Satan had made it appear that he himself was seeking to promote the good of the universe. The true character of the usurper, and his real object, must be understood by all. He must have time to manifest ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... at and despises it; the Republicans hate it: it seems a joke against THEM. Why continue it?—If there be anything sacred in the name and idea of loyalty, why renew this fete? It only shows how a rightful monarch was hurled from his throne, and a dexterous usurper stole his precious diadem. If there be anything noble in the memory of a day, when citizens, unused to war, rose against practised veterans, and, armed with the strength of their cause, overthrew them, why speak of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... force of arms, to acknowledge his continued possession of the throne of Naples. Since the return of Louis XVIII. the Cabinet of the Tuileries had never regarded Murat in any other light than as a usurper, and I know from good authority that the French Plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Vienna were especially instructed to insist that the restoration of the throne of Naples in favour of the Bourbons of the Two ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Dr. of divinity. When the rebellion broke out, he sheltered himself near Oxford; but when he saw the royal party decline so much that their cause was desperate, he began to tamper with the prevailing power; and upon Oliver Cromwell's being raised to the Protectorship, he so far coincided with the Usurper's interests, as to undergo the examination of the Friers, in order to be inducted into the rectory of Shilton in Berks, in the place of one Thomas Lawrence, ejected on account of his being non compos mentis. For which act he was much blamed and censured ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... halt for one day, and to take the advice of his council what was to be done at this juncture. His hopes were high, and his confidence in the good-will of the people of England to his cause was unabated. He continued to entertain the notion that George the Second was an usurper, for whom no man would willingly draw his sword; that "the people of England, as was their duty, still nourished that allegiance for the race of their native Princes which they were bound to hold sacred, and that if ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... usurpation of the throne of Portugal by Don Miguel, and from thence had passed over to the Brazils, where he had devoted himself to the service of Don Pedro, and had followed him in that expedition which terminated in the downfall of the Usurper and the establishment of the constitutional government in Portugal. Our conversation rolled chiefly on literary and political subjects, and my acquaintance with the writings of the most celebrated authors of Portugal ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... checked by Earl Godwin and his sons (themselves of Danish race); but there still remained the way of open war and an appeal to religious zeal; and this way William took. There was genius as well as statesmanship in the idea of combining a personal claim to the throne held by Harold the usurper with a crusading summons against the schismatic and heretical English, who refused obedience to the true successor of St. Peter. The success of the idea was its justification: the success of the expedition proved the need that England had of some new leaven to energise the sluggish temperament ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... beyond repayment for his ransom of English slaves during the Scanderoon voyage; and in 1664 he was forbidden the Court. The reason is not definitely known. Charles may have only gradually, but at last grimly, resented, the more he learnt of it, Digby's recognition of the usurper. ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... emulation. They had not hesitated to take up arms against tyranny in the Revolution, but having established a government of the people they were equally determined to defend and support it. They hated the usurper whether king, or Parliament, or mob, but they bowed before the duly ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... something radically wrong, anti-human and inhuman, and if we can discover another co-ordinating principle which is humane and feasible, civilization will then be seen to be a thing to be "superseded"—as Nietzsche thought man himself was—and trade, its latest and lustiest issue, will be felt to be a usurper deserving to be disinherited in favor of some true economic child of ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... rewarded those who had rescued him with unimportant domains. A fierce war followed, in which Ashikaga, the flatterer, was the victor, defeating and destroying his foes. Go-Daigo had pronounced him a rebel. In return he was himself deposed, and a new emperor, whom the usurper could control, was raised to the vacant throne. For three years only had the mikado remained supreme. Then for a long period the Ashikagas held the reins of power, and a tyranny like that of the Hojo existed in ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reader requires to know is, that a line of Hindoo Rajahs which once reigned over a very limited portion of Mysore gradually acquired about half of it; that a descendant of their line was set aside by the Mahometan usurper Hyder Ali (an able soldier of fortune, who had risen to the chief command of the army); that he conquered the remainder of the present territory and ruled it from 1761 to 1782; and that after his death he was succeeded by his son ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... to cite here a still more pointed example of the want of prevision, so common and so intelligible at that time. Writing in July 1791, he confutes those who asserted that an established and limited monarchy was a safeguard against a usurper, whose power is only limited by his own audacity and address, by pointing out that the extent of France, its divisions into departments, the separation between the various branches of the administration, the freedom of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... subject: Aristotle was quoted as equal authority with St. Paul, and his very image has been profanely looked on with the reverence paid to Christ. BACON had fixed a new light in Europe, and others were kindling their torches at his flame. When the great usurper of the human understanding was once fairly opposed to Nature, he betrayed too many symptoms of mere humanity. Yet this great triumph was not obtained without severe contention; and upon the Continent even blood has been shed in the cause of words. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... asleep. He imagin'd, it is plain, that it would do him more Honour than his own Green one. Unaccoutred as I am, I am ready, before this august Assembly, to give them incontestable Proof of my superior Skill; to engage with the Usurper of the White Armour with my Sword only in my Mantle and Bonnet; and to testify that I only was the happy Victor of ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... distinct class, since, however mixed with comic matter, they imitate Kyd or Marlowe and recast the chronicle of a reign to fit the accepted subjects of tragedy, the downfall of a prince, the revenge for a crime, the overthrow of a tyrant, or the retribution brought upon a conspirator or usurper. Conceived under Marlowe's influence, and perhaps owing something to his hand, is the tetralogy that includes the three parts of Henry ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buffoon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish Usurper is represented as a drunkard. But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... whirlwind, on thy pinion borne; The long long night,—the tardy, leaden morn; The grey frost, riv'ling lane, and hill, and plain; Chill silent snows, and heavy, pattering rain. These are thy known allies;—and Life forlorn, Yet patient, droops, nor breathes repinings vain; But now, Usurper, thou hast madly torn From Summer's hand his stores of angry sway; His rattling thunders with thy winds unite, On thy pale snows those livid lightnings play, That pour their deathful splendors o'er his night, To poise the pleasures ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... how vexed Mrs. Weatherbee looked when she came downstairs?" was Judith's remark as the door of her room closed behind them. "I'll bet she had her own troubles with the usurper." ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... standards proudly wave! And Mexico's high ramparts fall Before thy squadrons, true and brave. Peace shalt thou to the land restore; For fetters shalt give back the crown; And with thy shining sword shalt hurl The base usurper from the throne. ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... "murex," as Browning calls it, of the Tyrian purple, which can be found on the Minehead rocks at low-tide by the holiday-makers of our day?—that "purple dye" for which, the weary Roman usurper said, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... arm, he edged away to the farther side of the doorway. Experience had accustomed the ancient trader to despots, but in this cheery youngster of a Gringo the regal title was not clear, which simply made tyranny the more irksome. The Gringo was the veriest usurper. He did not justify his sway by the least ferocity. He never uttered a threat. Where, then, was his right to the sceptre he wielded so nonchalantly? Were there only some tangible jeopardy to his pelt, Murguia would have been more resigned. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... self-control and throws discretion to the winds. In a wild outburst of passionate hate she accuses Elizabeth of secret incontinence and calls her bastard and usurper. Thus she triumphs in the war of words, for her enemy retreats in speechless amazement; but there is no more room for hope in the clemency of Elizabeth. The prisoner's fate is sealed even without the murderous ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... took the child in his arms, and passion leaped up in their two hearts. In the darkness, and in such emotion, how could that mistake be known? The usurper drew her towards him. ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is "un peu fort"; and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the dauphin could not ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... revolutionary usurper is in full authority, his acts imitating his master, Armijo, like him in secret league with the savages, even consorting with the red pirates of the plains, taking part in their murderous marauds, and ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... utterly denied; and, in A. D. 588, John, Bishop of Constantinople, himself assumed the coveted title of "Universal Bishop." The Roman bishop, Gregory the Great, indignant at this usurpation, denounced him as a "usurper, aiming at supremacy over the whole church," and declared that whoever claims such supremacy "has the pride and character ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... submit to him." cried the empress, ardently; "you were obliged to repair to the proud usurper's camp and beseech him to ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the trade had numerous and absorbing engagements to plead as a reason for his inability to 'ang about all day for parties to make up their minds—the usurper's plea, by-the-by, for a coup d'etat—so perhaps some emissary might be found, to drop round to the shop to leave word. This young man was anxious to oblige, but altruism had its limits. Just ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Egbert, who took refuge at his court for a time, before he became King of England, from the usurper Brithric. The biography of the celebrated scholar Alcuin, says that Charlemagne met him in Parma; but Hume is probably right in his statement that he was sent by Offa as the most proper person to meet the Emperor's views in aiding him to confute certain alleged heresies. This ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... lost?" he said in a low, bleak voice. "Has he, this precious royal master of yours, this usurper—has he parted with that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... sides the knights fought with the utmost courage, and when nearly all were slain, Arthur encountered the traitor Mordred. Summoning all his strength, the exhausted king finally slew the usurper, who, in dying, dealt Arthur a mortal blow. This would never have occurred, however, had not Morgana the fay, Arthur's sister, purloined his magic scabbard and substituted another. All the enemy's host had perished, and of Arthur's noble army only one man remained ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... of the chiefs were adverse to their present prince, and remained in their houses, while those of the opposite faction had withdrawn. Cortes sent for those chiefs next morning, from whom he learnt, that they considered their present prince, Coanacotzin, as an usurper, he having murdered his elder brother, Cuicutzcatzin, who had been placed on the throne by Montezuma and Cortes, and that Coanacotzin owed his elevation to the favour of Guatimotzin, the present sovereign of Mexico. They pointed out a youth named ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Sentinels have been stationed on the coast of Cornwall; the whole country awaits only a signal to rise in your favor. It but remains for your highness to disembark at the head of your partisans, and give the people the necessary arms. The movement will spread even to London, the usurper will be driven from the throne, and you will restore the crown ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... either soldiering or sailoring; that they would toil—with their hands, if need be—until they should accumulate a sufficient sum to return and recover the ancestral estate from the grasp of the avaricious usurper. They did not know how it was to be done; but, young, strong, and hopeful, they believed it might be done,—with time, patience, and industry to ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... of the friends of William. His son, Conan II, succeeded, and reigned at the period when William was making his preparations for the conquest of England. He was a prince of ability, dreaded by his neighbours, and animated by a fierce desire to injure the Duke of Normandy, whom he regarded as a usurper and the murderer of his father Alain. Seeing William engaged in a hazardous enterprise, Conan thought it a favourable moment to declare war against him, and dispatched one of his chamberlains to him with the following message: "I hear that you are ready to pass the sea to make conquest of the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... have no idea that the Hungarians are fit for it. See what France has done with her free constitution! Oh! was there ever such a solemn farce, before Heaven, as that voting,—those congratulations to the Usurper-President, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... title-page. The moment we learn that Louis Napoleon wrote that Life of Caesar, the mind is intent upon discovering allusions to recent history, which the author has an interest in misrepresenting. The common conscience of mankind condemns him as a perjured usurper, and the murderer of many of his unoffending fellow-citizens. No man, whatever the power and splendor of his position, can rest content under the scorn of mankind, unless his own conscience gives him a clear acquittal, and assures him that one day ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Bordeaux, and reads as pleasantly as any story in "Astree," no mean compliment. Probability, geography and chronology, are not Lodge's strong points; we are in fact again in the country of nowhere, in an imaginary kingdom of France over which the usurper Torismond reigns. The true king has been deposed and leads a forester's life, untroubled, unknown, in the thick woods of Arden. Rosalind, a daughter of the deposed king, has been kept as a sort of hostage at the court of the tyrant in Bordeaux, presumably ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... distinction which the Assembly makes in the feudal dues.