"Devastation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... explosions, rapidly following each other, and mingling their reports with a discordant variety of loud and boisterous sounds. At this time, the whole country appeared to be encircled by a fiery zone, which, gradually contracting its circle by the devastation it had made, seemed as if it would not converge into a point while any thing remained to be destroyed. A little after four o'clock, an immense pillar of smoke rose, in a vertical direction, at some distance northeast of New Castle, for a while, and the sky was absolutely ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... hut among the hills. Every two or three days Malcolm went down to the village and brought back food. He learned that the remains of the army at Ruthven had entirely dispersed, the prince himself seeing the hopelessness of any longer continuing the struggle. Terrible tales of slaughter and devastation by Cumberland's troops circulated through the hills. The duke had fixed his headquarters at Fort Augustus, and thence his troops ravaged the whole country of the clans lately in insurrection. Villages were burned, cattle slaughtered, women subjected to the grossest insult ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... tiger-money and diet allowance for prisoners were the sole exceptions to the rule." Still more formidable foes were found in the herds of wild elephants, which came trooping along in the rear of the devastation caused by the famine. In the course of a few years fifty-six villages were reported as destroyed by elephants, and as having lapsed into jungle in consequence; "and an official return states that forty market-towns throughout the district had been deserted ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... inroad into the bones of the Flying Scud—more beams tapped and hewn in splinters, more planking peeled away and tossed aside—and every night saw us as far as ever from the end and object of our arduous devastation. In this perpetual disappointment, my courage did not fail me, but my spirits dwindled; and Nares himself grew silent and morose. At night, when supper was done, we passed an hour in the cabin, mostly without speech: I, sometimes dozing over a book; Nares, sullenly but busily drilling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broadside battery. Additional coal-bunkers were also constructed, and a magazine and shell-room built in a suitable position, and these and a few other less important changes effected, the transformation was complete, and the little Sumter ready to proceed upon her work of devastation. ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... indignation the vexations which the jealous care of the pleasures of princes causes to be exercised on wretched peasants, forced to suffer the havoc made by game in their fields, without daring to take any other measure to prevent this devastation than that of making a noise, passing the night amongst the beans and peas, with drums, kettles and bells, to keep off the wild boars. As I had been a witness to the barbarous cruelty with which the Comte de Charolois treated these poor people, I had toward the end of Emilius exclaimed ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... fragments. The illustrated papers of that most Christian land which is overcome with the barbarity of sinking old hulks in a channel through which privateers were wont to escape our blockade furnished effective engravings "by our own artist" of the scene. Wholesale plunder and devastation of the chief city of the revolt followed. The rebellion was put down, and put down, we may say, without any unnecessary tenderness, any womanish weakness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... discourage others from following the example of Fossate, he was swift and terrible in his rejoinder. He seized the Citadel, and did by force what had been refused to his request. Setting at liberty the prisoners in durance there, he gave the territory over to devastation by fire ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... devastation caused me much vexation, I could not help laughing at their antics, and at the humble and submissive manner in which I had advanced to pay homage to them. I called my sons, who laughed heartily, and rallied "the prince of the monkeys" without mercy, for not knowing his own subjects. Fritz ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... the direction the shots came from, and they ripped the woods and blew up rocks and trees, and created the most terrific devastation. ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... skirmish we set about burning the houses with great success, setting all in flames till we came to the church of St. Anne's, where we put up for this night, and were joined by Captain Ross, with about one hundred and twenty men of his company." The work of devastation continued the following day, until the forces reached Ange Gardien. August 28, Captain MacDonell with Captain Ross took post at Chateau Richer. September 1st, Chateau Richer was burned, and the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Seagrave, "the wreck and devastation which are here. See how the pride of man is humbled before the ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... everything before them. City, fortress, and battle-field resisted as the eddy whirls. Venice kept her brave colours streaming aloft in a mighty grasp despite the storm, but between Venice and Milan there was this unutterable devastation,—so sudden a change, so complete a reversal of the shield, that the Lombards were at first incredulous even in their agony, and set their faces against it as at a monstrous eclipse, as though the heavens were taking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the edge. The leader of the army of the Elamites had 2005 victory in battle, was master of the battlefield. The survivors of the weapons fled to seek fastnesses. The enemy seized upon gold, robbed with devastation the treasure-cities of the people, Sodoma and Gomorra. Then misery requited the great strongholds; the maidens, 2010 wives, and widows, deprived of friends, departed from their homesteads. The enemy led out with ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... intense and painful to all, for apart from the messenger of death and devastation which was about to be hurled at the Vampire, the Bellevite was in danger of being captured, and had a resolute enemy in front of her. The safety of the pet steamer depended upon the skill and judgment of a mere boy, though everybody on board had entire confidence ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... fears disturbed their security. Under the Spanish rule they were safe and happy. Then comes the gradual gathering of the cloud on the edges of their wilderness, its first fitful and irregular flashes, till it closes over their heads and bursts upon them in universal ruin and devastation. Their heroic resistance to the invasion of the United States troops follows, sublime from its very desperation. A more unequal contest was never fought. On one side one of the mightiest powers on earth, with endless stores of men ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... across an especially big