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Defenseless   /dɪfˈɛnsləs/   Listen
Defenseless

adjective
1.
Lacking protection or support.  Synonym: defenceless.
2.
Having no protecting or concealing cover.  Synonym: naked.
3.
Lacking weapons for self-defense.  Synonym: defenceless.



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"Defenseless" Quotes from Famous Books



... set of dowdy domestic drudges. Isn't it infamous, without an atom of evidence against her, to take it for granted that she is guilty? False to her dead husband's confidence in her, a breaker of seals, a stealer of poisons—what an accusation against a defenseless woman! Oh, my poor dear Minna! how she must feel it; she doesn't possess her mother's strength of mind. I shall fly to Wurzburg to comfort her. My father may say what he pleases; I can't leave these two persecuted women without a ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... she held her, she sunk her rudimentary nails into the poor girl's flesh, or twisted her arm in a most painful manner. When it was necessary to move from one spot to another she either jerked her roughly, or pushed her headlong before her. She seemed to be venting upon this poor defenseless creature all the hatred, cruelty, ferocity, and spite of her nine hundred years, backed by unguessable ages of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... point of view in which this case seems to merit your most serious attention. The real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the world ever saw; the defendant is a defenseless, proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only Free Press remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of the English Press is new—it is a proud ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... to come to that in the end! It was fortunate she had forced his hand. In another year or two it would have been an utterly barren sale. To keep the ship going he had been involving himself deeper every year. He was defenseless before the insidious work of adversity, to whose more open assaults he could present a firm front; like a cliff that stands unmoved the open battering of the sea, with a lofty ignorance of the treacherous backwash undermining its base. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... of a terrible misfortune to which she had been exposed. This event, which was indeed terrible, was nothing less than violence and robbery committed on a fugitive woman defenseless and alone, by a band at the head of which was the famous Marquis de Maubreuil, [A French political adventurer, born in Brittany, 1782; died 1855.] who had been equerry of the King of Westphalia. I will recur in treating of the events of 1814 to this disgraceful affair, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... a little more sunlight perhaps, or of pin-money and elbow-room, sailed away and conquered for themselves two entire continents, as well as a good part of a third. I have also heard that the inhabitants of this island, not content with killing and enslaving so many defenseless fellow-creatures, or with picking up any lesser island, cape, or bay that happened to suit their fancy, took it upon themselves to govern several hundred million unwilling individuals of all colors and religions in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... launched more oaths at his defenseless head than Toby had ever heard in his life. He was angry that the boy had not been on hand to help him, and also that he had been obliged ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... barbarities perpetrated upon a people who never did us any harm or wrong ought certainly to awaken in American bosoms every throb of pity and every sentiment of manliness. We have had accounts of butcheries called "battles" in which have been slaughtered hundreds of almost defenseless creatures for no offense except that of standing up for their independence. It is said that certain districts that would not acknowledge our mastery have been turned into wildernesses, and that in these districts the number of the slain may easily have equaled ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... he would have died before he would have wronged intentionally either class. In this case he had struck in behalf of a poor and unfortunate girl who had been grievously wronged at Baylor, and it used to be held, and is yet held in some communities, that the man who strikes in the defense of a defenseless woman exhibits the highest trait of chivalry, even if he had made a mistake in striking, but here in Waco, with its Christian schools and churches, and its so-called Christian civilization it was rewarded first by mobs ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... world, the world through which she had so far walked with proudly lifted head! Her dearly cherished love seemed to be tumbling in ignominious ruins, and that very love had left her defenseless. No one would ever know he belonged to her; that she belonged to him. She would have to creep with bowed head in assumed shame and ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... evoked disturbing memories. Six years ago he had acted as attorney to David's father in settling his financial difficulties, and later, after Peter Dunne's death, the Judge had settled the small estate. It was only through his efforts that they were enabled to have the smallest of roofs over their defenseless heads. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... and then being of gentle birth, and unminded to strike a defenseless female of uncertain years, I ran; I ran home and wrote a chapter in my book and this ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... they were safe, but when they became discontented, and wandered from home, they were sometimes lost. The rats were their principal enemies, and those from which they had most to fear. They were constantly lurking about to catch the ducklings, and sometimes the defenseless little ones ran directly into their deep holes, from which there was no possibility of escape. Quite a number of Lily's family came to an untimely end ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various

