"Decapitated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Boxers, jubilant over their success of the night before, trooped out to the American Board compound in the south suburb. The two ladies took refuge in the chapel, while Mr. Pitkin remained outside to do what he could to keep back the mob. But he was speedily shot and then decapitated. His body, together with the bodies of several of the members of the Meng family, was thrown into a hastily-dug pit just outside the wall of the compound, but his head was borne in triumph to the Provincial Judge, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... with the glare of "a panther," the Queen is large-hearted. The guards, it is true, arrive as the curtain falls; but those readers who have wasted their tender emotion on a couple of afflicted prisoners or decapitated young persons, whom mother Nature can easily replace, are mistaken. If the Queen does not die that night, she will rise next morning after sleepless hours, haggard, not fifty but eighty years old, and her passion ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of glass it crashed, neatly decapitated a rare, choice exotic, the pride of Mr. Alastair Kenneth MacIlwraith, head gardener, released from its hold a hanging basket, struck a large pot (perched high in a state of unstable equilibrium), and passed out on the other side with something ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... majority in Old Japan. Theirs was the happiness of ignorance and simple, undeveloped lives. Accustomed to tyranny, they did not think of rebellion against it. Familiar with brutality and suffering, they felt nothing of its shame and inhumanity. The sight of decapitated bodies, the torture of criminals, the despotism of husbands, the cringing obedience of the ruled, the haughtiness of the rulers, the life of hard toil and narrow outlook, were all so usual that no thought of escape from ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... a public man are rarely in combination. Intelligence, clear-sightedness, virtue, character, independence, leisure, fortune, consideration already acquired, and devotion,—all this is seldom united in one individual. An entire society is not decapitated with impunity. Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive. The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed the form of a ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... same village, was burned down. The women were able to escape. Four men who were working on this estate must have been all killed. The bodies of two of them, Victor Chaudre and Thomas Prosper, were discovered two months later buried together near the buildings which had been burned. Both had been decapitated, and Thomas's head was ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... grafted. At the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, the operation is very successfully performed on old vines as follows: Preparatory to grafting, the earth is removed from around the stock to a depth of two or three inches. The vines are then decapitated at the surface of the ground and at right angles with the axis of the stock. If the grain is straight, the cleft can be made by splitting with a chisel, but more often it will have to be done with a thin-bladed saw through the center of the stock for at ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... to have preached in Arabia, in Persia, in Abyssinia, to have baptized among the Iberi, the races of the Caucasus, and, like Saint Thomas, in India, but there is no authentic evidence to show this. According to some writers he was decapitated; others say he was flayed alive and then crucified, near the frontiers ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... irrepressible shudders, she saw before her the very implement with its ghastly load scraped up from the ground. Mrs Verloc closed her eyes desperately, throwing upon that vision the night of her eyelids, where after a rainlike fall of mangled limbs the decapitated head of Stevie lingered suspended alone, and fading out slowly like the last star of a pyrotechnic display. Mrs ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of the Lao-tsze sect inhabiting prisons under the jurisdiction of the Principal Bonze were decapitated, and the P.B. laid his own head upon his pillow with some approach to peace of mind, trusting that the knowledge of the Elixir of ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... charitable death. Others were lashed with ropes and cast, almost dead, into the sea; or, spiked hand and foot to the deck, were exposed mercilessly to the hot rays of the sun until the features were distorted into unrecognizability; some were placed before a gun and thus decapitated, while others were tied back to back and thrown into the waters. In fact, so low were these villainous wretches in their degradation that only the most cruel and cunningly devised torture could satiate their bloodthirsty cravings—human hyenas, who found rest only in the pains and shrieks of ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... the Armenian convent; standing in the midst of gardens, it has a most cheerful appearance. It is asserted to be built on the site where St. James was decapitated, an event commemorated by numerous pictures in the church; but most of the pictures, both here and in the remaining churches, are bad beyond conception. Like the Greeks, the Armenian priests enjoy the reputation of thoroughly understanding how ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... as a great attempt, yet surely it was nothing, since their is no part of the Viper poisonnable save only its head and its guts. As for the flech of it, any man may eat it wtout hazard, for the same very charlatan promised that ere we left the toune, having decapitated and disbowelled it, he sould eat the body of it before all that pleased to look on, which he might easily do. For as litle as he showed himself to care for it, yet he having irritate and angred it, either by his brizing[172] it in his mouth or by his unattentive handling ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... goat sacrificed to the goddess Kali, are believed to be temporarily possessed by her spirit, and thus enabled to prophesy.[56] Malayan exorcists still expel demons while they suck the blood from a decapitated fowl.[57] ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... seen all the examinations and the entire confessions, ordered that the delinquents should be drawn through the streets at the tails of horses and afterward decapitated. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... ill-fated engineer who was legally responsible for the mishap was in Paris at the time; he returned in all haste. After seeing the mischief, he tried to throw himself into an Arab well, and, baulked of this, lay down at night under a passing train and was decapitated. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Turkish minister generally loses his power and his head at the same time; the English minister carries on his business without a head at all. For the performance of his duty the former is decapitated—the latter is incapacitated. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... delays were unknown—had not Parysatis interfered. Realizing her son's imminent peril, she rushed forward and, clasping him in her arms, wound her long flowing hair about him, and pressed his neck to hers in such a way that the executioner must have beheaded her with the same stroke with which he decapitated Cyrus. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Church of the English Martyrs. On the 5th of January, 1715, we are told that sixteen rebels "were hanged upon Gallows Hill, for high treason and conspiracy." In the following year "42 condemned prisoners of all religions were hanged and decapitated at Preston;" and amongst them were five belonging Preston and the neighbourhood. They were "Richard Shuttleworth, of Preston, Esq.; Roger Moncaster, of Garstang, attorney; Thomas Cowpe, of Walton-le-Dale; William Butler, of Myerscough, Esq.; William ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... amount, would individuals be morally bound to submit to such a decree if they could contrive to evade it, any more than sexquipedalians would be bound to lay their heads on the block in obedience to a law directing everybody six feet high to be decapitated. All such partial legislation would be tyrannical, and circumstances must be very peculiar indeed to make submission to tyranny a duty. But of all conceivable legislation, none could possibly be more ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... decapitated while in this hibernating condition, the action of the heart is not affected for some time, a second life seeming to outlive the one taken. An experiment has been made in which the brain of the sleeper was removed, then the entire spinal cord, but for two hours hardly any change was noticeable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... the Army of the Potomac to press south. It may take a time, but if we keep a stiff upper lip we're bound to have the rebels whipped. I reckon they're whipped already in spite of Lee. I've heard of a turtle that an old nigger man decapitated. Next day he was amusing himself poking sticks at it and the turtle was snapping back. His master comes along and says to him, 'Why, Pomp, I thought that turtle was dead.' 