melon McNutt would lug it to the carriage and dump it in. And so angry and energetic was the little man that in a brief space the melon patch was a scene of awful devastation, and the surrey contained all the fruit that ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... importance. In pursuance of the design of the Florentines and the king, the duke of Calabria, by the assistance of the Colonna family (the Orsini had joined the pope), plundered the country about Rome and committed great devastation; while the Florentines, with Niccolo Vitelli, besieged and took Citta di Castello, expelling Lorenzo Vitelli, who held it for the pope, and placing Niccolo ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the blighting touch of the vandal shells. The trees were shattered, the roads and paths torn up, the ponds filled with debris and the beautiful lawn pitted with craters, but in spite of all this devastation, the flowers and trees were making a brave fight to live. I could not but think, as I wandered through this place, how well the little flowers and the mighty oaks typified the spirit of France and Belgium. Sorely stricken they were—wounded unto death; but with that sublime ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... to observe the sculptures on the monument,—the softly-flowing draperies which seemed more as if they had been moulded with hands than cut with a chisel. He then spoke in grievous terms of the recent devastation by the floods in Switzerland, which had also caused much damage in the plains of Lombardy. He thought that reservoirs ought to be constructed on the sides of the mountains, which would stay the force of the torrents, and hold the water until it could ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... far surpasses it in size. This latter volcano lies in a great central desert termed 'Odaxa-hraun' or 'Misdeed Lava Desert,' covering a space of 1200 square miles, and a most appropriate name it is, for the devastation caused by its last ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... into the mouth of a poor smith who refused to fasten fetters on the fallen minister words which, though probably never spoken, describe with sufficient accuracy Hubert's place in history: "Is he not that most faithful Hubert who so often saved England from the devastation of the foreigners and restored England to England?" Hubert was, as has been well said, perhaps the first minister since the Conquest who made patriotism a principle of policy, though it is easy in the light of later developments to read into his doings ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... when the Chinese captured the city through the treachery of its commander and turned the streets to rivers of blood. The Mohammedans were almost exterminated, and the ruined stone walls testify to the completeness of the Chinese devastation. ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... picture of the Alps, there is presented to our view the devastation of solid rocks by agents natural to the surface of the earth; here is the degradation of mountains in the course of time. Of these ruins plains are formed below; and these plains are continually shifting their place, in affording materials ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... between the unfortunate settlement and the outside world had been cut off so that to send warnings to the communities below had been impossible. Considering the enormity of the catastrophe, it was miraculous that there had not been greater loss of life and wider spread devastation. ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... of the boys had seen pictures in plenty of shell-smashed ruins, but the actuality of the awful devastation made them hold their breath for a moment. To think that such desolate piles of brick and mortar were once rows of human habitations, peopled with men, women and children very much like the men, women and children in their ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... villages there were living people left behind, some hundreds in Nesle and Roye, and, all told, some thousands. They had been driven in from the other villages burning around them, their own villages, whose devastation they wept to see. I met these people who had lived under German rule and talked with many of them—old women, wrinkled like dried-up apples, young women waxen of skin, hollow-eyed, with sharp cheekbones, old peasant farmers and the gamekeepers of French chateaux, and young boys and girls pinched ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... night, listening to the roaring of cannon, and figuring to ourselves the devastation that must have taken place, we find to our amusement that nothing decisive has occurred. The noise last night was mere skirmishing, and half the cannons were fired in the air. In the darkness there was no mark. But though the loss ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... allies, at the present moment, think themselves strong enough to refuse you a suspension of hostilities, what will they do, when they have their twelve hundred thousand soldiers on our territory? The dismemberment of France, the pillage and devastation of the capital, will be, perhaps, the fruit of the rash defence you propose ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the Colonne Vendome where the great Corsican in bronze gazed on a scene of wanton madness never equalled. Not even when drunken Nero mocked at the devastation of the imperial city by the ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... boards flung back anyhow; table drawers and bookcases had been ransacked, and looked it; books rifled in vain were heaped in disorderly hummocks wherever there was room for them; everywhere a vandal hand had been, leaving behind a train of devastation and ruin. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Pacific island nations, the Cook Islands' economic development is hindered by the isolation of the country from foreign markets, lack of natural resources, periodic devastation from natural disasters, and inadequate infrastructure. Agriculture provides the economic base with major exports made up of copra and citrus fruit. Manufacturing activities are limited to fruit-processing, clothing, and handicrafts. Trade deficits are made ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... hand deprecatingly. "The universal complaint, monsieur. It is the one great drawback to our Cause that we have as yet discovered no means of propagating it save only by the theory of devastation. It is only strong men and, I regret to say it, desperate men who can accept the gospel of dynamite. There are teeming millions of others ready enough to blow up society as it is at present constituted, but who shrink from the only ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... country such a crying need for—for twins, if I may put it picturesquely. In each family, in each home where there are no families, let there be two babies where there was one, for thus only can we triumph over the devastation of this war." At this moment the now considerable audience, which had hitherto been silent, broke into a shrill "'Ear, 'ear!" and Mr. Lavender, taking his hand from the acacia branch to silence them, fell off the wall into ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... traces of frenzied devastation grinned, blackened remains of a wilderness of wires, beams, sacks, broken tools, a disorder that took one's breath away and made one dizzy—all steeped in the suffocating stench of combustion, powder smoke, and the pungent, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... Academy. The truth is, it was not the conqueror, as the English pretended, but his exalted ideas of the arts, and of their value to a country, which captivated West, whose peaceful tenets led him to abhor war and devastation. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... feeling ill at ease as he always did in the presence of officialdom. The officer sat at a heavy table which had evidently been the kitchen table of the French peasant people who had originally occupied the poor cottage. Signs of petty German devastation were all about the humble, low-ceiled place, and they seemed to evidence a more loathsome brutality even than did the blighted country which Tom ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... house and lantern erected by James Ross were still in a tolerable state of preservation; but the provisions seemed to have been ransacked by foxes and bears, the recent traces of which were easily distinguished. Men, too, had had something to do with the devastation, for a few remains of Esquimaux huts remained upon the shores of the Bay. The six graves inclosing the remains of the six sailors of the Enterprise and the Investigator were recognisable by a slight swelling of the ground; ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... cherished at the outset of the expedition vanished long before our arrival in Cairo. Egypt was no longer the empire of the Ptolemies, covered with populous and wealthy cities; it now presented one unvaried scene of devastation and misery. Instead of being aided by the inhabitants, whom we had ruined, for the sake of delivering them from the yoke of the beys, we found all against us: Mamelukes, Arabs, and fellahs. No Frenchman was secure of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... measured with his eye the skulls of all who walked through the streets of Berlin. Alas! his own skull is now cleft by the Corsican sword. Four pupils of the University of Jena advance together to encounter the Emperor; at four blows he destroys them all. Blucher rushes to arrest the devastation; Napoleon strikes him to the ground, and is on the point of killing him, but Gneisenau, Ziethen, Bulow, and all the other heroes of the Prussian army, gather round him, and bear the venerable chief to a distance from the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perish in great numbers, and the eagles of the air feast upon their still quivering bodies. The wolf Fenris will now break his bands, the Midgard serpent rise out of her bed in the sea, and Loki, released from his bonds, will join the enemies of the gods. Amidst the general devastation the sons of Muspelheim will rush forth under their leader Surtur, before and behind whom are flames and burning fire. Onward they ride over Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, which breaks under the horses' hoofs. But they, disregarding its fall, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... happiness? Show how the two points of climax in event and feeling balance absolutely but do not sacrifice each other? Are Shakespeare's experiments in bold juxtaposition of extreme fortune and happiness and utterly irretrievable devastation anywhere so poignant as the arrival of Anthonio's letter at the ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... castle ruins which lie scattered about and in the vale below, form a scene of havoc and devastation, at once magnificent and impressive. The towers were blasted with gunpowder, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... the troops these few words from the letter of an officer written to one of his family will convey an idea: "I felt when I first came here that I would like to revenge myself upon these people for the devastation they have brought upon our own beautiful home—that home where we could have lived so happily, and that we loved so much, from which their vandalism has driven you and my helpless little ones. But, though I had such severe wrongs and grievances ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... toil, the wise are full of care; the good-for-nothing seek for nothing, they feed on vegetables, and roam where they list; they wander purposeless like a boat not made fast!' 'The mountain trees,' the text goes on to say, 'lead to their own devastation; the spring (conduces) to its own plunder; and so on." And the more he therefore indulged in reflection, the more depressed he felt. "Now there are only these few girls," he proceeded to ponder minutely, "and yet, I'm unable to treat them ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... men and a crowd of women. The mob had been seen; at least there was positively one person present who had distinguished them in the extreme distance, or rather the cloud of dust which they created; there were dreadful stories of their violence and devastation. It was understood that a body meant to attack Trafford's works, but, as the narrator added, it was very probable that the greater part would cross the bridge and so on to the Moor, where they would hold ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... as barren as Sahara by reason of the devastation that Sheridan had inflicted upon it with the deliberate and merciless strategic purpose of rendering it uninhabitable and in that way making of it a no-thoroughfare for Confederate armies on march toward the country north of the Potomac, or on ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... to speak of the deplorable condition in which the inhabitants had been left by the rival armies, dividing the blame with impartial hand, and moralizing a little, as follows: "A civil war is a dreadful thing; what with the devastation of the rebels, and that of the English and Hessian troops, every part of the country where the scene of the action has been looks deplorable. Furniture is broken to pieces, good houses deserted and almost destroyed, others ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... utter disregard for danger to turn a forlorn hope into victory, and by personal example and incentive to make still richer the honourable traditions of the 17th in the face of such overwhelming odds, and amidst such overaweing devastation. In this action seven officers were killed and five wounded. Of other ranks 41 were killed, ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... current through narrow gorges. At Skardo their united stream is said, even in winter, to be 500 feet wide and nine or ten feet deep. If one of the deep gorges, as sometimes happens, is choked by a landslip, the flood that follows when the barrier finally bursts may spread devastation hundreds of miles away. To the north of the fertile Chach plain in Attock there is a wide stretch of land along the Indus, which still shows in its stony impoverished soil the effects of the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... slave laborers working with a capital in the shape of