... thousands, and the plunder from palaces and warehouses was counted by millions, before the sun had set on the "great fury." Those Spaniards, and Italians, and Walloons were now thirsting for more gold, for more blood; and as the capital of England was even more wealthy and far more defenseless than the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands had been, so it was resolved that the London "fury" should be more thorough and more productive than the "fury of Antwerp," at the memory of which the world still shuddered. And these professional soldiers had been taught ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... virtue had expired, and the mutinous spirits rebelled against his authority. Ratcliffe, Archer, and the others who were awaiting trial conspired against him, and Smith says he would have been murdered in his bed if the murderer's heart had not failed him when he went to fire his pistol at the defenseless sick man. However, Smith was forced to yield to circumstances. No sooner had he given out that he would depart for England than they persuaded Mr. Percy to stay and act as President, and all eyes were turned in expectation of favor upon the new commanders. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... burning with curiosity, was tingling almost with suspicion. As she looked at those veils, and saw the shining of the feminine eyes behind them, it seemed to her that the two women lay in ambush while she stood defenseless ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... this siege was disastrous to the inhabitants, who had to suffer hunger and privations of every kind. Life at Orenbourg became insupportable. The decision of fate was awaited with anguish. Food was scarce; bombshells fell upon the defenseless houses of citizens. The attacks of Pougatcheff made very little excitement. I was dying of ennui. I had promised Accoulina that I would correspond with her, but communication was cut off, and I could not ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... us we can stand them off," saying this Jim reached for his revolver. To his astonishment it was gone. Then he remembered he had been disarmed by Captain Broom, and they were absolutely defenseless unless they could depend on Missouri's heels which had furnished ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... man wailed his miserable assent. His half-sister's reproachful eyes distracted him; the mention of her defenseless position before the world touched his sorest feeling. It was almost more than he could stand, He was upon the verge of hysterical breakdown, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... answered Elias. "You must be surprised that I, another unfortunate, young and strong, should propose to you, old and weak, peaceful measures, but it's because I've seen as much misery caused by us as by the tyrants. The defenseless are the ones ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... any one reflect for a moment that the umpire occupies this perilous position while regarded as a common enemy by both of the contesting teams, and as a legitimate object for insulting abuse from the partisan portion of the crowd of spectators. In fact, the umpire stands there as the one defenseless man against thousands of pitiless foes. The wonder is that half the umpires in the arena are as successful in the discharge of their arduous duties as they are, and the still greater wonder is that any self-respecting man can be induced to occupy a position which is ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick

... man. Alice called to him to look out, then whipped open the gate and ran after him. Leroy turned, and, in a flash, saw that which for an instant filled him with a deadly paralysis. Between him and the bull, directly in the path of its rush, stood this slender girl, defenseless. ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... sensual self, but from the intense physical centers of the upper body: the phallus polarized from the upper centers, and directed towards the great breast center of the woman. Her wakeful fear is terror of the great breast-and-shoulder, upper rage and power of man, which may pierce her defenseless lower self. The terror and the desire are near together—and go with an admiration of the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... judge from the sound, his back was broken on the spot. But he had no time given him to recover. Silver, agile as a monkey, even without leg or crutch, was on the top of him next moment, and had twice buried his knife up to the hilt in that defenseless body. From my place of ambush I could hear him pant aloud as he ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... disengaged at the first onset had paused a moment, and then seeing that all around him were employed in the deadly strife, he had sought, with hellish vengeance, to complete the baffled work of revenge. Raising a shout of triumph, he sprang toward the defenseless Cora, sending his keen axe as the dreadful precursor of his approach. The tomahawk grazed her shoulder, and cutting the withes which bound her to the tree, left the maiden at liberty to fly. She eluded ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... mob had melted away like a small snowbank in a hot sun. It was one thing to help lynch a defenseless Mexican; it was quite another to face nine or ten determined men backing the law. Scarce a score of the vigilantes remained, and most of them were looking for a chance to save their faces "without starting anything," as ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... except realizing happiness of the present and of the future. He gazed at the green spread of forest boughs, and saw in pleased anticipation their red and gold tints of autumn; also in pleased anticipation their snowy and icy mail of winter, and himself, the unmailed, defenseless human creature, housed and sheltered, sitting before his own fire. This last happy outlook aroused him. If all this was to be, he must be up and doing. He got up, entered the house, and examined the broken umbrella which was his sole stock ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... parent, yet do not we all find that they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-aches, what compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of a suffering and defenseless mother who brings ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... strife, even amongst the elements, to show that this is no longer a land for me? Spirits of these hills," cried he, "pour not thus your rage on a banished man! A man without a friend, without a home." He started and smiled at his own adjuration. "The spirits of Heaven launch not this tempest on a defenseless head; 'tis chance!—but affliction shapes all things to its own likeness. Thou, oh, my Father! would not suffer any demon of the air to bend thy broken reed! Therefore rain on, ye torrents; ye are welcome to William Wallace. He can well breast the mountain's storm, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... were smooth and oily. To Hal it really looked as though this fellow respected gameness enough not to take it out on a defenseless enemy. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... on the edge of a superb natural harbor, the entrance to which is masked by the Brioni Islands, is the great naval base of Pola, from the shelter of whose fortifications and mined approaches the Austrian fleet was able to terrorize the defenseless towns along Italy's unprotected eastern seaboard and to menace the commerce of the northern Adriatic. Pola Is a strange melange of the ancient and the modern, for from the topmost tiers of the great Roman Arena—scarcely less imposing than the Coliseum ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... I find that the government which conferred the right of citizenship is powerless, or indisposed, to force respect for its own enactments; I find that these people, left to the mercy of their enemies, alone and defenseless, and without judicious leadership, are urged to preserve themselves loyal to the men and to the party which have shown themselves unable to extend to them substantial protection; I find that these people, alone ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... people, without military stores, without wealth, without strength, against the most powerful kingdom on the earth; a declaration of war made when the British navy, at that day the mistress of every sea, was hovering along the coast of America, looking after defenseless towns and villages to ravage and destroy. It was made when thousands of English soldiers were upon our soil, and when the principal cities of America were, in the substantial possession of the enemy. And so, I say, all things considered, it was the bravest political document ever signed ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... he closed upon his defenseless victim, but ere his fangs had reached the throat they thirsted for, there was a sharp report and a bullet entered the ape's back ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... 144.]; two of the lieutenants and the master were also shot down. The ships gradually worked round till the wind was again on the port quarter, when they separated, and the Guerriere's foremast and main-mast at once went by the board, and fell over on the starboard side, leaving her a defenseless hulk, rolling her main-deck guns into the water. [Footnote: Brenton, v, 51.] At 6.30 the Constitution hauled aboard her tacks, ran off a little distance to the eastward, and lay to. Her braces and standing and running rigging were much cut up and some of the spars ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... bell. I stooped for my hat. To tell the truth, I was rather afraid to expose myself in such a defenseless attitude, but the Countess preserved her self control. The butler opened the door. I bowed, and left the Countess regarding me through the maimed "starers." Then I found the butler smiling. He probably knew the signs of the weather. I ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope

... peal of a great gun shook the world. There was no mistaking the sound of it or its meaning. The fleet had opened fire on the defenseless town. Mandy's teeth ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... hero, Lemminkainen, Sang the foemen with their broadswords? Sang the heroes with their weapons, Sang the eldest, sang the youngest, Sang the middle-aged, enchanted; Only one he left his senses, He a poor, defenseless shepherd, Old and sightless, halt and wretched, And the old man's name was Nasshut. Spake the miserable shepherd: "Thou hast old and young enchanted, Thou hast banished all our heroes, Why hast spared this wretched shepherd?" This ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... and rhyme, with due regard for euphony and cadence, is always safe, and is totally different from bursting out upon a defenseless woman with buckets ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... never seen—and, at ten o'clock of the morning, appeared at the Central Police Station. The bundle of papers in her hand indicated that she had read the latest lies and venom poured out on Gabriel's defenseless head. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... neighbors—by men who would share their last morsel or their last shilling with a fellow-creature in distress—who would generously lose their lives for a man who had obliged them, provided he had not incurred their enmity—and who would protect a defenseless stranger as far as lay in their power. There are some mock oaths among Irishmen which must have had their origin amongst those whose habits of thought were much more elevated than could be supposed to characterize the lower orders. "By the powers of death" is never now used as we have written it; ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton

... in a heated altercation with a second Austrian soldier. The plan worked as well as before and the man pushed the colonel back into the tent. The latter dragged the man in after him and stepped hurriedly aside, just as Chester brought the chair down upon the Austrian's defenseless head with all his power. The ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes

... water pitcher under the other, he scowled defiance at each newcomer. Against the jeers of the boys he could register vows of future vengeance and console himself with the promise of bloody retribution; but against the endless queries and insinuations of his adult neighbors, he was utterly defenseless. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... and held them under a spell like hypnosis, and hers were wide and futile of concealment so that her heart and its secrets were at last defenseless. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... a long and hard climb, we started about sunrise, taking a rifle with us; not that we expected to use it, but because it is not good to be entirely defenseless in those wild, out-of-the-way places. Following at first our little creek, we went on up and up, taking it slowly, until presently the pines began to thin out, the weather-beaten trees, gnarled, twisted and stunted, becoming ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... theory absolute authority and forming an apparently irresistible combination, exercised this power with moderation. They did not combine, as in the case of the partition of Poland, to break the peace and prey upon a defenseless neighbor, but to keep the peace; and if to keep the peace meant the suppression wherever possible of liberal political ideas, it meant also the renunciation of aggressive foreign policies. In this way Europe obtained the rest which ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... Perhaps he had an animus against these bumptious, undeferential, overcritical Americans, and thought it was time to give one of them a lesson. Perhaps he was tired of trapping ordinary garden variety spies of the Belgian brand. It would be a pleasing variation in the monotony of convicting defenseless, helpless Belgians if he could show that one of these fellows masquerading as Americans was a sham. Especially one of that journalistic tribe that had been sending out reports of German atrocities. Furthermore, it would redound ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... had come to love, as he never had loved the country which claimed him by birth. He had been called on in this place to fight for a man's station in it; he had trampled a refuge of safety for the defenseless among its thorns. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... hands in the surgery, he could have sworn that she, the little maneuvering minx, had laid a trap for him. She had come on her fool's errand, knowing that it was a fool's errand, for nothing on earth but that she might catch him, alone and defenseless, in the surgery. It was the sort of thing she did, the sort of thing she always would do. She didn't want to know (not she!) whether Jim Greatorex would sing or not, she wanted to know, and she meant to know, why he, Steven Rowcliffe, hadn't turned up that afternoon, and ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... the fear of Malabanan had spread among these widely scattered, defenseless wildmen, Terry grew grimmer. But as the weeks passed peacefully by, hope grew within him that Malabanan's presence in the lovely, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... cursing their ancestors for making the mistake of attacking a neighboring humanoid planet instead of Earth, only two days away on high drive. By now, they knew that Earth was defenseless. And yet, they seemed content to go on with their vows forgotten. Duke couldn't believe it. Down underground, beyond Earth inspection, they could have vast stockpiles of weapons, ready to install in their ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey

... the hostilities; had attacked by surprise isolated detachments; had indicated to the enemy the positions occupied by the troops; that women, old men, and even children had been guilty of horrible atrocities upon wounded and defenseless German soldiers, tearing out their eyes and cutting off fingers, nose, or ears; that the priests from their pulpits had exhorted the people to commit these crimes, promising them as a reward the Kingdom of Heaven, and had even taken the lead in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... of suffering and its eternal vicariousness. The veiled and incommunicable nature of the worst sufferings;—the passivity of genius, how it is essentially instrumental and defenseless, moved, not moving, it must do what it does;—the impossibility of discovery without its price;—finally, the excess of what the suffering 'seer' or genius pays over what his generation gains. (He seems like one who sweats his life out to earn enough to save a district from famine, and just as he ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... succession of passions. Most often they are only transitory fires: one destroys another, and all are absorbed by the great blaze of the creative spirit. But if the heat of the furnace ceases to fill the soul, then the soul is left defenseless against the passions without which it cannot live: it must have passion, it creates passion: and the passions will devour the soul ...—and then, besides the bitter desire that harrows the flesh, there is the need of tenderness which drives a man who is weary ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... The hours of darkness were those when the creature which walked upon two legs was no longer gliding through the forest with ready club or spear, and when those creatures which used four legs instead of two, especially the defenseless, felt more at ease than in the daytime. The grass-eating animals emerged from the forest into the plateaus and upon the low plains along the river side and the flesh-eaters began again their hunting. It was a time of wild ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... as if to confirm my opinion of its significance. The sight repaid all my watchings thrice over, and even now I feel my heart growing warm at the recollection of it. Strange thoughtlessness, is it not, which allows mothers capable of such passionate devotion, tiny, defenseless things, to be slaughtered by the million for the enhancement ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... of any kind, and almost nothing but furs went home in the ships to France. The colony depended upon its mother country even for its annual food supply, and when the ships from France failed to come the colonists were reduced to severe privations. A dispirited and nearly defenseless land, without solid foundations of agriculture or industry, with an accumulation of Indian enmity and an empty treasury—this was the legacy which the Company now turned over to the Crown in return for the viceroyal privileges ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... their misdeeds more than sufficient to be taken no further on the way to retribution than that. Whatever humiliation and disgrace they are capable of feeling or have cause to feel is at that first moment at its height; it strikes upon them unaccustomed and defenseless—never so acutely sensitive as then. Afterward, familiarity with misery and shame renders them progressively more and more callous, without adding one jot to the public odium of their position. They can never forget that first clang of the closing gates in their ears; the whole significance ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... upon the defenseless captives, tied their hands on their backs, and wound the ropes round their necks, so that they could drag them forward like oxen. And after binding Andreas Hofer, so that they were no longer afraid of his strong arms, they surrounded him with scornful laughter, tore handfuls ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... who had evidently dropped in from some store or office during the lunch hour. Now and again the fat man paused in his vocal efforts to reprimand her for her slackness. She paid no heed. There was something gruesome, uncanny, about the way her fingers went their own way over the defenseless keys. Her conversation with the frowzy little ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... clouds of doubt and despair were fading away, and that I was drifting into the safe harbor of the realms of truth. I felt as if everybody must believe him, for he clung to the truth, and I wondered how Mr. Hutchinson could so lie about a poor defenseless girl like me. ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney

... England was overpopulated. There was much to justify the belief. The reign of Elizabeth witnessed a striking increase in the number of unemployed, the poverty-stricken, and the vagabond. The destruction of the monasteries left the poor and defenseless without their accustomed sources of relief; while steadily rising prices, due partly to the increased supply of silver from the Spanish-American mines, were not infrequently disastrous to those who were already living close to the margin of subsistence. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... there?" cried the giant, in a voice of thunder. The bloodthirsty Wallachians would have rushed madly on their defenseless prey, had not the giant ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... orbit some four thousand miles up, and it would gird the world in four hours fourteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. It would carry atom-headed guided missiles, and every city in the world would be defenseless against it. Nobody could even hope for world domination so long as it floated on its celestial round. Which, naturally, was why there were such desperate efforts to destroy it ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... was not the laughing boy she had known, with his volatile, Lucifer-like charm of light-hearted recklessness in the face of destiny. Instead, a thinned, shy face rose before her, a face full of awkwardness and dreaming, troubled and absent; a face that one moment appealed by its defenseless forgetfulness, and the next, coerced by a look eloquent ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... as well in one season, if he looks for them with the necessary tree love which is but a fine form of true love of God's creation. This love, once implanted, means surer protection for the trees, otherwise so defenseless against the unthinking vandalism of commercialism or incompetence—a vandalism that has not only devastated our American forests, but mutilated shamefully many trees of priceless value in and ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... order to retain the duke in Lombardy, they requested the Venetians to press him with their utmost strength. But they also were alarmed, the marquis of Mantua having abandoned them and gone over to the duke; and thus, finding themselves almost defenseless, they replied, "that instead of increasing their responsibilities, they should be unable to perform their part in the war, unless the Count Francesco were sent to them to take the command of the army, and with the special ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... that it was no longer safe to trust their word. No sooner did the governor withdraw his army from the borders than the cunning Cherokees, whose passions had been inflamed by what may fairly be called the treacherous conduct of Lyttelton, rushed down with merciless ferocity upon the innocent and defenseless families on the frontier. On February 1, 1760, while a large party (including the family of Patrick Calhoun), numbering in all about one hundred and fifty persons, were removing from the Long Cane settlement to Augusta, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... party of Indians whom some Virginians lured across the Ohio near the mouth of Yellow Creek in 1774. On the Virginia side the murderers made three of the Indians drunk and tomahawked them, and when they had tricked the others into discharging their guns at a mark, and so had them defenseless, they ruthlessly shot them down. Logan's sister, who was the only woman in the party, tried to escape, but a bullet cut short her flight, and she died praying her murderers to have mercy on the babe she held in her arms. They spared ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... was answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenseless Spaniard. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... to prevent this in their usual fashion. Irregular troops were sent into Christian Bulgaria with orders to kill all they met. It was an order to the Mohammedan taste. The defenseless villages of Bulgaria were entered and their inhabitants slaughtered in cold blood, till thousands of men, women, and children ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... him in English: 'You are a coward. You have insulted a defenseless man. You have befouled the face of your king. You ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... house have beset, and with malice blockade Every pathway I out for my powers have laid, And would hidden means find With deceit and with hate To set watch on my mind And defile every plate In my beautiful home where defenseless we wait? ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... American commander might hurry back to their rescue. But Washington was first and foremost a man of good, hard common sense, and he knew that all Arnold could accomplish would be the destruction of a few 10 defenseless towns, and to let Cornwallis escape in order to protect them did not appeal to his practical mind at all. He therefore paid no attention to the traitor's movements, but bent all his efforts on speeding ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... to force all these wretches to make lies a shameful bulwark of their lives. Fualdes was not my enemy, he was only my creditor. If covetousness had misled a man otherwise decent and moderate, if it had armed his hand, I would never, for all that, have raised it against a defenseless old man. If you want a sacrifice, take me; I am ready, but do not mingle my lot with that of this brood. My family, who have always dwelt in the country, and have followed the customs and simple ways of rural life, are ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... by the bushrangers were gathered up, and in their defenseless condition they were marched to the government camp. It added to Fletcher's annoyance that the weapons dropped by his party were picked up and carried by their late captives, ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... the attacking party came in view, and, without suspecting what lay in front, advanced with quick gait towards the supposedly defenseless town. But suddenly, with a wild yell, the followers of Zeno leaped from behind the screening bushes, and dashed towards them. At the same instant, the soldiers who had been placed in hiding, attacked suddenly from the rear. Arrows poured into ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... cards face up!" Will interrupted impatiently. "Listen, Schillingschen. You're an all-in scoundrel. You're a spy. You're a bloody murderer of women and defenseless natives. If we could prove that we wouldn't argue with you. We know you burned that dhow with the women in it, but we've got no evidence, that's all. We know the German government wants that ivory, and we know why. We also want it. Our only reason for secrecy is that ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... be left a male and female of the race to carry the seed of Terra to another planet. And what a triumph if he, Guldran, should be the one to return at the eleventh hour with the prize. No need of calling for help. This was no armed war-party, but the most defenseless being in the Universe—a mother burdened with ...