'Well, he am dead, massa,' says Pompey, 'but the critter don't know enough ter ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... is again seen rising above the level of the window-sill, and another and another follows, till the three, as if decapitated, heads ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... combine, and each choose one whom they should privately guillotine when the opportunity offered. With the idea of paying a high compliment to Troubridge, who had so splendidly protected the Royalists, fought the French, and subdued the revolutionists, they made him the recipient of a decapitated head which had proudly sat on the shoulders of a revolutionist. This trophy was actually sent to him with his basket of breakfast grapes. In making the present the gallant fisherman conveyed his compliments to the Admiral, and reminded him ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... these had done their work, and the bungler paused amid his wasteful debris to watch his toil's result, first was heard a rustle of leaves, as if a passing whirlwind had alighted there; next came the crack of bursting sinews; then the groan of a great riving spasm, and the tree, decapitated at its foot, crashed to earth, with a vain attempt to clutch for support at the stiff, unpitying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... their credibility nevertheless, and in justification of this opinion, he quotes p. 457, the contradictions of the historians of the execution of the Marquis of Argyle; a fact nevertheless not doubted. But the cases are by no means parallel; that a rebel should be decapitated is a fact of notorious frequency in British history and very probable in itself, and as it is a fact without consequence, no man will be inclined to doubt it, if it be affirmed by history, notwithstanding some contradictions in the accounts of the circumstances ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... may not enter but an image of the goddess can be seen from a side door. In the depths of the shrine is said to be a cleft in the rock, adored as the Yoni of Sakti. In front of the temple are two posts to which a goat is tied, and decapitated daily at noon. Below the principal shrine is the temple of Bhairavi. Human sacrifices were offered here in comparatively recent times, and it is not denied that they would be offered now if the law ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ball against the criminal's shoulders, another cuts it off with a wooden knife, a basket receives it below, then one of them takes it out, and, holding it aloft shouts 'Behold the head of a traitor!' It seems that four criminals had been safely decapitated, and Dolly was being led to the fatal block, when she slipped her foot and fell to the ground, overturning Harry and a chair in ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... yelping savages; and who knows how it all would have terminated? Forty spears against forty guns—but how many guns would not have decamped? Perhaps all, and I should have been left with my boy gunbearers to have my jugular deliberately severed, or to be decapitated, leaving my head to adorn a tall pole in the centre of a Kigogo village, like poor Monsieur Maizan's at Dege la Mhora, in Uzaramo. Happy end of an Expedition! And the Doctor's Journal lost for ever—the fruits ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... when the British public were intense believers in bear's grease as the producer of hair, and no one troubled himself or herself to investigate the precise configuration of the exhibited animal and compare it when hung up, decapitated, and shorn of its feet, with the ordinary well-fatted domestic pig, albeit the illusion was kept up by its being possible to see through the gratings outside the shop-window Ramball's black bear still "all alive-o," parading ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... him in real life! A story—to be called The Passing of Polonius—in which a king issues a decree condemning to death every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank, and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects his own tediousness is ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... prepared; Made war when angry and made peace when scared. New taxes he inspired; new laws he made; Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed, In short, he ruled so well that all who'd not Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot Made the whole country with his praises ring, Declaring he was every inch a king; And the High Priest averred 't was very odd If one so competent ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... as the doll's basin of real water was cast forth by the cruel charmer, poor Chan expired in such strong convulsions that his head rolled down among the audience. Miss Ki Hi peeped to see what had become of her victim, and the shutter decapitated her likewise, to the great delight of the children, who passed around the heads, pronouncing a ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... dots crawling along across the dome of light. Out in one of the public squares of the city great crowds of people were gathering. Cornelia knew the reason of the concourse—the heads of two noble Romans, just decapitated, were being exposed to the gibes and howls of the coarse Greek and Egyptian mob. And Cornelia wished that she were herself a swallow, and might fly up into the face of the sun, until the earth ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... various princes and nobles who had been captured. A son of Temin-Umman was executed with his father. Several grand-sons of Merodach-Baladin suffered mutilation, A Chaldaean prince and one of the chieftains of the Clambulu had their tongues torn out by the roots. Another of the Gambulu chiefs was decapitated. Two of the Temin-Umman's principal officers were chained and flayed. Palaya, a grandson of Merodach-Baladan, was mutilated. Asshur-bani-pal evidently hoped to strike terror into his enemies by these cruel, and now unusual, punishments, which, being inflicted for the most part upon ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... rifle and issued from camp alone, feeling so reduced in strength that my mind involuntarily reverted to the extremity I had been brought to by my youthful folly in coming into such a desert waste. About three hundred yards from the camp I saw two teal ducks; I levelled my rifle, and handsomely decapitated one. This was a temptation to my constancy; appetite and conscientiousness had a long strife as to the disposal of the booty. I reflected that it would be but an inconsiderable trifle to the mess of four hungry men, while ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... whatever may be said against his methods, he certainly succeeded. At the end of a few months' campaign, every single brigand, and all their friends and relations, were wiped off the face of the earth—together with a very considerable number of innocent persons. The high roads were lined with decapitated bandits, the town walls decked with their heads; some villages had to be abandoned, on account of the stench; the Crati river was swollen with corpses, and its banks whitened with bones. God alone knows the cruelties which were ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... without difficulty. We parted a little coldly. He had decapitated his brassy on the occasion of his striking Dorsetshire instead of his ball, and he was slow in recovering from the complex emotions which such ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... wan o' thim things, is it?" he said, looking at the writhing decapitated viper. "Shure I thought it was the jumping sort that springs up at yer ois, and stings ye before yer know where ye are. There was a cousin, of me mother's went to live in Hampshire, and she got bit by wan ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... hard all her life, and her hands were red and big-jointed. There was no pleasure in watching their clever manipulation of the little, steel hook. If it had been the Little Doctor's hands, now—Chip turned again to the decapitated, pale blue vine with its pink flowers and no leaves. The Countess counted off "chain 'leven" and began in a constrained tone, such as some well-meaning people employ against helpless ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... clergyman, or what not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast; then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, (even including, however he managed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... clear for an instant, and I caught sight of a bare leg disappearing into a big black box, and a moment later I saw Hassel's smiling face on the top of the box. A shudder passed through my frame — he looked as if he had been decapitated. On further consideration, his features were too smiling; the head could not be severed from the body yet. Now the steam began to clear away little by little, and at last one could see clearly what was going on. I had to laugh; it was all very easy to understand ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Abdallah, pacha of St. Jean d'Acre, nearly died from fright at seeing him in a dream, standing erect on his mountain. In the pictures of the Christian churches, he is surrounded with decapitated ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Finally, on retiring to bed and being pressed by the rest of his dormitory for a story, he embarked upon the history of a certain Pollock and an individual referred to throughout as the Porroh Man, the former of whom caused the latter to be decapitated, and was ever afterwards haunted by his head, which appeared to him all day and every day (not excepting Sundays and Bank Holidays) in an upside-down position and wearing a horrible grin. In the end Pollock very sensibly committed suicide (with ghastly ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... placed beneath the fatal ax. Madame Roland, without the slightest change of color, or the apparent tremor of a nerve, saw the ponderous instrument, with its glittering edge, glide upon its deadly mission, and the decapitated trunk of her friend was thrown aside to give place for her. With a placid countenance and a buoyant step, she ascended the platform. The guillotine was erected upon the vacant spot between the gardens ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate your stronghold as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear away the invaders. Their bite is very painful, and they take such tenacious hold, that rather than quit their grip, they allow themselves to be decapitated and leave their head and formidable forceps ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... voluntary, but mainly reflex, and is performed in the most natural and best manner without the interference of the will. A vast number of complex movements are reflex. As good an instance as can be given is the often-quoted one of a decapitated frog, which cannot of course feel, and cannot consciously perform, any movement. Yet if a drop of acid be placed on the lower surface of the thigh of a frog in this state, it will rub off the drop with the upper surface of the foot of the same leg. If this foot be cut off, it ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... drawn to this omission by the discovery of the decapitated man found at Nuneham Regis ("N. & Q.," Vol. vi., p. 386.), and from observing that the then proprietor of the place appears to have been half-sister to Lady Russell, viz. daughter of the fourth Lord Southampton, by his second wife Frances, heiress ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... political "boss." The minister of the reformed faith became God's mouthpiece upon earth and inculcated an unbending puritanism in daily life. "No more festivals, no more jovial reunions, no more theaters or society; the rigid monotony of an austere rule weighed upon life. A poet was decapitated because of his verses; Calvin wished adultery to be punished by death like heresy, and he had Michael Servetus [Footnote: A celebrated Spanish reformer.] burned for not entertaining the same opinions as himself upon the mystery of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... sword everywhere, but they were eventually repulsed and driven out by Stephen. In the course of this campaign he took a son of the Tartar chief prisoner, and when envoys came to treat for his liberation he ordered the prince to be decapitated in their presence, a deed which may have been justified as a lesson to the ruthless tribe who had invaded his country. Not content with this, however, he impaled all the envoys but one, whose nose and ears he cut off, and sent him back to his ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... the candle carried by the guide, which told their own story. In the centre of this dreary vault was a well whose water was level with the river, into which it opened some twenty feet from the surface, and into which the decapitated bodies of the criminals were cast and left to float away with the ebb and flow of the Jumna's tide. The bed of the river showed that at certain seasons it must be at least half a mile in width, but it was a meagre stream when we crossed it that ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... past that is gone forever. Inscribed copies of books from Goethe and Schiller and Schlegel and Byron are in the cases, and on the walls are to be seen pictures of Necker, Rocco, De Stael and Albert, the firstborn son, decapitated in a duel by a swinging stroke from a German saber, on account of a king and two ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... who were ready to study my work in good faith, I have nevertheless not succeeded in establishing legal proof that Gurn is Fantomas. Deibler and the Public Prosecutor, and people generally, think that it is merely Gurn who is going to be decapitated now. I may have secured this man's condemnation, but none the less he has beaten me and deprived me of the satisfaction of having brought him, Fantomas, to the scaffold! I have only consigned Gurn to the scaffold, and that is ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... attendants, to go to Lower Sandusky, and there execute the sentence which they had pronounced upon him. But what was their surprise and disappointment, when they arrived at the place of encampment, where they found their trusty friends scalped and decapitated, and that their prisoner had made his escape?—Chagrined beyond measure, they immediately separated, and went in every direction in pursuit of their prey; but after having spent a number of days unsuccessfully, they ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... medicated draughts, cuts and lacerates himself till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds, or drains the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends; there is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Soldan and his forty followers rode into camp with their prisoner there was a jubilant outcry, and the demand was made that the foreign dog be instantly decapitated, but the Emir smiled and, holding ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... a decapitated frog is irritated, there is an instant contraction of the corresponding limb; if the irritation is intense the other limb also contracts. These motions indicate the existence, in some part of the spinal cord, of a distinct nerve-centre, capable of converting ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... light, he transfers to the States-General presided over by himself, but he is equally sovereign in either case. So with the Pope and the Council. Let us be content to know, in the words of Thomassin,[19] that 'the Pope in the midst of his Council is above himself, and that the Council decapitated of its ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... in his own ship by stabs with a dagger by the chief constable of the fleet, who was sent to do this by Ferdinand Magellan in a boat with certain men. The said three ships having thus been recovered, five days later Ferdinand Magellan ordered Gaspar de Quexixada to be decapitated and quartered; he was captain of one of the ships and was one of those ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... owner. Further on in the interior our men have wrecked everything like vandals. Everything has been searched. Outside, throughout the country, the spectacle of the inhabitants who have been shot defies any description. They have been shot at such short range that they are almost decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their hiding places. The men shot; the women and children locked into a convent, from which shots were fired. And, for this reason, the convent is about to be set fire ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the others. The mere wish was sufficient—Rome fell at his feet. The patent of divinity was in the genuflections of a nation. At once he had a temple, priests and flamens. Inexhaustible Greece was sacked again. The statues of her gods, disembarked at Rome, were decapitated, and on them the head ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... sometimes