buildings, mills, fixtures, and implements, which had been accumulating during a century. Under Toussaint there were 290,000 free laborers, many of them just from the army or the mountains, working on plantations that had undergone the devastation of insurrection and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... pestilence or a plague. Moreover, it was lost sight of in the general misery and misfortunes of the times. The Emperor Valerian had just been defeated and taken prisoner by Sapor. Pretenders had started up in nineteen different places for the imperial purple. Banditti had spread devastation in Sicily. Alexandria was disturbed by tumults. Famine and the plague raged for ten years in nearly all parts of the empire. Rome lost by the pestilence five thousand daily, while half the inhabitants of Alexandria ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... during the hot season, as otherwise he would find no shelter. The sugar-cane is his great delight, both as being his favourite food and as affording a high, impervious, and unfrequented situation. These hogs commit great devastation, especially the breeding sows, which not only devour, but cut the canes for litter, and throw them up into little huts, which they do with much art, leaving a small entrance which they stop up at pleasure. Sows ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... moments of the tempest's wrath Sufficed to mark one dreadful path With scenes of devastation; While over piles of wild debris Rose shrieks of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the war!" he murmured, in a sort of wail or whine. "Take notice, comrade, that I weep when I speak of it. If you write anything about me be sure to say that I cried when the war was mentioned. We Germans have been so misjudged. When I think of the devastation of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... the causes of devastation really is a melancholy one. Nor do I see any remedy; the most important causes will always operate. Yet, supposing the constant existence of a highly civilised people, the ravages of time might be repaired, and by defending the finest works of ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... through the West India Islands. And growing confident, a portion of them seem desperately bent on kindling the all-devouring flame in the bosom of our land. Let it once again blaze up to heaven, and another cycle of blood and devastation will dawn upon the world. For our own sake, and for the sake of those infatuated men who are madly driving on the conflagration; for the sake of human nature, we are called on to strain every nerve to arrest it. And be assured our efforts will be bounded only with our being. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... God, his neighbour, and himself, by man Force may be offer'd; to himself I say And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes By devastation, pillage, and the flames, His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites In malice, plund'rers, and all robbers, hence The torment undergo of the first round In different herds. Man can do violence To himself and his own ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... things went confusedly through Jim's mind, as he sat at his club window, staring blankly down at the dreary summer twilight in the street. The club was a temporary wooden building, roomy and comfortable enough, but facing on all four sides the devastation of the great earthquake. Here and there a small brick building stood in the ashy waste, and on the top of Nob Hill the outline of the big Fairmont Hotel rose boldly against the gloom. But, for the most part, the rising hills showed only one ruined brick ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... and seeing the processions. This prevented any lives being lost, as every one ran out of doors at the first shock, which was not very severe. The second, a few minutes afterwards, threw down a great many houses, and others, which continued all night and part of the next day, completed the devastation. The line of disturbance was very narrow, so that the native town a mile to the east scarcely suffered at all. The wave passed from north to south, through the islands of Tidore and Makian, and terminated in Batchian, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... since I heard of the measures which were adopted in consequence of the Bunker's Hill fight;" and at an earlier date he said: "I hope my countrymen (of Virginia) will rise superior to any losses the whole navy of Great Britain can bring on them, and that the destruction of Norfolk and threatened devastation of other places will have no other effect than to unite the whole country in one indissoluble band against a nation which seems to be lost to every sense of virtue and those feelings which distinguish a civilized people from the most barbarous savages." ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... to these pages to dwell further on the military achievements or political intrigues of the times of which we are speaking. Humanity shudders at the perusal of the events of this war. Through the whole of its long period, Germany was a scene of devastation. In its northern and central parts, the ravages of advancing and retreating armies were repeatedly experienced in their utmost horrors: many of its finest towns were destroyed; whole villages depopulated; large territories laid waste. Frequently the women, the children, ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... to strike at long range the gentlemen who formed the escort, the townspeople, the officers of the different cities she passed through, pages, populace, and servants; it was wholesale slaughter, a general devastation. By the time Madame arrived at Paris, she had reduced to slavery about a hundred thousand lovers: and brought in her train to Paris half a dozen men who were almost mad about her, and two who were, indeed, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was the capacity of man to modify nature and exploit society more publicly tested out than in the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the purposeful devastation of jungle life and village life in large parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. Reported in the public press and pictured, live, over radio and television, these latest developments in the ugly record of man's exploitation ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... isolated lodges that the atrocious conspiracy of Philippe [the Duc d'Orleans] and Robespierre was formed? Is it from isolated lodges that those prominent men came forth, who, assembled at the Hotel de Ville, stirred up revolt, devastation, assassination? And is it not in the lodges bound together, co-and sub-ordinated, that the monster Weishaupt established his tests and had ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... suffered at that time more than did Weyanoke. Here, part of Grant's army crossed the James in the march upon Petersburg. While bridges were building, the Federal forces were scattered over the plantation; and when at last they crossed the river, they left devastation behind. ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... woman. No one can realize more than I the devastation and ruin alcohol in its many tempting forms has brought to the human family. Still I solemnly believe that in weakness and deterioration of health, the corset has more to answer for than intoxicating drinks." When asked how far advanced ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Dan to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon;" and of the parallel passages, Micah v. 4 (5); Zech. iii. 10. It is further shown by the connection with what precedes, where great calamity, and the devastation of their whole country had been predicted to Israel,—and by the mention of the vine and fig-tree, which are characteristic of the land of Israel. The words, "For the mouth of the Lord," etc., point out the pledge, which the person ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... concert of sweet sounds; but no human voice awoke the echoes there. It was as if the earth was speaking in thankfulness to its Maker, while man,—ungrateful and unworthy man,—pursuing his ruthless path of devastation and destruction, had left no being to say, "I thank ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale.—Colton. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... dress. And do the honour to the Duke's motto. I saw my little man off on Monday, after expedition over Bank and Tower. Thence to Pym's, Poultry: oysters consumed by dozings. Thence to Purcell's: great devastation of pastry. Thence to Shoreditch, where Sons calmly said: "Never mind, Papa; it is no use minding it. I shall soon be back to you," and so administered comfort to his forlorn Dad.—My salute to the Conquered One, and I am your ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... this matter. The article thus exported will do as much evil there as it would if consumed here. It will spread just as much devastation somewhere, as it would if consumed in your own family, and among your own friends and neighbors. We have only to ask, what would be the effect if it were consumed in your own habitation, in your neighborhood, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... describes how "he ordered the towns and fields of the whole district to be laid waste; the fruits and grain to be destroyed by fire or by water ... thus the resources of a once flourishing province were cut off, by fire, slaughter, and devastation; the ground for more than sixty miles, totally uncultivated and unproductive, remains bare to the present day." This is believed to have been written about 1135, and would give us grounds for believing that the desolation ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... want of trust, and resolved to pay her out in some way. I stood for an hour at the window looking absently at the lightning flashes. Then it grew lighter and lighter outside; at last the clouds parted, and the sun shone forth fresh and bright and as if wondering at the devastation the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the villages for the defense of the ministers. Consequently, the soldiers were able to retire from Loay, Maribohoc, and Loon, but always remained in Inabangan, Jagna, and Tagbilaran—not for the purpose of protecting the ministering fathers, but to prevent all devastation and disorder on the part of those who were not subdued. A general amnesty was granted to all the delinquents who had taken to the mountains. That produced many submissions, although it did not wholly extinguish an evil whose ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... numbers by other outlying bodies of the horde,—who kept falling in at various distances upon the first and second day's march. From sixty to eighty thousand of those who 20 were the best mounted stayed behind the rest of the tribes, with purposes of devastation and plunder more violent than prudence justified or the amiable character of the Khan could be supposed to approve. But in this, as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the 25 malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi. The first tempest of the desolating fury ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims! and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Great waste and devastation were committed by the Spanish soldiery; for, thinking it would be impossible to keep possession of the place, they began to destroy whatever they could not take away. Immense jars of oil were broken, costly furniture shattered to pieces, and magazines of grain broken open and their ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and women wringing their hands. In the high road lay articles of furniture, huddled together, thrown in heaps one on another, and broken into fragments in the fall. A sergeant and company of musketeers were even then in the midst of this pitiful work of devastation, turning the people out of their little thatched cottages and flinging their poor sticks of property out after them. Everywhere were tumult and ruin. Old people were lying on the cold earth by the wayside. They had been born in these houses; they had looked to die in these homes; but houses and homes ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... part of the earth's surface which they have touched. At the beginning of the eleventh century, Asia Minor was one of the most prosperous and highly civilized parts of the world;[320] and the tale of its devastation by the terrible Alp Arslan and the robber chiefs that came after him is one of the most mournful chapters in history. At the end of that century, when the Turks were holding Nicaea and actually had their outposts ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the Army, therefore, is to compel the complete cessation of all its operations and its practical disbandment, and thus to invite hordes of predatory savages from the Western plains and the Rocky Mountains to spread devastation along a frontier of more than 4,000 miles in extent and to deliver up the sparse population of a vast tract of country to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... way for America to be safe from invasion and that is for America to be ready for it. We are not ready today, we never have been ready, yet war may smite us at any time with all its hideous slaughter and devastation. Our vast possessions constitute the richest, the most tempting prize on earth, and no words can measure the envy and hatred that less rich and less favoured nations feel ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... still—Alfred's moral welfare. His early separation from his family would be a sad thing; but not half so fearful as the risk of sending him into the society of the dissolute, or, at best, the careless, where his duty will lie in scenes of bloodshed and devastation, where his employment will be to contrive and execute plans for spreading ruin and wasting life. Can we devote him to an employment like this? Some may represent the matter in a different light, and say that he is promoting ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... until he saw that his work of devastation was well under way, then he led his followers back toward the hills. At sunset he reined in upon the crest of a ridge and looked behind him into the valley. The whole sky was black with smoke, as if a city were ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... policemen one meets at every important corner we climbed the hill and left the motor among the great trees, which are still fortunately preserved. And we stood for a few minutes, gazing over miles and miles of devastation. Then, taking the motor once more, we passed through wrecked and empty villages until we came to the foot of Vimy Ridge. Notre Dame de Lorette rose against the sky-line ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... opposite side, but now the Huns in the foolish arrogance of their hearts must needs swarm over the whole valley, and offer themselves and their works as targets for our searching gun-fire. On the summit of their ridge and due east of Hebuterne is Puisieux-au-Mont, in almost the same condition of devastation as Gommecourt, while further beyond, the trees of Achiet can be seen. During the summer months those who wished could reckon up the times of arrival and departure of trains at the German railhead at Achiet, for the smoke from the engines could be distinctly ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... gradual encroachments of that irresistible power had in the course of two centuries buried a large portion of the ancient Borough beneath the waves. Two existing maps of the town, one of about 1590, the other about 1790, show how extensive this devastation had been. This cause, and others arising from it, the gradual decay of the shipping and fishing industries, had left the town in the main a poor and squalid place, the scene of much smuggling and other lawlessness. Time and the ocean wave had left only "two parallel ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... it has caused in the world, diminish much of its merit in their eyes. When they would oppose the popular notions on this head, they always paint out the evils, which this supposed virtue has produced in human society; the subversion of empires, the devastation of provinces, the sack of cities. As long as these are present to us, we are more inclined to hate than admire the ambition of heroes. But when we fix our view on the person himself, who is the author of all this mischief, there is something so dazzling in his character, the mere contemplation ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... conflagration, pillage, devastation—who knows? A Mohammedan writer of the thirteenth century merely mentions it as "a great city of ruins"; and so it lay, deserted and forgotten, until a German traveller visited it in 1806; and so it lies to-day, with all ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... enough to take his leave, and hurried into the town. In front of the church he found a great many people assembled to hear his report of his interview with the Griffin. When they found that he had not come to spread ruin and devastation, but simply to see his stony likeness on the church, they showed neither relief nor gratification, but began to upbraid the Minor Canon for consenting to conduct the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... passed with such rapidity as scarcely to leave the impression of reality upon the mind. As soon as the sun rose in the morning, Victoire looked out for the turrets of the Chateau de Fleury, and she saw that they were safe—safe in the midst of the surrounding devastation. Nothing remained of the superb palace of Chantilly but the white arches of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Iroquois had hitherto been a standing obstacle to the progress of the young nation. Wherever they appeared, utter devastation followed, and as no precaution could prevent, and no foresight anticipate their incursions, life itself was felt by the inhabitants to hang merely on a thread. At length, sixteen of the colonists headed by ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... husbandmen fled for refuge to the towns till these in fear of famine shut their gates against them. Then in their despair they threw themselves into the woods and became brigands in their turn. So terrible was the devastation that two hostile bodies of troops failed at one time even to find one another in the desolate Beauce. Misery and disease killed a hundred thousand people in Paris alone. At last the cessation of the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... ties were, you informed me that it was "what baseness," or words to that effect; and so on, until I hardly know where I am at. (Catches sight of the chest.) Hello! How did that happen to escape the general devastation? What are you going to do ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... do" she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly. "Will you let me go, Captain Carey? Or must I call my servants to my assistance? ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... Gaskell jumped up from his seat, saying, "Now we shall have news!" and instantly the whole party flocked round me, eager to know the truth as to the wild rumour which was all they had as yet heard of the devastation wrought by the dynamiters in London on the previous day. My morning's work had, of course, qualified me to satisfy their curiosity, but the questions they poured in upon me were so numerous and so eager that I was at last obliged to ask them to sit down, and ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... believer may be like a solitary oak in the forest—all his compeers cut down—tempest after tempest has sighed and swept amid the branches—tree by tree has succumbed to the blast—there may be nothing but wreck and ruin and devastation all around. Friend after friend has departed; some have altered towards him; kindness may have given way to alien looks and estranged affection; others are removed by distance—old familiar faces and scenes have given place to new ones;—others ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... she said, and then dropped the shielding hand, and stood before me with twitching lips and death in her eyes. I saw in a flash the devastation that had been wrought; but, thank God, I pierced beneath it to the anguish in her heart. The pity—the awful, poignant pity—of it smote me. Everything that was man in me surged towards her. What she saw in my eyes I know not; but in ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... himself as authorized so to do by the rules of war: that he would set fire to all palaces, houses, and gardens; sack all the towns and villages, without sparing the most inconsiderable cottage, and subject the country to all the horrors of war and devastation. He conjured his serene highness to reflect on these particulars, and begged he would not lay him under the necessity of taking steps so contrary to his own personal character, as well as to the natural humanity of the French nation." To this letter, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the bush or tree, and throw on it a little brimstone. The vapour of the sulphur, and the suffocating fume arising from the charcoal, will not only destroy all the insects, but prevent the plants from being infested with them any more that season. Black cankers, which commit great devastation among turnips, are best destroyed by turning a quantity of ducks into the field infested by them. Every fourth year these cankers become flies, when they deposit their eggs on the ground, and thus produce maggots. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... re-entered what had been his home, its bareness made his heart sink. An hour or two had sufficed for this devastation; nothing remained upon the uncarpeted floors but the needments he would carry with him into the wilderness, such few evidences of civilisation as the poorest cannot well dispense with. Anger, revolt, a sense of outraged love—all manner of confused passions had sustained him throughout this ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... be affirmed, are so far from the truth as that which makes the Iroquois a band of treacherous and ferocious ravagers, whose career was marked everywhere by cruelty and devastation. The clear and positive evidence of historical facts leads to a widely different conclusion. It is not going too far to assert that among all uncivilized races the Iroquois have shown themselves to be the most faithful of allies, the most placable of enemies, ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... Mrs. Jerry's help, to make the bond of mutual liking serve very well in the place of intelligible speech. For another, the don fairly committed himself to the promise of a peon or two to help in the further devastation of the trees upon the Picardo mountain slope behind the little, natural meadow, which Jerry Simpson had so calmly appropriated ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... front seat beside Uncle Cradd, both of them in deep converse about a line in Tom Moore, while Uncle Cradd bumbled the air of "Drink to me only with thine eyes" in a lovely old bass, I should have been softly and pensively weeping at the thought of the devastation of my father's fortune, of the poverty brought down upon his old age, and about my fate as a gay social being going thus into exile; but I wasn't. Did I say that I was sitting alone in state upon the faded rose leather of those ancestral cushions? That was not the case, for upon the seat beside ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and other valuables. I ordered them to mount and march instantly, this was about nine or ten o'clock, Monday morning. I proceeded to Mr. Levi Waller's, two or three miles distant. I took my station in the rear, and as it 'twas my object to carry terror and devastation wherever we went, I placed fifteen or twenty of the best armed and most to be relied on, in front, who generally approached the houses as fast as their horses could run; this was for two purposes, to prevent their escape and strike terror to the inhabitants—on this account I never ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... Northumbrians looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done, shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose the crown than gain it so—a protest which James must have thought a piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion was too solicitous for the welfare ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of such a concession being only to put an end to a bloody war more promptly, and by a remedy as violent as a devastation (aussi violent qu'une devastation), to insure tranquillity of neighborhood between two rival and newly reconciled nations, it necessarily follows that every act on the part of the subjects of the republic of Poland, contrary to such intention, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... moment, in almost every newspaper in the country,—scientific journals among the number,—abusing and ridiculing the poor farmer for destroying the birds that destroy his grain; and telling him, if he were to let the birds alone, they would eat the insects that commit far greater devastation on his precious cerealia! Conceited theorists! it has never occurred to them, that the victims of the farmer's fowling-piece—the birds that eat corn—would not touch an insect if they were starving! The farmer does not make war on the insect-eating ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... called in the Latin translation. Dupouy in "Le Moyen Age Medical," says that it commenced in the village of Peleuse, in Egypt, and followed a double course, one branch going to Alexandria and the other to Palestine. It reached Constantinople in the Spring of 543, and produced the greatest devastation wherever it appeared. In the course of the succeeding half century this epidemic became pandemic and spread over all the inhabited earth. The epidemic lasted four months in Constantinople, from 5000 to 10,000 people dying each day. In his "History of France," from 417 to ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... empire and established a republic. But throughout this period, disturbances and guerrillas scarcely ever ceased, while the gradual but sure devastation of the missions and the behavior of the authorities towards the beloved padres heightened the indignation of all noble-minded citizens and increased the unpopularity of the governors and authorities, most of ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... eminence that offered shelter. But shelter was not needed. The storm was clearly defined. Its limits were as distinctly marked by its Creator as if it had been a living intelligence sent forth to put a belt of desolation round the world; and, although the edge of devastation was not five hundred yards from the rock behind which the hunters were stationed, only a few drops of ice-cold rain fell ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... great development whose evidences to-day on every hand attest its magnitude. We have felt the fierce play of volcanic effort, lifting new continents of opportunity from the infertile sea, without any devastation of pre-existing fields of human toil and harvest. But it still remains to elucidate the actual thing done; to reduce it to concrete data, and in reducing, to unfold ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... withstand the shots sent from some of the guns which have been invented, and all might be destroyed by torpedoes. We could hardly believe that some of the ships we saw were fit to go to sea. The most remarkable was the Devastation. Her free-board—that is, the upper part of her sides— is only a few feet above the water. Amidships rises a round structure supporting what is called "a hurricane-deck." This is the only spot where the officers ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... strong mound has been broken down, the waters whose amassed volume it opposed, rush forward, and, in their impetuous course, spread afar terror and devastation. On visiting the scene where this has occurred, we naturally cast our eyes in every direction, to discover the mischief which they have occasioned by their irruption; so, then, on reaching the grand theatre of the French revolution, did I look about for the traces of the havock it had left behind; ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... yawning chasm was not the same. It circled wider, redder, deeper. It was a weird, ghastly mouth of hell. Gale stood fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its somber portent an unshakable ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... about 100 m. till it debouches into the Bay of Bengal. During the latter part of its course this noble river expands into a large estuary containing many islands, the principal of which is that of Dakshin Shahbazpur. The islands on the sea-front are exposed to devastation by cyclonic storm-waves. The Arial Khan, a branch of the Ganges, enters the district from the north, and flows generally in a south-easterly direction till it falls into the estuary of the Meghna. The main channel of the Arial Khan is about ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... themselves at the table, which Mirandolina had decorated with a number of wax candles stuck in the cut-glass bottles of the Count's dressing-case. Here they were speedily joined by the actress's monkey and parrot, who had soon spread devastation among the dishes. While Miranda was restoring order by boxing the monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup. The ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... torches in their hands, but durst not meddle with them. There being near his Golden House some granaries, the site of which he exceedingly coveted, they were battered as if with machines of war, and set on fire, the walls being built of stone. During six days and seven nights this terrible devastation continued, the people being obliged to fly to the tombs and monuments for lodging and shelter. Meanwhile, a vast number of stately buildings, the houses of generals celebrated in former times, and even then still decorated with the spoils of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... battle was over by eleven in the morning, and in the forenoon I caused our engineers to burn a part and to sink a part of the vaunted bridge of the Khalsa army, across which they had boastfully come once more to defy us, and to threaten India with ruin and devastation."[21] ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... this was especially the case with the heavy guns, the lighter and more manageable pieces were better aimed, and the round shot continually struck the men-of-war but failed to penetrate their iron sides. On the other hand, the huge shot and shell of the ironclads committed terrible devastation on the batteries. These were for the most part constructed of stone, which crumbled and fell in great masses under the tremendous blows of the English shot ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... furniture, books, and pictures; the stark and staring walls, with their stained and torn paper, were bared to the gaze of every chance passerby. Suddenly, to the yearning heart of the onlooker, a miracle appeared. The scene of devastation disappeared; there was a fragrance of honeysuckle and yellow roses in the sharp air and, in a dim, sweet, old, sheltered room stood a little girl with patched gingham gown and long smooth-hanging braids ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... It has been much talked of lately and widely endorsed by logical persons. It is perfectly in accord with the principle of self-interest and the rule of reason. There is no rational justification for the immense loss of life, suffering, destruction and devastation caused by war. The only trouble about the principle is that, as it deals with human beings, there is with this, as with other questions of conduct, that same unknown factor—the spiritual side of man's nature. One of the most fundamental feelings of manhood—true for a nation, as it is for ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... thing of the past. Fire surrounded and smoke rose in the green underbush. In a wide circuit the axes were still crashing. Those very advantages for which the place was chosen, it had been the king's first idea to abolish; and in the midst of this devastation there stood already a good-sized maniap' and a small closed house. A mat was spread near by for Tembinok'; here he sat superintending, in cardinal red, a pith helmet on his head, a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... puny earth-dwellers. The men raised great rocks in the air and threw them with all their strength. Jerry struggled with a mammoth boulder,—Winslow leaping to his aid. They toppled it over to start an avalanche of devastation that swept into the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Staffer Zuter his pot, which the honest fellow had left with us for a while, and set them on the fire for supper against my child and the maid should return. It was not long before they came through the coppice and told me of the fearful devastation which Satan had made in the village and manse by the permission of all-righteous God. My child had gathered together a few books, which she brought with her, above all, a Virgilius and a Greek Bible. And after she had told me ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... had fallen with peculiar fury on the border provinces of Leon and Estremadura, which, from their local position, had necessarily been kept in constant collision with the enemy. Its baneful effects were long visible there, not only in the general devastation and distress of the country, but in the moral disorganization, which the licentious and predatory habits of soldiers necessarily introduced among a simple peasantry. In a personal view, however, the war had terminated ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... friend, who had returned to his fatherland with a fortune acquired beyond the Atlantic. Our talented author has certainly not lost sight of the fact that Germany, as a whole, has as little recovered from the devastation of the Thirty Years' War as the eastern districts of Prussia have recovered from the effects of the war with France in the present century. Let the faults and failings of our national German character be what they may (and we should like ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... maliciously smiling at her own mischief. The land was close to me, and the vessel drifted on shore. I found that I was at the Isle of France, having, in the course of twelve hours thus miraculously shifted my position from one side of the globe unto the other. I found the island in a sad state of devastation; the labour of years had been destroyed in the fury of an hour—the crops were swept away—the houses were levelled to the ground—the vessels in fragments on the beach—all was misery and desolation. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... apprehensions; for he conjectured that the Moors were about to renew that system of defence which had been so destructive at the first onset. His suspicions were well grounded. Incontinently another ominous shout rent the air, and the tremendous fragments again rolled down, spreading devastation wherever they passed. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... will be punctually kept by Ritterdom." Here we see the strange stern, medieval, crusading atmosphere which lies behind the unpleasant combinations, so familiar to us to-day in France and Belgium, of Uhlans and religion, of culture and violence, of "Germanisation" and devastation. When we hear the German professors of to-day preaching of the spread of German culture by the German arms, and when we feel disgust at the exaggerated religious phraseology which pervades the Kaiser's oratory and seems to accord so ill with his policy ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern, |