— The Last Supper • T. D. Hamm

... of the woodland path almost as soon as her victim. A moment she paused, glaring upon her with eyes of fiercest hate as she stood there alone and defenseless. The next, she drew out the flashing stiletto. Flung away the scabbard, and advanced with it in her hand and ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... woman's hand, guiding her to the broken place in the wooden fence. There he paused, looking back and listening. There was no sound of an alarm yet, no cries to suggest that the fiends had rushed up the stairs to wreak their savagery on a defenseless woman. For a moment Barrington contemplated taking a horse from the stable, but he dared not run the risk of the delay. Chance must bring them the means of entering Paris ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... swerves the darts of hate and malice aimed at a defenseless race, so that though they wound, they do not destroy. With antidotal efficacy, it nullifies the virus of proscription so that it does not stagnate the blood nor paralyze the limb of ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... to Washington, as men cannot address you for us. We have no power at all; we are totally defenseless. [Miss Smith then read two short letters written by her sister Abby to the Springfield Republican.] These tell our brief story, and may I not ask, gentlemen, that they shall so plead with you that you will report to the Senate unanimously in favor of the sixteenth amendment, which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... difficulties of the surrounding country, covered with the debris of the buildings which constituted the larger cities of Nankin at an earlier period of history, helped the assailing party more than they did the defenders. Sir Hugh Gough drew up an admirable plan for capturing this vast and not defenseless city with his force of 5,000 men, and there is no reason to doubt that he would have been completely successful; but by this the backbone of the Chinese government had been broken, and even the proud and obstinate Taoukwang was compelled to admit that it was ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... of stone. He no longer played with shells and sticks, but with pebbles, which he gathered, hoarded in piles, and threw at marks,—to be gathered again,—seldom entering the woods but for food and the relaxation of the hunt. But with his change of habits came a lessening of his cruelty to defenseless creatures,—not that he felt pity: he merely found no more amusement in killing and tormenting,—and in time he transferred his antagonism to the sharks in the lagoon, their dorsal fins making famous targets for his pebbles. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... that the discovery made no appreciable change. If he had been bound to silence before, he was no less bound to it now; the only difference lay in the fact that what he had just learned had rendered his bondage more intolerable. Hitherto he had felt for Sophy Viner's defenseless state a sympathy profoundly tinged with compunction. But now he was half-conscious of an obscure indignation against her. Superior as he had fancied himself to ready-made judgments, he was aware of cherishing the common doubt as to the disinterestedness of the woman ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... could subsist on the proceeds of the chase and the little plantations tended by the women, but this offered small attractions to the restless and warlike Indians, who preferred depending upon the plunder that they could always gather by a raid upon the defenseless Mexican villages. Thus during the whole journey they had not once caught sight of an Indian, though they had two or three times made out, with the aid of a telescope Tom had brought with him, little clusters of wigwams far ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty

... and considering her defenseless position, the savages allowed her considerable liberty. From the first, however, she was made a slave and a drudge, and compelled to toil with the hardy squaws of their tribe, bearing their insults and sometimes even their blows. The hope and prospect ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... driven from their homes by the threats of armed men; that in one case at least the habitation of an Indian woman was burned, and that the kind of outrages were resorted to which too often follow the cupidity of whites and the possession of fertile lands by defenseless and unprotected Indians. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... have been easily made mine," was the unavailing regret of the handsome Major. "If I could have come out with them," he sighed. He well knew the softening effect upon romantic womanhood of a long sea voyage where the willing winds sway the softer emotions of the breast, and the trembling woman is defenseless against the perfidious darts ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... to stand by his own manifesto, and exasperated by the murderous attacks of the Black Hundreds upon defenseless people in the streets, the Social Democrats, the Social Revolutionists, and the extreme opponents of the government generally resorted to a series of armed revolts, which finally culminated in the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... desperately with a very manlike desire to smash something; to relieve the wrathful pressure by hurting somebody. Let it be written down to his credit that he did not wreak his vengeance on the defenseless. Thomas Jefferson, the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... his knees, tracing figures in the sand with his shoe. Eleanor noticed the nice way his hair grew on the back of his neck and the white skin that met the clear brown skin at the collar-line. In spite of his bigness and his strength, he seemed very young and defenseless when it came to his ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... it would," General Cordeen thought, and a pall of awe covered the linked minds. The implications of the naively frank remark just uttered by this apparently inoffensive and defenseless young woman were simply too ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... place in the Pacific Ocean," said the Idiot. "Make your own geography—everybody else does. There's a million islands out there of one kind or another, and as defenseless as a two weeks' old infant. If you want a real one, fish it out and fire ahead. If you don't, make one up for yourself and call it 'The Isle of Piccolo,' or something of that sort. After you've got your chorus going, introduce your villain, who should be a man with a deep bass voice and a piratical ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... is your father, Pamphilus. It is a difficult matter. Besides, this woman is defenseless. No sooner said than done; he will find some pretext for driving her ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... "mammy" in the neighborhood, and plied with abominable concoctions that would be productive of homicide if we were to attempt forcibly to administer them to grown men, and whose only effect on the defenseless little sufferer is to cause colic and indigestion. Many times has the writer seen a wee, tiny little mortal, who was too young and weak to even protest, bundled up with a mountain of flannels in the hottest weather of July and August. True to the superstition that the warmer we kept an infant ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... did. She came that night to Anne's room just as Anne was getting into bed. Unappeased by her defenseless ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... shaking hands across his face. Through the barrier and free—but Hume was back there, without a weapon, defenseless against any questing beast able to nose him out. Sickly, without water and protection, he was a dead man even while he ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... discouraged? No. Naturally it was very much surprised, very much astonished, to find its work baffling and difficult instead of simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold, fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... then I looked at the picture again, but my better nature asserted itself and I made no attempt to strike this defenseless woman. ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... speedily provided with another interest which engrossed him to the exclusion of further efforts to bait a victim defenseless against his insolence. ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... ever had, for your free spirit, something of degradation in it;—but to pure patriotism, freedom and liberty, as their nature was: first to cracking such desultory cribs as offered,—knocking down defenseless wayfarers and the like: then to bolder raidings and excursions;—until presently, lo, they are a great people; they have ridden over all Asia like a scirocco; they have thundered rudely at the doors of proud princes,—troubling even the peace of the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... Chinese fight? "What with, stupid Gretchen?" How can a virtually bankrupt nation like China take up arms, which she doesn't possess, against the mighty nations of Europe? Defenseless, unarmed China is no match for the "civilization" ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... and shook his head ominously. A woodsman, he had his superstitions, and Paul's words weighed upon his mind. He began to fear a great disaster, and his experienced eye perceived at once the defenseless state of the valley. He remembered the council of the great Indian force in the deep woods, and the terrible face of Queen Esther was ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... you slay him, my son? For you must leave your club and your armor behind, and be cast to the monster, defenseless and naked like ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... with discouragements, the entire party sank down exhausted upon the snow. The entire party? No! There was one man who never ceased to work. When a fire had been kindled, and nearly every one had given up, this one man, unaided, continued to strive to erect some sort of shelter to protect the defenseless women and children. Planting large pine boughs in the snow, he banked up the snow on either side of them so as to form a wall. Hour after hour, in the darkness and raging storm, he toiled on alone, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... sighted Turks in force; and then probably the distance deceived them into thinking us Turks, too, for we rode now with no less than five Turkish officers as well as a German sergeant. And in the rear of large bodies of Turks there was generally a defenseless town or village whose Armenians had all been butchered, and whose other inhabitants were mostly too gorged with plunder to show any fight. We helped ourselves to food, clothing, horses, saddlery, ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... of his age forgetful, Pursued him with all his might. "Why from thy defenseless father," He cried, "dost ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... leave you to guard him while he dispatches an errand. If it were a motor car there would be a brake to hold it. If it were a boat, you might throw out an anchor. A butcher's cart would have a metal drag. But here you sit defenseless—tied to the whim of a horse—greased for a runaway. The beast Dobbin turns his head and holds you with his hard eye. There is a convulsive movement along his back, a preface, it may be, to a sudden seizure. A real friend would have loosed the straps that run along the horse's ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... cases that the men were unable to keep the women from flight. The wearing of arms is as much a custom with Manbos as the wearing of a watch is with us. The bolo is his life and his livelihood. Were he not to wear it he would be branded as insane, and he looks upon a defenseless person, stranger or otherwise, much in the same light, unless he attributes the absence of a weapon to the possession of secret powers of protection, in which case he is inclined to follow the example of the fugitive women and betake himself beyond ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... the runaway brute within him, and who loses his head on the edge of the precipice over which she is going to fall, is as contemptible as any man who breaks open a lock, or as any rascal on the look-out for a house left defenseless and without protection, or for some easy and profitable stroke of business, or as that thief whose various exploits you have just ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... harsh and sinister sound that filled her with inexpressible horror. For a moment she stood motionless in the center of that leering circle, her eyes wide, her face white as death,—a slight figure, trying to hard to stand straight, crushed and defenseless, only her eyes pleading in last appeal. Instinctively her lips whispered ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... battle of the Marne the Prussians were pressing northward, venting their rage on the defenseless inhabitants, killing many such and carrying others away with them. It was desperate business that these brutal Prussians were engaged in. Finding themselves unable to whip the Allied soldiers, they sought to terrorize old ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... from the unhealthful climate. In view of the recent destruction of the city of Manila by fire, Vera has forbidden the people to build any more houses of wood, obliging them to use stone for that purpose. Finding the city practically defenseless, Vera has begun to build near it a fort and other means of defense; and he asks for a small number of paid soldiers as a garrison for the city. He has assessed on the encomenderos and other citizens and on the Indians the expenses of these works. Another fort is needed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... upon the absurdly simple notion of trying to locate the negro of given length and proportions. The real "mosquito man"—one of that dark band that spends its Zone years with a wire hook and a screened bucket gathering evidence against the defenseless mosquito for the sanitary department to gloat over—was found not to fit the model even in hue. Moreover, "mosquito men" are not accustomed to carry their devotion to duty to the point of crawling under trunks ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... he would. But he gave her his strong grip and friendly smile. Just then his face did not look hard. He could not tell her why he had held his cousin on the grill so long, that it had been in punishment for what he had done to a defenseless friend of his in the name of love. What he did say suited ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... theology than we intended; and we need not say how much the monstrous inequalities attributed to the combatants affect our estimate of the results of the conflict. The state of man is what it is, because the defenseless Adam and Eve of Milton's imagination yielded to the nearly all-powerful Satan whom he has delineated. Milton has in some sense invented this difficulty; for in the book of Genesis there is no such inequality. The serpent may be subtler than any ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... and working for the destruction of its indispensable ally, the lawgiving State. How is the rebel to be disarmed? Slain it cannot be by Godhead, since it is still Godhead's own very dearest soul. But hidden, stifled, silenced it must be; or it will wreck the State and leave the Church defenseless. Not until it passes completely away from Godhead, and is reborn as the soul of the hero, can it work anything but the confusion and destruction of the existing order. How is the world to be protected against it in the meantime? Clearly Loki's help is needed here: it is the Lie that must, on ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... Antonia Shimerda liked to go with me, and we used to wonder a great deal about these birds of subterranean habit. We had to be on our guard there, for rattlesnakes were always lurking about. They came to pick up an easy living among the dogs and owls, which were quite defenseless against them; took possession of their comfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies. We felt sorry for the owls. It was always mournful to see them come flying home at sunset and disappear under ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... in wait for him, knowing full well that he must return as defenseless as he went away. As soon as Douglass came near the place where the white man was hiding, the latter made a leap at Fred for the purpose of tying him for a flogging. But Douglass escaped and took to the woods, where he concealed himself for a day and a ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... decided Mr. Damon, suddenly. "We want to locate that cave, first of all. Perhaps, when we do find it, we may see some easier way of getting to it than this. And if those diamond makers do attack us—well, I don't believe they'll shoot defenseless men, and they may listen to reason, and give Mr. Jenks his rights—tell him how to make diamonds in return for the money he ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... motives; that you have tried, for a profligate purpose of your own, to damage her reputation, and to deprive her of the protection of Major Milroy's roof; and that, after having been asked to substantiate by proof the suspicions that you have cast on the reputation of a defenseless woman, you have maintained a silence which condemns you in the estimation of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... tribes. Hidden perhaps by his lazy manner, but underneath that yellow thatch of his the shiftless one was a thinker, a deep thinker, and a nobler thinker than the one who sat before Troy town, because his thoughts were to save the defenseless. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... young professors and graduate students. They were soon in possession of the thrilling facts of the past night, and one of them offered to be a prisoner, if a prisoner was desired. When they heard how Bertram Cope had saved the lives of defenseless women in a lonely land, they inclined to smile. Two of them had been present on another shore when Cope had "saved" Amy Leffingwell from a watery death, and they knew how far heroics might be pushed by women who were willing to idealize. Cope saw their smiles and felt that he ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... old chap," he remarked, as he looked down upon the brute. "But, then, it served you right. You attacked the innocent and defenseless, little thinking that such swift vengeance was so near. You were little different, however, from certain two-legged brutes who tried the same game to their own sorrow. You did me a great favor to-day, though, and it's too bad I had to shoot you. I would like to take your ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... mountainside I walk on; this is a bosom, an embrace, in its softness. I tread gently, for I do not wish to stamp or weigh it down, and I marvel: a mountain so tender and defenseless, indulgent like a mother. To think of an ant walking on this! Here and there lie stones, half-covered with moss, not because they have fallen there, but because this is their home, and they have lived ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... bring any officers nor anybody else to this house. I'm all alone. I hope you have more honor than to come and disturb defenseless, unprotected women." ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... most of those killed were soldiers, as Gallipoli had been a staff head-quarters not long before and always has been a natural base for the defense of the Dardanelles, the attack was doubtless justified by the rules of war. It happens, however, that people who live in defenseless, bombarded towns are never interested in the rules of war. So a new and particularly disturbing rumor went flying through ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... paradox, but it is a truism, that, in matters of love, it is the weaker and the defenseless sex that takes the initiative. In ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... fleet hastened home to defend the capital. The Romans landed near the town of Clupea, or Aspis, which they took, and there established their head-quarters. From thence they laid waste the Carthaginian territory with fire and sword, and collected an immense booty from the defenseless country. On the approach of winter, Manlius, one of the Consuls, by order of the Senate, returned to Rome with half of the army, while Regulus remained with the other half to prosecute the war. He carried on his operations with the utmost vigor, and was greatly assisted ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence



Words linked to "Defenseless" :   defenselessness, naked, unarmed, defenselessly, unprotected, defenceless, defencelessly, vulnerable



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