I have seen it eight feet long. Before now, I have seen a couple dining near the corner of a room, with their roll of bread thrown like a cane against the wall, and as often as they wanted a fresh slice, the roll was very coolly brought over and decapitated. The Frenchman eats little meat, but enormously of the staff of life. The chocolate and coffee which are to be had in the French cafes, are very delicious, and though after a fair and long trial I never could like French cookery as well as the English, yet I would not for a moment pretend that ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... door from the hall opened about a foot, a fat head in a gaunt bonnet protruded through the crevice, having rather a decapitated look, and ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... de Montmorency was one of the two daughters of that brave and unfortunate Count de Montmorency Bouteville, who, the victim of a false point of honour and of an outrageous passion for duelling, was decapitated on the Place de Greve, on the 21st of June, 1627. She was sister of Francois de Montmorency, Count de Bouteville, better known as the illustrious Marshal de Luxembourg. Born in 1626, she had been married in 1645 ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... brutality, cruelty, selfishness, and all infuriate and debased passion—that damnable magazine of disease physical and moral. It is undeniable that there were many there whose faces were passport to the Court of Lucifer—murderers, and dire malefactors; but better to have decapitated them than to have committed them to the slow torture of this citadel of woe. There were inmates who had been immured for years—inmates for debt whose hair had whitened in the fetid imprisonment, whose laugh had ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the bent stems of the flowers. Then there was a quick jerk, and one violet was decapitated. "One for you, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... minister, the latter had to be tied to a tree by his companions, to prevent the devil in his infernal fury from destroying him. This, however, happened but rarely. The objects of sacrifice were goats, fowls, and swine, which were flayed, decapitated, and laid before the idol. They performed another ceremony by cooking a jar of rice until the water was evaporated, after which they broke the jar, and the rice was left as an intact mass which was set before the idol; and all about it, at intervals, were placed a few buyos—which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... cannon, and the buck disappeared. I ran to the spot with more anxiety than I should have felt in an ordinary way over a koodoo or an eland. To my delight there the little creature lay—the huge bullet had decapitated it. Considering all the circumstances I do not think I have often made a better shot than this, but if any one doubts, let him try his hand at a rabbit's head fifty yards away with an elephant gun ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... the youngest resided in the abbey of Maubuisson and had for lovers two Norman gentlemen, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay. The king, Philippe le Bel, being informed, caused the two Normans to be arrested, in 1314; they confessed under torture, and were condemned to be flayed alive, mutilated, decapitated, and hung up by the arm-pits. The two princesses, after having had their heads shaved, were conducted to the Chateau-Guillard, where they were most ingeniously persecuted. When the husband of Marguerite ascended the throne, in 1315, as Louis le Hutin, or the Quarreller, he disposed ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... at him," said Trix. "I know he has a large cupboard at home with the heads of all the wives he has decapitated hanging up in a row by ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... gone to seed till the harvest of flowers in their season was past gathering, and any child in the neighborhood was at liberty to pluck them by handfuls, while the wicked ones played at "chicken fighting" and littered the ground with decapitated bodies. There is no heartsease nowadays, only the magnificent pansy of which it was the modest forerunner. But one little cluster of dark, spicy blooms like those I used to gather in that old ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... savagely informed its mother that if she did not keep it quiet, he would not be answerable for the consequences. His warnings having no effect, he flew upstairs one day, when she was temporarily absent, and, snatching up the bread knife from the table, decapitated the infant. He then stuffed both its head and body into a grandfather's clock which stood in one corner of the room, and, retiring to his own quarters, drank till he ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... 'To hang them:'—But with a constant notification that, after hanging, the criminals would be decapitated: otherwise the threat loses its sting. It seems to be a superstition universal amongst Southern Asiatics, unless possibly amongst the Malay race, that to suffer any dismemberment of the body operates disastrously upon the fate ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... were brilliantly illuminated, and crowds of eager spectators gathered around the two council chambers. Some fifty or sixty poor and efficient men were to be turned out of office, and the populace were eager to witness the jocose and delicate way in which the New York city fathers decapitated their children. To have witnessed the smiling jests that passed to and fro in the Board, the quiet and sneering pleasure of one man—the careless tone of another—the indifferent air of a third—you would have supposed that these wise men had met to perform some ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... miracle. In the usual garbled manner of the sensational type of newspaper (not missing, alas! even in India), the reporter's version was slightly exaggerated: it indicated that the SADHU had been almost decapitated! ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... impossible for it to have got to. But it was gone, and no doubt the poor eels were drinking in their natural element and twisting about in their little wicker prison; turning their companions, the decapitated eel and the dead trout, over and over, and up and down, in ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... when a large stake is at issue. 'John!' I enjoined, 'let us keep calm, and put the point to a test that never fails!' Here I gave him one of those pats on the shoulder so impressive, and pulled out a double-headed cent, like unto those so much in use in General Jackson's time, when shaving decapitated the deposits he found himself mounted on the back of a brass jackass. 'Here!' I continued—'Heads, I win; tails, you lose.' To come the sharp over him in a more square sort of way, I gave him an unmoved look straight in the eye, as I twirled up ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... is the attitude toward pain, inasmuch as barely a trace of intelligence is required, in order to know that it is necessary to wipe away a hot liquid drop that has fallen on the body. Every physiological text-book mentions the fact that a decapitated frog makes such wiping movements when it is wet with acid. From this unconscious activity of the understanding to the technically highest-developed treatment of a burn, a whole series of progressively higher expressions of intelligence may ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... on to the front veranda for a mild cigar after the mulberry just as she brought her scythe round with an admirable sweep and decapitated a whole army of ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... population. It happened, at the first opening of the campaign, that the Christians were equally courted by the Sultan's generalissimo, Solyman, the Pacha of Thessaly. For this, however, that Pacha was removed and decapitated; and a new leader was now appointed in the person of that very enemy, Ismael Pasho, whose attempted murder had brought the present storm upon Ali. Ismael was raised to the rank of Serasker (or generalissimo), ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... them, and they resolved to take satisfaction for the pretended and supposed insult. The bolder of them, on some pretext or other, approached the zealous father, quickly drew a cutting weapon, such as they use, from its sheath, and at the first blow almost decapitated him with it. His hood protected him somewhat, but not so much that he was not grievously wounded. As the wound was given in a dangerous place, its cure was difficult. Thus he lived but a short time, sacrificing his life very willingly ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Cibot the Great. A Chouan implicated in the Breton insurrection of 1799. Decapitated by his cousin Cibot, alias Pille-Miche, and by Marche-a-Terre for having unthinkingly betrayed the brigand position ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... windows of the earliest pointed style. The whole of the sculpture over the architraves of the arch, is, both in its design and execution, curious. The knotted serpents, terminating at either end in heads of devils; the two men tugging at rings, attached to a chain twisted round the neck of a decapitated demon, whom, two dogs are baying; and the structure of the chain itself, are all peculiar; and scarcely less so is the medallion below.