—On the one hand it abolishes without indemnity all those dues which the noble receives by virtue of being the local sovereign, the ancient proprietor of persons and the usurper of public powers; all those which the lessee paid as serf, subject to rights of inheritance, and as former vassal or dependent. On the other hand, it maintains and decrees as redeemable at a certain rate all those ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rather a silent man; but my lady rattled on gaily in her accustomed style, and while that perennial stream of small talk flowed on, Clarissa had leisure to observe the usurper. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Ranavalona, the blood-stained usurper, our present queen, is filled with such bitter hatred of Christianity that she has for many years persecuted the native Christians who have been taught by white missionaries from your land. Hundreds of men and women have been murdered ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Holland, on quitting the conqueror of Hohenlinden, "he also has his ambition, and wishes to have a turn at governing France: he would not be its master for twenty-four hours." Georges Cadoudal laughed scornfully; "Usurper for usurper! I love better the one who is ruling now than this Moreau, who has neither heart nor head!" The conspirators felt their danger. Their preliminary interviews had led to no result; the murmurs of discontent had not ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... of his rights is presumed to have abandoned them; a presumption which is at best doubtful, and cannot destroy the right and established property of a monarch. Besides, even this presumption altogether vanishes when the superior strength of a usurper has prevented the lawful proprietor from claiming his rights, which has been the case ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... no affectation; it is an innate quality. He thinks his thoughts in his own way, and "the style is the man" never more truly than with him. One of his family letters mentions the execution of Charles I. as a "horrid murther," and another speaks of Cromwell as a usurper; but nowhere in anything intended for the public eye is there an indication that he lived in the most tumultuous and heroic period of English history. Not a word shows that Shakespeare was of the generation just preceding his, nor that Milton and George ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... their origin in hatred of Philip alone, nor in desire for honours and estates for himself, nor in racial antagonism, for had he not been allied with England in this war against the Government? He hated Philip the man, but he hated still more Philip the usurper who had brought shame to the escutcheon of Bercy. There was also at work another and deeper design to be shown in good time. Philip had retired from the English navy, and gone back to his duchy of Bercy. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and they are only to the last page but one. Perhaps you will think that my first objection does show that I am too much biassed. I own I am sorry to see my father compared to Sylla. The latter was a sanguinary usurper, a monster; the former, the mildest, most forgiving, best-natured of men, and a legal minister. Nor, I fear, will the only light in which you compare them, Stand The test. Sylla resigned his power voluntarily, insolently: perhaps timidly. as he might think he had a better chance of dying in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... all, may be no greater than our own. She was kind to her nephew; and if she had any scruples of conscience about her husband's taking the young Prince's crown, consoled herself by thinking that the King, though a usurper, was a most respectable man, and that at his death Prince Giglio would be restored to his throne, and share it with his cousin, whom he ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... language and fashion as they lived, as if the grave had given up the dead for the amusement and instruction of the living. Burbage, esteemed the best Richard until Garrick arose, played the tyrant and usurper with such truth and liveliness, that when the Battle of Bosworth seemed concluded by his death, the ideas of reality and deception were strongly contending in Lord Glenvarloch's imagination, and it required him to rouse himself from his reverie, so strange did the proposal ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... age, in a kind of honourable prison. Virtual master in Milan, but without a legal title to the throne, unrecognised in his authority by the Italian powers, and holding it from day to day by craft and fraud, Lodovico at last found his situation untenable; and it was this difficulty of an usurper to maintain himself in his despotism which, as we shall see, brought ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... had brought with him his three young maiden daughters, whose helpless state appealed warmly to the generous knight. National policy accorded with the inclination of the prince, for the Castilian revolution had been promoted by France, and the usurper had been in the pay of the French king. These inducements were enough to win for Don Pedro the support of Edward III., and the aid of the Black Prince, who entered upon the enterprise with the passionate enthusiasm which was a part of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... princess, and they found the country involved in civil war. The poor princess was put under the care of Prince Ghazan, the son of Prince Arghun, who did not ascend the throne until 1295, when his uncle, the usurper, was strangled. What became of the princess we do not hear, but on parting with Nicolo, Matteo, and Marco Polo, she bestowed on them great marks of favour. It was probably during Marco Polo's residence in Persia that he collected some curious documents upon Turkey in Asia; they are disconnected ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Rodney, but there's something very nice about it. Great pity, though, that they are French, and so corroded, so crusted over, as I may call it, with a sort of hero-worship for that tyrannical usurper. There, I won't ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... tell Sibylla that she was talking like a child. He only said that John Massingbird's claim to Verner's Pride was indisputable—that it had been his all along; that, in point of fact, he himself had been the usurper. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... him, disputed about homoousian and homoiousian, and grimaced and pretended to be very very fierce and exact to hide how much they were frightened and how little they knew, and because they did not dare to lay violent hands upon that usurper of the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... shook him, while Jacksonian Democracy went wild—not looking into future years to see what they were going wild about. Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner, who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher Bartlett in, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... convictions, she was the only legitimate sovereign in the island, a confessor for their beloved Church, a captive princess and beauty driven from her throne, and kept in durance by a usurper. Thus every generous feeling was enlisted in her cause, with nothing to counterbalance them save the English hatred of the Spaniard, with whom her cause was inextricably linked; a dread of what might ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... law, Mary was rightful heir to the English throne, and Elizabeth was an usurper. Parliament, at Henry's request, had declared that Elizabeth, his issue by Anne Boleyn, was illegitimate, and that being true, Mary was next in line of descent. The Catholics of England took that stand, and Mary's beauty ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... villages of the Iaik, and has even taken and destroyed several fortresses, at the same time committing everywhere robberies and assassinations. Therefore, upon the receipt of this, you will, Captain, bethink you of the measures to be taken to repulse the said robber and usurper; and if possible, in case he turn his arms against the fortress confided to your ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... gang of witches, who inflicted torments upon an image made in his name, for the sake of compassing his death. In the tale of Macbeth, which is another early instance of Demonology in Scottish history, the weird-sisters, who were the original prophetesses, appeared to the usurper in a dream, and are described as volae, or sibyls, rather than as witches, though Shakspeare has stamped the latter character ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... torch of the Peninsular War lighted. As one man the nation rose; the labourer armed himself with his agricultural implements, the workman with his tools; without leaders, nay, in defiance of those who should have led them, the people sprang to action, and, with England's help, the usurper was driven from the throne of France, and finally caged in St. Helena. But it is never forgotten that Spain—these two or three sons of hers preferring honour to life—has the glory of having been the first to oppose and check the man and the nation that aspired to tyrannise ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... was changed for political or superstitious reasons. When the successful general Pul usurped the throne of Assyria he adopted the name of one of the most famous of the kings of the older dynasty, Tiglath-pileser. His successor, another usurper, called Ulul, similarly adopted the name of Shalmaneser, another famous king of the earlier dynasty. It is probable that Sargon, who was also a usurper, derived his name from Sargon of Akkad, and that ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... up the cushion, and efface the appearance of any one having occupied that sacred seat; although King Charles himself, considering the youth and beauty as well as the affliction of the momentary usurper of his hallowed chair, would probably have thought very little of the profanation. She then hastened officiously to press her support on Edith, as she paced the hall apparently in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of title, invalidity of title; illegitimacy. loss of right, disfranchisement, forfeiture. usurpation, tort, violation, breach, encroachment, presumption, assumption, seizure; stretch, exaction, imposition, lion's share. usurper, pretender. V. be undue &c adj.; not be due &c 924. infringe, encroach, trench on, exact; arrogate, arrogate to oneself; give an inch and take an ell; stretch a point, strain a point; usurp, violate, do violence to. disfranchise, disentitle, disqualify; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... That great usurper, the Renaissance, came creeping up to the North where the tapestry looms were weaving fairy webs. Pope Pius X wanted tapestries, those of the marvellous Flemish weave. But he wanted those of the new style of drawing, not the sweet restraint and finished ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... And thro' the kindred squadrons mow their way. Ye Towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, With many a foul and midnight murder fed, Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, And spare the meek usurper's holy head. Above, below, the rose of snow, Twined with her blushing foe, we spread: The bristled boar in infant-gore Wallows beneath the thorny shade. Now, brothers, bending o'er th' accursed loom Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... where a great number of disciples and scholars soon put themselves under his direction. St. Kentigern was here when St. David died, in 546, or rather in 544, when the first of March fell on a Tuesday.[3] After the death of the usurper Morcant, Rydderch returned from Ireland, and recovered his crown, and St. Kentigern, leaving his school to the care of St. Asaph, (whose name the town, which was raised at Elgwy, bears to this day,) went back to Glasco, taking with him several hundreds of his scholars; ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... time building up his colossal empire. His Christian soul was mightily stirred by seeing an infidel kingdom set up in Andalusia; and when, in 777, the Saracen governor and two other Arab chiefs appealed to him for aid against the Omeyyad usurper, Abd-er-Rahman, he eagerly responded. His grandfather Charles Martel had driven these infidels back over the Pyrenees; now he would drive them out of Spain, and ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... the affection the little girl conceived for her. "We two are friends," both mother and daughter often said of each other. Even Modeste, old Modeste, who had been at first indignant at seeing a stranger take the place of her dead mistress, could not but acknowledge that the usurper was no ordinary step mother. It might have been truly said that Madame de Nailles had never scolded Jacqueline, and that Jacqueline had never done anything contrary to the wishes of Madame de Nailles. When anything went wrong it was Fraulein Schult who was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a conclusive winner in a long war of varying fortunes. He was, in addition, what very few great soldiers or commanders have ever been, a great constitutional statesman, able to lead a people along the paths of free government without undertaking himself to play the part of the strong man, the usurper, or the ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... madness: it was, he thinks, the best possible way to thwart his design of revenge and it was carried on with unseemly lack of dignity. Shakespeare has followed his sources too closely, with bad results. There appears "no Reason at all in Nature, why the young prince did not put the Usurper to Death as soon as possible." To be sure this would have ended the play; the poet must therefore delay the hero's revenge. But, insists Anonymous, "then he should have contrived some good Reason for it." This is clearly recognition of the vexing problem that has since occupied ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... the foreign usurper! a rueful chair should it be for her: but hush, John Graham! Hold your tongue, and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... ago—would have judged questions involving revolt. John Ball would have offered to pull down the government because it was a bad government, not because it was a government. Richard II. would have blamed Bolingbroke not as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in the useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any rebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in its first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said before, it ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... however, the French contingent mutinied and refused to fight; and the natives, panic stricken by the desertion of their allies, fell back on Pondicherry. Chunda Sahib accompanied his men. Muzaffar Jung surrendered to his uncle, the usurper. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... government. You apprehend that a single executive, with, eminence of talent, and destitution of principle, equal to the object, might, by usurpation, render his powers hereditary. Yet I think history furnishes as many examples of a single usurper arising out of a government by a plurality, as of temporary trusts of power in a single hand rendered permanent by usurpation. I do not believe, therefore, that this danger is lessened in the hands of a plural executive. Perhaps it is greatly ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... front of his inn-door—permission to set up any pole or support against the privet hedge. In fact, he and Captain Runacles had sworn very heartily to sit indoors, pull down their blinds and withhold their countenances from the usurper. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... friends in Egypt fully sympathized with them. Amasis, sent to meet them and quell the revolt, was proclaimed king by the rebels, and Apries, who had now to rely entirely on his mercenaries, was defeated and taken prisoner in the ensuing conflict at Momemphis; the usurper treated the captive prince with great lenity, but was eventually persuaded to give him up to the people, by whom he was strangled and buried in his ancestral tomb at Sais. An inscription confirms the fact of the struggle between the native and the foreign soldiery, and proves ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
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