[197]—The church ends at the east with a large circular arch, which is now closed, and has always been so since ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... great relief, and restored me to confidence in the establishment. I am at a loss to explain how my faith should have been confirmed afterwards by coming upon a guillotine—an awful instrument in the likeness of a straw-cutter, with a decapitated wooden figure under its blade—which the custodian confessed to be a modern improvement placed there by Signor P——. Yet my credulity was so strengthened by his candor, that I accepted without hesitation the torture of the water-drop when we came ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... defended St. Elmo, cut the Maltese cross on the bodies of the slain, and, tying them to planks, let them drift with the receding tide into the other branch of the harbour still defended by the Christians. The Grand-Master, in resentment of this cruelty, caused his Turkish prisoners to be decapitated and their heads thrown from mortars into the camp ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... another protector was known. If any members of the family went to fight at sea, they collected some sea-weed to take with them. If in pursuit of a canoe, they threw out some of it to hinder the progress of the enemy, and make the chase successful in obtaining a decapitated head or two. If the enemy tried to pick up any of this deified sea-weed it immediately sank, but rose again and floated on the surface if one of its friends paddled ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... mother's neck and for one awful moment it looked as if both were to be decapitated by the trunk lid, so violent had been Mrs. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... two soldiers, one with the haft of a blood-stained knife between his teeth, had mutilated horribly a living girl. Little Papeete had been decapitated just where his skull lay now; the shrieks and wails of the tortured tore the sky above Berselius; but Adams heard nothing and saw nothing but ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... "And very decapitated and de-legged types," said Mrs. Lenox with a laugh. "And dirty, too—like the Sleeping Beauty. Do you know, it gives me the shivers to think of the Sleeping Beauty, lying there for ages, with dust and cobwebs accumulating on her. I'm sure I hope the prince gave her ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the smallness of the knife which diminished the violence of the shock, that it did not bound beyond the basket to the pavement. Terrible incident, which often occurred at executions during the Terror. Nowadays assassins and poisoners are decapitated more decently. Many improvements in ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... returned with the reenforcements that he took to Macan, put in at the kingdom of Sian with one of your Majesty's ships, some artillery, and seventy Spaniards. As I have been informed, endeavor was made to carry matters with so high a hand that the natives, aided by Japanese, decapitated him and most of his men; while about thirty of them are in prison, and most of the property of your Lordship from this place, quite a large amount, is in the power of that king. I shall endeavor with all my power to collect them peaceably; for the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... of the history of the Thirteen to be certain that his present tale will never be thought below the interest inspired by this programme. Dramas steeped in blood, comedies filled with terror, romantic tales through which rolled heads mysteriously decapitated, have been confided to him. If readers were not surfeited with horrors served up to them of late in cold blood, he might reveal the calm atrocities, the surpassing tragedies concealed under family life. ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... we all do, that he would be like a decapitated chicken himself without her," said Mrs. Clifford, with her ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... laying your foot upon the king's neck, for be it known to you the body on which you trample is worthy of respect." On hearing this Mochuda ceased to measure the king and declared:—"The neck upon which I have set my heel shall never be decapitated and the body which I have measured with my foot shall not be slain and but for your interference there would not be wanting anything to him or his seed for ever." Addressing (specially) the interrupter, he prophesied:—"You ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... human inquiry. The natural instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to conceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth cloud. In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that was buried when a person died was the corpse decapitated and she often puzzled herself to think what was done with the isolated head. When her mother was being tied up in grave-clothes, Esther hovered about with a real thirst for knowledge while the thoughts of all the other ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... exist in these commonwealths. And feudalism is outside the gates. There are the brutal, leering men-at-arms, in slashed, puffed doublets and heavy armour, face and dress as unhuman as possible, standing grimacing at the blood spurting from John the Baptist's decapitated trunk, as in Kranach's horrible print, while gaping spectators fill the castle yard; there are the castles high on rocks amidst woods, with miserable villages below, where the Prodigal Son wallows among the swine ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... same symbol with its attendant falcon was repeatedly and conspicuously emblazoned. From Edmund of Langley it descended to his son Edward duke of York, slain in the field of Agincourt, and next to the son of his unfortunate brother the decapitated earl of Cambridge; to that Richard who fell at Wakefield in the attempt to assert his title to the crown, which the victorious arms of his son Edward IV. afterwards vindicated to himself ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the fluttering drapery of some worshipper to be the decapitated bodies of goats and bullocks lying in their blood, and from which would rise the millions of ever-moving flies which had given them a semblance of life ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... he saw the enemy within the walls; the rest either perished or were made slaves. Mutila and Faveria were also attacked and levelled with the ground, and quiet reigned in Istria. Livy says that at that time 5,622 persons were sold into slavery, the authors of the war were beaten and then decapitated, and Istria was garrisoned with Roman troops. In 129 B.C. the Istrians rose in revolt when Rome was occupied with the Gepid war. The Consul Caius Sempronius Tuditanus crushed this revolt, and after that ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... "degrading and slow process," and his younger brothers are beheaded; his house is razed to the ground and the earth under it dug up several feet deep; his neighbours are severely punished; his principal teacher is decapitated; the district magistrate is deprived of his office; and the higher officials of the province degraded three ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... offered to high Heaven. But Friar Fiacre, of the Hotel-Dieu, finding himself some time later at the point of death, and feeling disturbed in conscience, revealed the fact that from religious considerations he had himself decapitated the image, "in order to have the Huguenots accused of it, and thus lead to their complete extermination!" Recordon, Protestantisme en Champagne, ou recits extraits d'un MS. de N. Pithou (Paris, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... adventure; and, like many adventurers, the pair came to grief. They took David into the parlor and the cat wriggled from its owner's arms, jumped upon the table, knocked the case containing the chessmen to the floor, and not only broke the glass but decapitated one ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... come on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, to pic-nic. Formerly, when a janissary was condemned to die, he was confined in this castle. At the appointed hour, he was led through a small arched doorway, which opens on the Bosphorus, and there decapitated, and the body was thrown into the sea; at the same instant the firing of a long gun, which stands by the side of the gate, announced ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... its fate, when suddenly, the slope of the ground helping us, we managed to set it on its feet; as soon as it was turned over, it rushed at Lucien. The enormous rolls round its neck, being all distended, made it carry its head very forward, so, with a single blow of his cutlass, l'Encuerado decapitated the assailant. We were then witnesses to a strange sight, for while Gringalet was furiously attacking the motionless head, the feet, continuing to move, bore along the body, which in a moment disappeared in the lake. Although we had ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... scientific discovery and for no other purpose," absolutely prohibits any kind of demonstration. It would debar me from showing the circulation in the web of a frog's foot or from exhibiting the pulsations of the heart in a decapitated frog. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... please you, and I gave up billiards and everything you didn't like, and waited and never complained, for I hoped you'd love me, though I'm not half good enough..." Here there was a choke that couldn't be controlled, so he decapitated buttercups while he cleared his ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... wood underneath it; all this time the poor woman, suffering even more from shame than from fear, was kept in suspense; at length, when she was properly adjusted, the executioner touched the spring, the knife fell, and the decapitated head, falling on the platform of the scaffold, bounded two or three times in the air, to the general horror; the executioner then seized it, showed it to the multitude, and wrapping it in black taffetas, placed it with the body on a bier at the foot ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... animal to the executioner, who fixes its neck within a forked or Y-shaped stick fixed fast in the ground. With one blow the animal's head is severed from its body. The bleeding head is carried off into the shrine to be laid before the image of the goddess, and become the temple perquisite. The decapitated body is carried off by the offerer to furnish his family with a holiday meal. With his forehead ceremonially marked with a touch of the blood lying thick upon the ground, the offerer leaves the temple, his sacrifice finished. Such is animal sacrifice; if the ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... having had Krishna as its member. The Yadava dynasty only lasted from A.D. 1150 to 1318, when the last prince of the line, Harapala, stirred up a revolt against the Muhammadans to whom the king, his father-in-law, had submitted, and being defeated, was flayed alive and decapitated. It is noticeable that the Yadu-Bhatti Rajputs of Jaisalmer claim descent from Salivahana, who founded the Saka era in A.D. 78, and it is believed that this era belonged to the Saka dynasty of Gujarat, where, according to the tradition given above, the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... were the communists of the Middle Ages, and were for a number of years the plague of the northern seas; until at the beginning of the fifteenth century they were subdued, and many of them captured by the Dutch, who nailed them up in barrels, leaving an aperture for the head, at top, and then decapitated them. The best account of them is found in "Raumer's Historical Note-book," vol. ii. p. 19. And if any one wishes to see the result of communist teaching, they have only to study here the horrible excesses to which ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... little David standing, his fingers clutched into the hair of decapitated Goliath. As Saul sees David standing there holding in his hand the ghastly, reeking, staring trophy, evidence of the complete victory over God's enemies, the king wonders what parentage was honored by such heroism, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... barges bearing 250 tons of coal had taken their places on opposite sides of the steamer, each illuminated with buckets of blazing coal or by burning conical heaps on the surface. From the bottom of these pits in the darkness the illumination suggested huge decapitated ant heaps in the wildest frenzy, for the coal seemed covered and there was hurry in every direction. Men and women, boys and girls, bending to their tasks, were filling shallow saucer-shaped baskets with coal and stacking them eight to ten high in a semi-circle, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... win the gratitude of my always hungry brother officers, when, through an open door, I caught sight of fowls in a backyard. I promptly jumped off my horse, and entered into negotiations with the owners of the chicken run, which speedily resulted in the decapitated corpses of three plump fowls being slung from my saddle. Amid the envy of the column, I proudly rode down to the transport of my unit with my spoil, the result being that in a short time not a fowl remained alive in the village; ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... all the boys took a header into the river, only their faces and hair-covered heads appearing above the surface; they treaded water, or swayed around on the bottom. As "Al-f-u-r-d" looked back on them they seemed like so many decapitated heads floating in space, a sight that dwelt in ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... was convicted of having kept such negligent watch and ward over his highness's seraglio, that some presumptuous Giaour had made a hole in the wall, and established a communication with Zaida, the dey's favourite odalisque. Accordingly Osmin was to be decapitated; and as to the offending lady, the next time the dey took an airing in the bay of Naples, she would be put into the boat in a sack, and consigned to the keeping of the kelpies. Thunderstruck at such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... hidden thoughts of the greater part of the bourgeoisie, that to surrender Petrograd to the Germans did not mean to lose it. Under the peace treaty it would be restored, but restored ravaged by German militarism. By that time the revolution would be decapitated, and it would be easier to manage. Kerensky's government did not think of seriously defending the capital. On the contrary, public opinion was being prepared for its possible surrender. Public institutions were being removed from Petrograd to ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... by the frenzied Alcalde, who rushed toward Rosendo. The old man swung his enormous machete with a swirl that, had it met the official, would have clean decapitated him. But, fortunately, one of the priest's supporters threw out his foot, and the corpulent Alcalde fell heavily over it and bit the dust. Jose threw himself upon Rosendo. The old man staggered with the shock and gave way. The priest turned to the excited crowd. Holding up both hands high ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pot. Memba Sasa scrubbed this with sand. First we made tea in it, and drank turn about, from its wide edge. This warmed us up somewhat. Then we dumped in our few potatoes and a single guinea fowl that F. had decapitated earlier in the day. We ate; and passed the pot over ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Constance; Eitelhans Langenmantel, a former soldier and son of the Augsburg burgomaster, expelled from the city October 14, 1527, impassionate in his writings against the "old and new Papists," i.e., Luther and others who adhered to the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, decapitated May 12, 1528, at Weissenburg; Christian Entfelder, 1527 leader of the Brethren at Eisenschuetz Moravia, and later on counselor of Duke Albrecht of Prussia; Hans Schlaffer, a former priest, active as Anabaptistic preacher and author, executed 1528; Joerg Haug, pastor in Bibra; Wolfgang ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... sometimes woven in: those with heads on represent the victorious warriors; those decapitated depict the braves vanquished by the fighters of their special tribe. An open palm is sometimes seen; this is an ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... bird, of a cow coming through a gate, of a general addressing his troops (most comical of all). Several glasses were broken. The corkscrew was disregarded as a useless implement, and whisky-bottles were decapitated against the tent poles. I remember vaguely the crowning episode of the evening when the little major was dancing the Irish jig with a kitchen chair; when Falstaff was singing the Prologue of Pagliacci ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Constantinople till now. The Pasha tells me in confidence that he is enormously wealthy. His fortune was made by brigandage in Greece, from which he retired a few years ago, shocked by the sudden death of his brother, who was decapitated at Corinth with five others. The Bey is a nice, gentle-mannered, simple-hearted old man, kind to the poor, and eminently hospitable. He has invited me down to Prevesa for the pig-shooting. If I have your permission to accept the invitation, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... I decapitated my third egg, and began a little speech. "Look here," I said. "Please don't imagine I'm surly or telling you uncivil lies, or anything of that sort. I'm forced almost, to be a little short and mysterious. I can quite understand this is as queer as it can be, and that your imaginations ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... corresponding to the modern taking away of a "man's stripes." If a soldier proves a hopeless case he is expelled with ignominy from the camp and army. If he deserts or plays the traitor he may either be decapitated or beaten to death with cudgels. If a whole company or regiment gets into disgrace, it may have to put up with barley instead of wheat for its rations, and if it is guilty of gross insubordination, or of some crime which cannot be sheeted home to the individual, it may ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... it should be evident that it is a part and not the whole. In the portrait statue, for example, if the head alone is represented, there should appear, along with the head, as much of the bust as will suggest attachment to the body, in order that it may not seem decapitated! It is because the torso is so obviously a fragment of an ideal whole that we do not feel it to be an uncanny mutilation of a man or woman. In its present condition, the "Venus de Milo" is not the statue of an armless woman, but a statue of part ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... well as I could have done myself," commented Fred, as his friend lowered his weapon and watched the struggles of his victim, which quickly ceased, for, as has been said, the crotalus species is easily killed, and when one of them has been decapitated he cannot keep up ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... later, the King—who by now had thrown the blame of the whole affair, with its slaughter of some two thousand Huguenots, upon the Guises and their hatred of Coligny—rode out to Montfaucon to behold the decapitated body of the Admiral, which hung from the gallows in chains. A courtier of a poor but obtrusive wit leaned ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... at Ust Padenga that Corp. Chas. A. Thornton gave up his chair to a weary Supply Company man, Comrade Carl G. Berger, just up from Shenkursk with an ambulance, and a Bolo three-inch shell hurled through the log wall and decapitated the luckless supply man. In the hasty retreat the hospital men, like the infantry men, had to abandon everything but the clothes and equipment ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... a picture of the guillotine, calling up thoughts of severed heads from memory's cloisters. On the left you see a ghastly head; on the right the decapitated trunk. By the victim stand the bloody actors in the tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen! When I review the awful guilt of Marat and Robespierre, humbly do I give thanks that I have been kept from yielding, like them, to fierce ambition and lust of power, ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... happened to pick up the douro, put it into his pocket and passed on, Bou-Akas made a sign to his chinaux (who followed him, also in disguise, and knew the Scheik's will) rushed forward immediately, and decapitated the offender. In consequence of this summary method of administering justice, it is a saying amongst the Arabs that a child might traverse the regions which own Bou-Akas's sway, wearing a golden crown on his head, without a single hand being ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 1785 an Englishman visiting France boasts of the political liberty enjoyed in his country. As an offset to this the French reproach the English for having decapitated Charles I., and "glory in having always maintained an inviolable attachment to their own king; a fidelity, a respect which no excess or severity on his part has ever shaken." ("A Comparative View of the French and of the English Nation," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... may have taught Mr. Collings many things, he probably retains more of the old Radical Adam than does Mr. Chamberlain. At one time he was regarded by some of his opponents as a political fire-eater—a democratic despot who would have decapitated kings and queens without a tinge of remorse, and slain wicked Tories with the sword. He was, however, never the ungenial, self-seeking, aggressive person some of his foes may have fancied him. He was always an affable, pleasant, agreeable man, who could ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... inappropriate to mention here the callous and brutalized nature of those gang-robbers, of whom it is recorded that, when one of their gang was suddenly arrested, they at once decapitated him, and carried off the head, lest the whole ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... I was under sentence of decapitation, and was about to be instantly decapitated, and an express arrived with a pardon for the condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a play, I should be under the necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to proceed to extremities,—meaning,' said Mr. Grewgious, passing his hand under his chin, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... his own time, had told some truths not very favourable to the memory of the Cardinal's great uncle. In consequence, the implacable minister, under false pretences, caused the philosophic historian's eldest son to be condemned and decapitated, saying: "De Thou, the father, has put my name into his history, I will put ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... form, of the very practice they assert to have prevailed. After an execution at Peking certain large pith balls are steeped in the blood, and under the name of blood-bread are sold as a medicine for consumption. It is only to the blood of decapitated criminals that any such healing power is attributed. It has been asserted in the annals of the Propagation de la Foi that the Chinese executioners of M. Chapdelaine, a missionary who was martyred in Kwang-si in 1856 (28th February), were ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... fella boys too much" that stopped along the bush. He could see him, as he had last seen him, stripped of the shot-gun and all the naturalist's gear of his master, lying on the narrow trail where he had been decapitated barely the moment before. Yes, within a minute the thing had happened. Within a minute, looking back, Bassett had seen him trudging patiently along under his burdens. Then Bassett's own trouble had come upon him. He looked at the cruelly healed stumps of the ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... their bright clear colours, the desert appears, and shows quite brown by contrast; one sees the great yellow swell of sand and stones above the pictures of these decapitated people. It rises like a colossal wave and stretches out to bathe the foot of the Libyan mountains beyond. Towards the north and west of the solitudes, shapeless ruins of tawny-coloured blocks follow one another in the sands until the dazzling distance ends in ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... the fatal charms of Leucippe, and resorts to the old expedient of procuring her abduction by a crew of pirates while on an excursion to the Pharos. The vessel of the captors is, however, chased by a guard-boat, and on the point of being taken, when Leucippe is brought on deck and decapitated by the pirates, who throw the headless body into the sea, and make their escape; while Clitophon stays the pursuit, to recover the remains of his mistress for sepulture. Clitophon now returns to Alexandria to mourn for his lost love, and is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... interminable period of silence. The entire train seemed deserted. Helpless, bereft of its engine, a huge, decapitated monster it lay, half-way around a curve, rained ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... had been provided. They found, however, an old wooden chest, made to contain arrows, lying in one of the apartments of the tower, which they used instead. They first laid the decapitated trunk within it, and then adjusted the dissevered head to its place, as if vainly attempting to repair the irretrievable injury they had done. They hurried the body, thus enshrined, to its burial in a chapel, which was also within the tower, doing all with such dispatch that ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Taira and Minamoto clans. The same policy of extermination which Kiyomori had pursued against the Minamoto was now remorselessly enforced by the Minamoto against the Taira. The prisoners who were taken in the battle were executed to the last man. Munemori was taken prisoner and decapitated. Whenever a Taira man, woman, or child was found, death was the inevitable penalty inflicted. Yoritomo stationed his father-in-law Hojo Tokimasa at Kyoto to search out and eradicate his enemies as well as to supervise the affairs ...
— Japan • David Murray
... medicine men, who were summoned from every direction. A number of these unfortunate physicians were put to death as a penalty for their failure to restore health to the dying chief. Finally, there were very few medicine men remaining in the vicinity; those who had not been decapitated having proved their strong desire for further life by discreetly ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... another priest-led fanatic, the wretched but unflinching instrument of a great conspiracy, had at a blow decapitated France. No political revolution could be much more thorough than that which had been accomplished in a moment ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Descriptology, or verbal daguerreotyping of the Continuity of Society, and hence of the Dynamical aspect of Concrete Sociology, History stands, then, in a sense, at the head of the scale, omitting Theology, the true apex of the pyramid of Sciences, which pyramid Comte has decapitated of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... question miraculously restored all Mr. Prohack's vanished aplomb. That at the end of the greatest war in the history of the earth, amid decapitated empires and cities of starvation, braces should be made to measure,—this was too much for Mr. Prohack, who had not dreamed that braces ever had been made to measure. It shocked ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... for the ground thirsteth for their blood. Go see thyself that they are beheaded without stay or delay: await not other order, but instantly obey my commandment." The Grand Wazir went forth at one and in his presence the Envious Sisters were decapitated and this underwent fit punishment for their malice and their evil doing. After this, Khusrau Shah with his retinue walked afoot to the Cathedral- mosque whereby the Queen had been imprisoned for so ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... but the head projected into that of his neighbor; this occasioned a dispute as to the right of possession. The matter was at length referred to the decision of Cardinal Spada, who, like the wise man of old, ordered the Statue to be decapitated, and division made according to position—the trunk to one claimant, and the head to the other. The object of the wily Cardinal was not so much justice, as to get possession of the Statue himself, which he afterwards did, at a tithe of what it would otherwise ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... participation in the flight and conversion of a Moslem lady, who had taken the name of Leocritia, under which she was canonized at a later date. It was said that the woman had become a Christian through his efforts, and that he had hidden her for a time in the house of his sister. He was decapitated, and his body was thrown into the river; and if the legend be true, a white dove flew over it as it floated down the stream. Leocritia also was put to death. Here, however, the record of these martyrdoms ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... objection she was perfectly satisfied. Chirac was concurrence itself. In five minutes it seemed to be the most natural and proper thing in the world that, on her honeymoon, she should be going with her husband to a particular town because a notorious murderer was about to be decapitated ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... inhospitable shores. An instance occurred in the crew of the "Larpent," an English merchant vessel, which went ashore here, about the time we passed the island, of which but four escaped, and these by a miracle. They saw their unfortunate shipmates lanced, and decapitated, and themselves, being hotly pursued, escaped in their boat, and landing at a point unobserved, were, whilst pushing their way to the interior, captured and sold as slaves, from which condition they were released ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... passed. One was the brave death of the major of this regiment that was lying idle under the tree. The commanding officer evidently was not doing his duty, and this major was endeavoring to rally his men and get them at work. He was swinging his hat and cheering his men forward, when a solid shot decapitated him. His poor body went down as though some giant had picked it up and furiously slammed it on the ground, and I was so near him that I could almost have touched him with ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... Browne, in a voice of horror. "Is that what she has to expect? Rows of decapitated heads! Have you had private information, Miss L'Estrange? Is a rehearsal of the French Revolution to be performed in London? Do you really believe the poor child is doomed to behold your head carried past the windows on a pike? Was there meaning in the artless prattle ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... prince; and, disregarding all orders to be quiet or to leave the country, continued to agitate, to threaten, and to thunder even in the ears of the prince himself. Things took their natural course. Disobedience provoked punishment. A guard of soldiers was sent, and the saint and his little band were decapitated. The scene of the execution was a wood, and the heads and trunks were left lying there for the wolves and the ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... transfer the burden of my slight knowledge of its past to the mind of the reader. I will only say that it came into the hands of the jovial Henry VIII. through the loss of several of its owners' heads, a means of acquisition not so distasteful to him as to them, and after its restitution to the much decapitated family it continued in their possession till a few years ago. It remains with me a vision of turrets and gables, perfect in their Tudor kind, rising upon a gentle level of fields and meadows, with nothing dramatically picturesque in the view from its straight-browed ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... showed at a distance. He sent in some men, as much to give them something to do as for any real good, one day, who in a few hours pulled up enough docks to fill a cart. They came across a number of snakes, and decapitated the reptiles with their hoes, and afterwards hung them all up—tied together by the tail—to a bough. The bunch of headless snakes hangs there still, swinging to and fro as the wind plays through the oak. Vermin, too, revel in weeds, which encourage the mice and rats, and are, perhaps, quite as much ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... dish, and send them to London for exhibition; but a former confidential agent obtained it from the executioner for a higher price than the merchant had offered; and together with the heads of his three sons and grandson, who, according to custom, were all seized and decapitated, had them deposited near one of the city gates, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... wet clothing made dark heaps on the glistening floor; a thin layer of water rushed to and fro. In the bed-places men lay booted, resting on elbows and with open eyes. Hung-up suits of oilskin swung out and in, lively and disquieting like reckless ghosts of decapitated seamen dancing in a tempest. No one spoke and all listened. Outside the night moaned and sobbed to the accompaniment of a continuous loud tremor as of innumerable drums beating far off. Shrieks passed through the air. Tremendous dull blows made the ship ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... There is a God above us, I know, and I believe there is a just Duke in the Breton land. Mighty ruler, make war upon the Frank, defend our country, and give us vengeance—vengeance for Karo my son, Karo, slain, decapitated by the Frankish barbarians, his beauteous head made into a balance-weight for ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... adultery and ended with an inexpressible terror when Bonhomet, opening Claire's eyelids, as she lies in her death bed, and penetrating them with monstrous plummets, distinctively perceives the reflection of the husband brandishing the lover's decapitated head, while shouting a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans |
