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Ravaging   /rˈævɪdʒɪŋ/   Listen
Ravaging

noun
1.
Plundering with excessive damage and destruction.  Synonym: devastation.






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"Ravaging" Quotes from Famous Books



... a trophy. Next he took on board troops from the friendly district of Achaia, and, crossing over to the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf, coasted along past the mouth of the river Achelous, overran Acarnania, drove the people of Oeneadae to the shelter of their city walls, and after ravaging the country returned home, having made himself a terror to his enemies, and done good service to Athens; for not the least casualty, even by accident, befell the troops under ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... imagine these four thousand armed bandits falling unexpectedly upon the inhabitants of Saint-Cloud, of Sevres, of Montreuil, ravaging, destroying, robbing all, ransoming the nuns of Longchamps, threatening to pillage Le Landit, it can readily be believed that the merchants were so uneasy that they hastened to place their goods upon carts and to flee ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... After ravaging the settlements of Spain on the Atlantic coasts, various fleets of these piratical adventurers sought the Pacific waters in 1685, and there for several years made life scarce worth living to the inhabitants of the Spanish coast cities. Time and again these were plundered of their wealth, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... Eirikson to be his foster-son, set him on his knee, and thereafter he was brought up at the Danish king's court. Some of Eirik's sons went out on viking expeditions as soon as they were old enough, and gathered property, ravaging all around in the East sea. They grew up quickly to be handsome men, and far beyond their years in strength and perfection. Glum Geirason tells of one of ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... egotistical law of each one for himself and do not know how to band themselves together to repel an enemy who threatens one and all. Taken singly, the Anthophora does not even know how to dash at the enemy who is ravaging her cells and drive him away with her stings; the pacific creature hastily leaves its dwelling when disturbed by undermining and escapes in a crippled state, sometimes even mortally wounded, without thinking of making use of its venomous sting, except when it is seized and ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... screeches and growls and roars; till Toomey would have to come and stop his performance by darkening the cage with a tarpaulin. At the sound of Toomey's voice, soothing yet overmastering, the great wolf would lie down quietly, and the ghostly summons of his far-ravaging fathers would haunt his spirit ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... caused by a germ called spirocheta; the full name is spirocheta pallida—a pale, spiral-shaped germ. Though the disease has been ravaging Europe and America for centuries, the germ of it has been discovered only a few years ago, namely, in 1905, and, like the gonococcus, also by a German scientist, Fritz Schaudinn. Syphilis is a constitutional disease. In ten days to three weeks after a person has contracted ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... times that the intellect sees nothing but shadows; the memory is occupied with vain and transitory things, with many and varied reflections and impure thoughts; and likewise all the sensations of the body are ill-regulated and ravaging. So it is perfectly clear that no one of these gates is in our own free possession, except only the Gate of Will. This belongs to our liberties, and has for its Watch Free-will. And this gate is so strong that nor demon nor creature can open it if the watch does not consent. And while ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... the plebeians rose higher and higher, when again news came that the enemy was ravaging the lands of Rome. The senate, well knowing that the power of the consuls would avail nothing, since Appius was regarded as a tyrant, and Servilius would not choose again to become an instrument for deceiving the people, appointed a dictator to lead the citizens ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... all the treasures therein, and carried them away with them. And when they had done the utmost evil, this counsel was counselled: that Elgar the earl should be inlawed, and be given his earldom, and all that had been taken from him. This ravaging happened on the 9th before the Kalends of November. In the same year died Tremerin the Welsh bishop [Of St. David's] soon after that ravaging: and he was Bishop Athelstan's coadjutor from the time that he ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... York on a Galveston steamer, their departure being attended by such an assemblage of young women that on the second day out their companions of the voyage confided the supposition that it had been a "bridal party." That little Spanish-American word ravaging our coasts and carrying off the pride of the youth has to answer for many such bridal parties, whose tours have been followed with pins and colored pencils and eyes more eager than those of mothers-in-law. In a month or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... against Me? 29 All you are the sinners;(164) Against Me you all have rebelled— Rede of the Lord. In vain have I smitten your sons 30 Ye(165) took not correction Your(166) sword has devoured your prophets, Like a ravaging lion. O generation—you!—look at the Word of the Lord!(167) 31 Have I been a desert to Israel, Or land of thick darkness? Why say My folk "We are off, No more to meet Thee!" Can a maiden forget her adorning, 32 Or her girdle a bride? Yet Me have My people forgotten, Days ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... the fine valley of Taos. They had heard of the prosperous condition of San Ildefonso, and hence their hostile visit. Besides, both Apaches and Comanches were en paz with the settlement, and had for some years confined themselves to ravaging the provinces of Coahuila and Chihuahua. No provocation had been given to these tribes to recommence hostilities, nor had they given any signs of ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... command of it to Salvatinea, who left in it, from his army, for captain one of his brothers, in order that he himself might go forward with the King through the kingdom of Orya. And the King, passing the river once more in pursuit of the King of Orya, and taking and ravaging all the country which had no reason for expecting him, arrived at a city called Comdepallyr,[522] where were all the chiefs of the kingdom, it being the chief city in that kingdom. And he laid siege to it, and remained there three months without being able to capture it, and in the end he ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... was foiled by the vigilance and determination of the English admiral. Disappointed in these attempts, he proceeded, in the teeth of the warnings which had been given him, to execute his orders to put down the insurrection on land, and carried them out with merciless atrocity,—ravaging the Morea with fire and sword. Resolved now to bring matters to an issue, the combined fleets in October, 1827, entered the harbour. As was expected would happen, the Turks fired upon them, and then ensued the famous battle of Navarino, in which, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... all his enemies were scattered—except Peter, who had been sedulously training his people in the military arts. On August 21, 1704, Peter captured Narva. Now he made a new alliance with Augustus. Seventy thousand Russians were soon ravaging Polish territory. Within two months, Charles and Stanislaus had cut them up in detail, or driven them over the border. Schulembourg crossed the Oder, but his battalions were shattered at Frawenstad by Reuschild. On September 1, 1706, Charles ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... Androgeos by name, had shown such strength and skill in the Panathenaic festival that AEgeus, the Athenian king, sent him to fight with the flame-spitting bull of Marathon, a monstrous creature that was ravaging the plains of Attica. The bull killed the valiant youth, and Minos, furious at the death of his son, laid ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... lost their lives at its capture, and we have sure information that Mahomet is preparing for an attack on the Island. No doubt he thinks it will be an easy conquest, for in '57 he succeeded in landing eighteen thousand men on the Island, and in ravaging a large district, carrying off much booty. Since then, however, the defences of Rhodes have been greatly strengthened. Zacosta, our last grand master, laboured diligently to increase the fortifications, and, specially, built on one side of the entrance to the harbour a strong tower, called ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... years later, repeated the same story; and what with the Black Death sweeping over the land, and these terrible English ravaging at will, France sank into an abyss of misery worse even than that which had engulfed the empire. The unhappy peasantry, driven by starvation into frenzied revolt, avenged their agony upon the nobility by hideous plunderings and burnings of the rich chateaux.[21] A partial peace with England ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... refusing compensation. Frenchmen and Englishmen alike, he held, could plunder Spaniards 'beyond the line.' Lancerota, one of the Great Canaries, was reached on September 6. The islanders happened to be under the influence of a special panic. Barbary corsairs had been ravaging a neighbouring island. Next year they laid Lancerota itself waste. When Ralegh's fleet appeared it was supposed to be the Barbary squadron. Some sailors having landed, three were murdered. Ralegh showed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... thinking that it was advisable for them to cross the mountains and to go to their several homes, some to Thrace and some to Gaul. But the gladiators being strong in numbers, and confident, would not listen to him, and they went about ravaging Italy. The Senate were now no longer troubled merely at the humiliation and disgrace that they suffered by the revolt; but, moved by fear and the danger, they sent out both the consuls[31] as to a war of the utmost difficulty and importance. Gellius, suddenly falling ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... ate and rested till the sun began to pass its meridian, when once more they started on their pilgrimage. That night, after a day wherein they had met no other sign of life than gulls and crows ravaging the mussel-beds, they slept on piles of sun-dried kelp which they heaped into some crevices under an overhanging brow of low cliffs on a rocky point. And dawn found them again, traveling steadily eastward, battle-axes ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... collected all the forces in the kingdom, horse and foot, and placed them under the command of a gallant young officer, Otto Krumpen, with orders to invade Sweden from the south. They landed in the early days of January, 1520, and proceeded northwards, ravaging the country as they went. Sture at once issued a broadside to the people, calling them to arms. He likewise sent his messengers to Trolle, to beg him to use his influence against the enemies of Sweden. The ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... every way from little Gerald Gregory, climbed at will. Jim was a lion who liked to be interrupted by grown-ups, who was laughing at his make-believe all the time, but Derry was so frightfully in earnest as to often terrify himself, and almost always impress his brother, with his roarings and ravaging. ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... bedabbled with dust and mire, rushed into the hall, rushed through the rows of the banqueters, rushed to the throne-chair of Harold, and cried aloud, "William the Norman is encamped on the shores of Sussex; and with the mightiest armament ever yet seen in England, is ravaging the land ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a scene of devastation scarcely paralleled in the annals of this continent. For thirty days the army employed themselves in burning and ravaging the settlements of the broken-spirited Indians. No less than fourteen of their towns were laid in ashes; their granaries were yielded to the flames, their corn-fields ravaged, while the miserable fugitives, flying from the sword, took refuge with their starving families ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... that the Westerners could do to help the cause of the eastern patriots, and most of them, if left alone, would have been only distant spectators of the conflict. But orders given to the British agents and commanders called for the ravaging of the trans-Alleghany country; and as a consequence the West became ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... extraordinary had happened. The name of the governor thus driven away was Fonseca. Knowing well that success alone could have justified his conduct, he did not attempt to return to Mexico, but meeting with some pirates, at that time ravaging the coasts in the neighbourhood of Guatimala, he joined them, and, excited by revenge and cupidity, he conceived the idea of conquering California for himself. He succeeded in enlisting into his service some 150 vagabonds ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... the mountain men—the "Hornets," from the "Switzerland of America," and cut off Col. Clarke's forces. Failing in this, he afterward moved more slowly and frequently halted to collect all the Tories he could persuade to join him. He crossed Broad river, ravaging the country through which he marched. About the last of September he encamped at Gilberttown, near the present town of Rutherfordton. la his march to this point, his force-increased to upwards of one thousand men. All of his Tory recruits were furnished with arms, most of them ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... Arrived at Versailles, they stopped at the Fleur-de-lys inn, but there the sickness which the boy had complained of during the journey became very serious, and the innkeeper, having young children, and believing that he recognised symptoms of smallpox, which just then was ravaging Versailles, refused to receive them, saying he had no vacant room. This might have disconcerted anyone but Derues, but his audacity, activity, and resource seemed to increase with each fresh obstacle. Leaving Edouard in a room on the ground floor which had no ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... with his western neighbour, especially as the usual trouble continued in the east, in which direction the Prince proposed to extend his dominions. By 955 we find Germans and Bohemians allied against the Magyars, who had acquired a habit of ravaging Western Europe once a year. They met their match on the Lechfeld, near Augsburg, and were utterly defeated in one of the most sanguinary and decisive battles fought during the Middle Ages. According to Count ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... escaped, and arrived at Campeachy in disguise, in time to take part in the thanksgiving and religious rejoicings of the Spaniards on account of his supposed death. Here he succeeded in enticing some slaves from their masters, with whom he again put to sea, with the design of ravaging the small town of De los Cayes, on the south side of Cuba. Divining his project, however, some fishermen conveyed information to the governor at Havana, who immediately despatched a vessel of war of ten guns in pursuit, with orders not to return until the pirates were captured, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and expected that Orodes would be easy to capture, because but newly established. Therefore he crossed the Euphrates and proceeded to traverse a considerable portion of Mesopotamia, devastating and ravaging the country. As his crossing was unexpected by the barbarians no strong guard had been placed at that point. Silaces, then governor of that region, was quickly defeated near Ichnai, a fortress so named, after contending with a few horsemen. He was wounded and retired to report personally ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio

... at Dessau, when new Pandour Tempests, tides of ravaging War, again come beating against the Giant Mountains, pouring through all passes; from utmost Jablunka, westward by Jagerndorf to Glatz, huge influx of wild riding hordes, each with some support of Austrian grenadiers, cannoniers; threatening ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... approaching, and from the walls a cloud of dust on the road is discovered with terror. It proves to be the post-wagon on its way to Bordeaux. After this the number of brigands is reduced to 1,500, but there is no doubt that they are ravaging the country. At nine o'clock in the evening 20,000 men are under arms, and thus they pass the night, always listening without hearing anything. Towards three o'clock in the morning there is another alarm, the church bells ringing and the people forming a battle array. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... reverses, so unusual a success elated them beyond all bounds of moderation. They considered their independence as now firmly established, and could scarcely be restrained from rushing, like a disorderly horde of conquering barbarians, on their enemies below, and ravaging the country round. But fortunately El Feri joined to great courage and activity the rare endowments of a prudent and sagacious chief. He foresaw that the present success, if not followed up judiciously, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... Philadelphia and Sebonitis and Gerasa and Pella and Scythopolis, and after them Gadara and Hippos" ("Wars," II. xviii. 1). I submit that, if Gadara had been a city of "Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law," the ravaging of their territory by their brother Jews, in revenge for the massacre of the Caesarean Jews by the Gentile population of that place, would surely have been a somewhat unaccountable proceeding. But when we proceed a ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... We had been ravaging the Frankish coasts, and the lad got a wound in his shoulder; we carried him home, for he had fought like a wolf, and the leeches tried to cure him, but it was all in vain; they said he would never be fit to go to battle again. Poor Sigard! he could ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... ravaging band ... Matak, alone, searching for him in the night ... Ledesma's daughter, that gentle, big-eyed girl, at the mercy of such beasts ... would the patrols never return? He rose and paced the floor, frantic with the enforced inaction. Schooling himself to a semblance of patience, he sat through ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... ravaging our beloved country, and seducing her sons of freedom to the disgraceful ranks of slavery and oppression. Intemperance is that tyrant that has under his control many formidable evils that infest the world. His boasted labor is to hurry on thousands of victims to the commission of crime, and bring ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... defeat or reprisals. Even the European coalitions which forced upon him successive treaties did not prevent renewed attacks or heal the scars of the repeated devastations of the lower and the upper Rhine country. The culmination of this period of suffering was the terrible ravaging of the Palatinate, in 1688, when the fertile region about Heidelberg, Mannheim, Speyer, and Worms was harried and burned and pillaged by the soldiers of Louis, with the same brutality and more destructiveness ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... and the close habitations, and insufficient food of many of the poor, prevent population from increasing beyond the means of subsistence; and, if I may use an expression which certainly at first appears strange, supercede the necessity of great and ravaging epidemics to repress what is redundant. Were a wasting plague to sweep off two millions in England, and six millions in France, there can be no doubt whatever that, after the inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful shock, the proportion of births to burials would be much above what it ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... places this embassy from Tyre to the Carthaginians at the same time that the Syracusans were ravaging Africa, and had advanced to the very gates of Carthage. But the expedition of Agathocles against Africa cannot agree in time with the siege of Tyre, which was more than twenty years ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... hidden inlets served as places of concealment for buccaneers. These pirates of the Spanish Main not alone indulged in the adventurous pastime of smuggling, but they attacked and plundered Spanish trading ships and even made forceful expeditions upon land, ravaging cities and towns. They were encouraged in their depredations by other nations unfriendly to Spain. Henry Morgan, one of these buccaneers, who was commissioned as a privateer, was knighted by England in 1671 because of his prowess ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... Camisards. It was fought near the village of that name, not far from Ners, early in the spring of 1704. The campaign had been opened by the Florentines, who, now that they had made a desert of the Upper Cevennes, were burning and ravaging the Protestant villages of the plain. Cavalier had put himself on their track, and pursued and punished them so severely, that in their distress they called upon Montrevel to help them, informing him of the whereabouts of ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... with the phrase ha dias, but otherwise improbable. The frightful anarchy in Castile, which began in 1465 with the attempt to depose Henry IV. and alter the succession, was in great measure a series of ravaging campaigns and raids, now more general, now more local, and can hardly be said to have come to an end before Henry's death in 1474. The war which began with the invasion of Castile by Alfonso V. of Portugal, in May, 1475, was simply a later phase of the same series of conflicts, growing out ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... which nothing seemed to rouse her. She did not remark Mrs. Hunt's absence, or the presence of the neighbors at her bedside. And one morning, when she was wrapped up and placed by the fire, Mrs. Wood told her as gently as possible that her grandmother had died from a disease which was ravaging the country and supposed to be cholera. The intelligence produced no emotion; she merely looked up an instant, glanced mournfully around the dreary room, and, shivering slightly, drooped her head again ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... a hypocritical, psalm-singing, canting rogue in disguise," said Mason scornfully. "By the life of Washington! it worries an honest fellow to see such voracious beasts of prey ravaging a country for which he sheds his blood. If I had you on a Virginia plantation for a quarter of an hour, I'd teach you to worm the tobacco ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... under a wall.... Sometimes I have known a badger leave the solitude of the woods and take to some drain in the cultivated country, where he becomes very bold and destructive to the crops, cutting down wheat, and ravaging the gardens in a most surprising manner. One which I know to be now living in this manner, derives great part of his food during the spring from a rookery, under which he nightly hunts, feeding on the young rooks that fall from their nests, or on the old ones that are shot. This ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... John. On 9th/21st November, he had written to his mother telling her to write to John urging him to come home at once, as he had seen in the Russian newspapers how the town of Guanajuato had been taken and sacked by the rebels, and also that cholera was ravaging Mexico. Later {123b} he tells her of that nice house at Lakenham, {123c} which he means to buy, and how John can keep a boat and amuse himself on the river, and adds, "I dare say I shall continue for a long time with the Bible Society, as they see ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... were driven by the conquerors into a stream, swollen by the rains, where they miserably perished. The fugitives, led by Sviatopolk, in dismay fled back to Kief and took refuge behind the walls of the city. The enemy pressed on, ravaging, with the most cruel desolation, the whole region around Kief, and in a second battle conquered the king and drove him out of his realms. The whole of southern Russia was abandoned to barbaric destruction. Nestor gives a graphic sketch of the misery ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... coming of the Lord Jesus, out of the heavens, down to the earth. At the moment when He comes the Jews will be in the midst of a terrible siege in Jerusalem. Against the city will be assembled the armies of the nations. The city will be taken, the looting and ravaging already begun. ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... issued one of his grandiloquent manifestoes declaring that he was acting in behalf of all princes and seigneurs who had suffered wrong at the hands of the Swiss, and that he was ready to punish all who had provoked his just wrath by ravaging his province of Burgundy. It was rather a curious act on his part, to let his chief mercenary captain go off to make a pilgrimage just as he was on the eve of a campaign, but so he did, granting Campobasso leave of absence to visit the shrine of St. James at Compostella, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... aouls of the Kabardians were plundered; twenty Cossack stanitzas were destroyed; and ravaging on either side the lands through which he passed, the Imam seriously threatened the strong places of Mosdok, Jekaderinograd, and Stavropol. It was easy galloping over the smooth valleys and softly rolling hills of ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... was startled. She had heard of sleeping sickness, but had always supposed it to be a tropical disease. It surprised her to hear that it was ravaging ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham

... swear by the black hell which at this moment appears to me a paradise when compared with the earth, that I will henceforward give boundless scope to all my passions, and, by ravaging and destroying, believe that I am acting consistently to such a monster as man. Fly, and purchase me his daughter: she is doomed to destruction, as is every ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... pulled out and his hands cut off,—for the crime of having copied into his Note-book some strong passages against the Jesuits, extracted from German Books. Patriotic 'Confederates of Bar,' joined by all the plunderous vagabonds around, went roaming and ravaging through the country, falling upon small towns and German villages. The Polish Nobleman, Roskowski [a celebrated "symbolical" Nobleman, this], put on one red boot and one black, symbolizing FIRE and DEATH; and in this guise rode about, murdering and burning, from ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the interests of his master, than with the furtherance of his own plans, now purposed to carry the war into Saxony, and by ravaging his territories, compel the Elector to enter into a private treaty with the Emperor, or rather with himself. But, however little accustomed he was to make his will bend to circumstances, he now perceived the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... to the knave of hearts in those packs of cards marked by the greasy fingers of many a mercenary. La Hire was nominally on the side of the Dauphin Charles, but in reality he only made war on his own account. At this time he was ravaging Bar west and south, burning churches and laying ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... years to come. The King landed at La Hogue, or Saint Vaast-la-Hogue, as it is now called, where he knighted the Prince of Wales and made Warwick and Harcourt marshals of his army. They advanced in three divisions—the King and the Prince in the centre, the two marshals on the right and left—ravaging all before them, and not stopping in their victorious course till the great victory at Crecy. Harcourt subsequently met a traitor's fate. A force was sent against him, his army was routed, and, preferring death to being taken, he fought most valiantly until ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... them to flight by thousands. At this moment the whole Mexican Republic, equal in size to half a dozen European States, appears to be crumbling into fragments. The rambling expeditions of the Americans are ravaging it in all directions with impunity, and armies which might have been long since annihilated by a mere guerilla war, have been suffered to march from city to city, with scarcely more resistance than a cattle-stealing skirmish. By the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... in the fields. Several thousands died; the troops themselves suffered so much from thirst and hunger that no less than 30,000 stragglers fell out from the ranks and spread themselves over the country, burning, ravaging, plundering, and committing terrible depredations. Such dismay was caused by their treatment that the villages were all abandoned, and the whole population retired before the advance of the French, driving their flocks and herds before them, and thus adding greatly to ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... his friend to let no man know of his departure from life, to the intent that the fear of his approach might prevent fresh monsters and new robbers from ravaging ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... with poverty there arose those other evils inseparable from general distress — robbery, freebooting, crime in its darkest and ugliest aspects; bands of hungry men, ruined and beggared, partly perhaps through misfortune, but partly through their own fault, wandering about the country ravaging and robbing, leaving desolation behind them, and too often, if opposed, committing acts of brutal cruelty upon defenceless victims, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... King Ethelred, "upon the bridge betwixt the castle and Southwark have the ravaging Danes raised towers and parapets, breast high, and thence they did cast down stones and weapons upon us so that we could not prevail. And now, sea-king, what dost thou counsel? How may we avenge ourselves of our ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... knights received an earnest petition from the Duke of Poland, for aid against the Turks, who were ravaging his dominions, and by the enormous multitude of their hosts were able to defeat any army he could bring into the field. The knights accepted the invitation, and took part in a series of bloody and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... the east of France, which had been excluded from the armistice. Besanon still kept the enemy in check, and the latter had their revenge by ravaging the Comte Franch. Sometimes we heard that they had approached quite close to the frontier, and we saw Swiss troops, who were to form a line of observation between us and the Germans, set ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... in a former part of my journal mentioned the Illanun pirates, and my meeting with them here. On our return we heard of their being still on the coast, and from that time to this they have been ravaging and plundering between Tanjong Datu, Sirhassan, and Pontiana. Malays and Chinese have been carried off in great numbers; Borneo and Sambas prahus captured without end; and so much havoc committed, that the whole coast, as far as the natives are concerned, may be pronounced ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... that this part of the island is now known as Free Cuba, that the insurgent government controls it, and that there are no Spanish troops marching through it, ravaging it or laying it waste. What soldiers Spain still keeps in this part of the island are shut up in a few large ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 47, September 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... was sufficiently elastic to cover fifteen, for she was ravaging her wardrobe to effect her purpose and convince her brother, whose artistic tastes she consulted, with a skill that did her good service in the end. Rapidly assuming a gray gown, with a jaunty jacket of the same, she kilted the skirt ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... rivulet is when a torrent has carried away its banks and swept its bed. Two thousand navvies, the outsweepings of jails and the galleys, have come down to the works; a horde of contractors, sub-contractors, with the several staffs of clerks, inspectors, and suchlike, have settled on the spot, ravaging its beauty, uprooting its repose, vulgarising its simple rusticity, and converting the very gem of the Mediterranean into a dreary swamp—a vast amphitheatre, where liberated felons, robbing contractors, foul miasma, centrifugal pumps, and tertian fevers, fight all day ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... Through the ravaging of immense areas of crop-producing lands, the driving away of the people that lived on them, and the dislocation of commerce, the food supplies for millions of non-combatants are so reduced that the rising generation in several countries ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... bigger lives—more imposing, as it were, and they would safeguard them. Those who are afraid are the foreigners and the officials, yes, even the Emperor himself. Is he afraid, the Emperor? One can but guess. He has spent many weeks of this hot summer, when cholera was ravaging his country, in his summer palace at Nikko. There he was safe. And cholera spread itself throughout the land, in the seaports, in the capital, across the rice-fields to the inland villages, taking its toll here and there, of little ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... name, who's been ravaging Our sanctum? There the lamp lies dashed To pieces, curtain dragged to floor, pen smashed, And on the mantelpiece the ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... her whole time to imagining and organizing the personal display on the coach. She consulted with the other ladies as to the kind of dresses that were to be worn, but she decided everything herself; and when the time came she had all the young men ravaging the lanes and pastures for the goldenrod and asters which formed the keynote of her decoration for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... therefore ordered the alkaid to suffer all the passengers, together with their baggage, to be landed, and soon afterwards the plague appeared at Fas, and at Tangier. Thus the contagion which is now ravaging West Barbary was imported from Egypt. It does not appear that the mortality is, or has been, during its acme at Fas, any thing comparable to what it was during the plague that ravaged this country in 1799,[140] and which carried off more than two-thirds of the population ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... Jeffrey did go down to the kitchen, rigid in the order Mary Nellen always left. He entered boldly on a campaign of ruthless ravaging, found bread and cheese and set them out, and a roast most attractive to the eye. He lighted candles, and then a lamp with a gay piece of red flannel in its glass body, put there by Mary Nellen, who, though on Homeric knowledge ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... childhood by an uprightness of life which indicated his future sanctity. Erlin was opposed by Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, who made him prisoner and seized his possessions, carrying off the young Magnus to act as his personal attendant. After ravaging the Western Isles the Norwegian king encountered, off the Island of Anglesey, the forces of the Norman Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury, and defeated them with much slaughter. The young Magnus {64} refused to take any part ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett

... year, David claimed Northumberland for Henry as the representative of Siward, and, on Stephen's refusal, again adopted the cause of the empress. The usual invasion of England followed, and after some months of ravaging, a short truce, and a slight Scottish victory gained at Clitheroe on the Ribble, in June, 1138, the final result was David's great defeat in the battle of the Standard, fought near Northallerton on the ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... was ravaging the Kingdom of Damnasia, and the King, greatly concerned for the lives and limbs of his Royal subjects, promised his daughter Zodroulra to any man who would kill the animal. After some days Camaraladdin appeared before the ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... or the idols of silver and gold, work of men's hands, instead of the true God, refuseth, choosing rather to give up life, abandon wealth, and forego even wife and family; or he that goeth forth, ravaging and laying waste, plundering and spoiling, slaying the men, carrying away their children into captivity, and ravishing their wives and maidens in his unlawful embrace, and then shall call it "Jehad in the ways of the Lord!" ... And not content therewith, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... invaded India[3] and added that strange and ancient land to their domain. Europe they had failed to conquer; but their fleets commanded the Mediterranean. They held all its islands, Sicily, Crete, Sardinia, and Corsica. They plundered the coast towns of France and Italy. There was a Saracenic ravaging ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... easily explained. The wild beasts, in ravaging the interior of Will Tree, had scattered the remains of the fire. The fire had spread to the things in the room. The flame had caught the bark, which had dried and become combustible. The gigantic ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... sure of its mark, the ravaging Zeppelin rose higher on the discharge of its first bomb and still higher after firing the second. At the safe distance of four thousand feet it dropped three more shells recklessly, haphazard. One of ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... be (now dwindled to something less, although the cheese industry makes her prosperous enough and happy enough) was called by the poet Vondel the trumpet and capital of the Zuyder Zee, the blessed Horn. He referred particularly to the days of Tromp, whose ravaging and victorious navy was composed largely of ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... of stoicism. In the garden path, beside the moat, while he puffed his cigarette, he told me how he had held up his head to the Prussians; for, hard as it seemed to believe it, that pastoral valley had been occupied by ravaging Teutons. According to this recital, he had spoken his mind civilly, but most distinctly, to the group of officers who had made themselves at home in his dwelling—had informed them that it grieved him profoundly ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... in both the latter had triumphed, whilst two distinguished individuals had fallen a sacrifice to the popular fury—Freire in Portugal, and Quesada in Spain. The news which reached me at Lisbon from the latter country was rather startling. The hordes of Gomez were ravaging Andalusia, which I was about to visit on my way to Madrid; Cordova had been sacked and abandoned after a three days' occupation by the Carlists. I was told that if I persisted in my attempt to enter Spain in the direction which I ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... spewing murder in its last writhing, the monster died. It had begun by furiously ravaging Belgium in August, 1914; it ended with the awful, wanton murder of noncombatants at Mezieres in November, 1918. Throughout four years, three months and ten days, it had ramped and raged over the land, under the sea and in the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... murderer quite a person to be commended in the eyes of the public. The devil of it is," he said as he sank into his big chair with a sigh, "that had I hanged him it would not have been necessary to write three foolscap sheets of report. I dislike these domestic murderers intensely—give me a ravaging brigand with the hands of all ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... of Catherine Hall; Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge. He died in February 1598 while the plague was ravaging Carlisle, and was buried in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley

... would have been as much joy to Mary as to himself—his ordination. He struggled with his own anxiety that the intervening obstacles to his journey should not deprive him of serenity and trust, but the inward fever was ravaging within. Only one short week, and then he departed; ere, however, that time came, he received a letter, and with a sickening feeling of indefinable dread recognised the handwriting of his Mary. He left the breakfast-parlour ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... what lay before the minister of God now in this selva oscura of life? The selling of the Master, of 'the love so sweet, the unction spiritual,' for an intellectual satisfaction, the ravaging of all the fair places of the heart by an ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Fives-Court, and became the Laureate of the Ring. "He has made a good set-to with Eales, Tom Belcher (the monarch of the gloves!), and Turner, and it is known that he has parried the difficult and ravaging hand even of Randall himself." "The difficult and ravaging hand"—there ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... to fell the trees to make room for the plow, and now one of the strongest impulses of the average American is to cut down a tree. Our forests, on which a moist climate so largely depends, are treated as if they encumbered the ground. The smoke that we are breathing proves that fires are ravaging to the north and west of us. They should be permitted no more than a fire in the heart of a city. The future of the country depends upon the people becoming sane on this subject. If we will send to the Legislature pot-house politicans who are chiefly interested in keeping up a supply of liquor ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... impunity they now enjoyed, the vast barbarian horde, divided into foraging parties of from one hundred to a thousand, spread over a tract of country thirty miles wide, rolled like a devastating tidal wave in resistless course southwards, driving the independent princes before them, plundering, ravaging, and destroying, and leaving famine behind. Part of the plunder indeed, of the provinces recently attached to Kapchack's kingdom, and now declared independent, furnished the first instalment of the war indemnity the barbarians ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... by this time led their forces over through the narrow defile and the territories of the Sequani, and had arrived at the territories of the Aedui, and were ravaging their lands. The Aedui, as they could not defend themselves and their possessions against them, send ambassadors to Caesar to ask assistance, [pleading] that they had at all times so well deserved of the Roman people, that their fields ought not to have been laid waste—their ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... whole population of the city were becoming more and more alarmed every hour, for the rioters were burning and destroying the suburbs, and they declared that if the Londoners did not open the gates, they would, after ravaging every thing without the walls, take the city by storm, and burn and destroy every thing in it. So it was finally concluded to open the gates and let ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... inhabitants of an island, (16) and were still, as now, rulers of the sea, they would have had it in their power to work whatever mischief they liked, and to suffer no evil in return (as long as they kept command of the sea), neither the ravaging of their territory nor the expectation of an enemy's approach. Whereas at present the farming portion of the community and the wealthy landowners are ready (17) to cringe before the enemy overmuch, whilst the People, knowing full well that, come what may, not one ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon

... "Commerce prevention" have no more connection with the old and barbarous idea of plunder and reprisal than orderly requisitions ashore have with the old idea of plunder and ravaging. No form of war indeed causes so little human suffering as the capture of property at sea. It is more akin to process of law, such as distress for rent, or execution of judgment, or arrest of a ship, than to a military ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... now began to be a grief to me to see the turgid pallor that gradually overspread the always ashen countenance of Zaleski; I grew to consider the ravaging life that glared and blazed in his sunken eye as too volcanic, demonic, to be canny: the mystery, I decided at last—if mystery there were—was too deep, too dark, for him. Hence perhaps it was, that I now absented myself more and more from ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... doses of quinine, aided by Tim's rugged constitution and the fact that this was his first attack of the ravaging sickness of the swamp lands, pulled him back to safety within the next two days. To safety, but not to strength. Despite his stout-hearted assertions that he was ready to hit the trail and "walk the legs off the whole danged outfit," he ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... that I can no where find so great satisfaction as in those innocent and useful pursuits: In indulging these feelings, I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it, by the most uninterrupted career of conquests." A visitor to Mount Vernon in 1785 states that his host's "greatest pride is, to be thought the first farmer in America. He ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... retired to the open country, and being wearied out, lay down to sleep on the skin of the horse. But he had scarcely closed his eyes before a messenger arrived from the elders of Esthonia, announcing that war had broken out, and that a hostile army was ravaging the country. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... Clelie, was no longer anything but Lodoiska, still noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de Scuderi to Madame Bournon-Malarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the portresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent. Madame Thenardier was just intelligent enough to read this sort of books. She lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she possessed. This had given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive attitude towards her ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... is easy for those who do not know what the real situation was to suppose that the French were something akin to fools. For twenty centuries the Germans had been swarming over the Rhine in preying, ravaging hordes, and France had been beating them back to save her national life. That they would swarm again, more insolent and more rapacious than ever after their triumph of 1870, was not to be doubted. ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... ran on to the north and west till we raised the coast of Japan and picked up with the great seal herd. Coming from no man knew where in the illimitable Pacific, it was travelling north on its annual migration to the rookeries of Bering Sea. And north we travelled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... representations would have been as ineffective as her piety or her prayers. So long ago as 1796 she implored the mercy of Napoleon for the Roman Catholics in Italy; and entreated him to spare the Pope and the papal territory, at the very time that his soldiers were laying waste and ravaging the legacy of Bologna and of Ravenna, both incorporated with his new-formed Cisalpine Republic; where one of his first acts of sovereignty, in the name of the then sovereign people, was the confiscation of Church lands and the sale of the estates of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... poverty, and so many other causes of suffering, Christophe bore his lot patiently. He had never been so patient. He was surprised at himself. Illness is often a blessing. By ravaging the body it frees the soul and purifies it: during the nights and days of forced inaction thoughts arise which are fearful of the raw light of day, and are scorched by the sun of health. No man who has never been ill can have a ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... at last, they who forever marched, they to whom space was so great! I see their poor hands, their poor legs, their poor backs, resting on the earth. They are tranquil at last. The shells which bespattered them are ravaging another world. They ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... longer carried on the war together, since each blamed the other for the disaster, but Junius went on ravaging a portion of Samnium, while Rufinus inflicted injury upon Lucanians and Bruttians. He then started against Croton, which had revolted from Rome. His friends had sent for him, but the other party got ahead of them by bringing a garrison from Milo, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... Kenneth, bowing —"all this you have done, by your royal treaty with our sovereign at Canterbury. Therefore have you me, and many better Scottish men, making war against the infidels, under your banners, who would else have been ravaging your frontiers in England. If their numbers are now few, it is because their lives have been freely ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... Fraser, an officer in the 78th Highlanders and afterwards first seigneur of Mount Murray, one of the two seigniories into which Malbaie was divided, was sent out on these ravaging expeditions. Years after, some of Fraser's neighbours of French origin rallied him on his capacity for devastation as shown at this time. See Fraser's Journal, Appendix A, p. 253, and the Memoires of Philippe Aubert de ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... intelligence may reach us. Francis and I did not reach here from New Haven for four days, and we return there on Saturday. As it was, I left only in obedience to my father's command, and brought news of Lyon's ravaging the city to General Wolcott, dodging Hessians and outlying marauders by the way. Do you stop here long, Dolly, or will you have my escort back ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... words contained in the document written at the Mont-Dore on the 3rd and handed to M. de Vesme on the 13th of June 1914, at a moment when no one was thinking of the terrible war which to-day is ravaging half ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... than in the previous year; and the consumption of tea and spirits increased in due proportion. The same year saw great improvements in sanitation put into practice as the result of an alarm of cholera, that plague ravaging Hamburg. ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... everybody. Though her husband was a handsome man, he was as unprincipled as he was unfortunate. He gambled. This she once admitted to me, and while at long intervals he met with some luck he more often returned dispirited and with that hungry, ravaging look you expect to see in a wolf cheated ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... able to talk Mahratti; though many of them are, of course, familiar with the southern dialects. The rajah is already practically at war with the Mahrattas as, for a long time, his troops have been ravaging the territory of Purseram Bhow; which he was invited to do by the Peishwa, when Purseram took sides against him. He is doubtless in some apprehension of an attack by the Mahrattas and, upon our promising to ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... ranged in a semi-circular form, are imposing on, the eye from their magnitude, and on the imagination from their fame. I paused to enjoy their perspective; but, is not senseless WAR, I exclaimed, even now ravaging or disturbing the four quarters of the world, and is it not from this scite that it receives its impulse and direction? I charitably hoped that mere errors of judgment had guided the councils of the men who inhabit these buildings—but ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... the affairs of the wide-spread empire were prosperous, and his own Austria advanced rapidly in order, civilization and power. The numerous nobles, turbulent, unprincipled and essentially robbers, had been in the habit of issuing from their castles at the head of banditti bands, and ravaging the country with incessant incursions. It required great boldness in Rhodolph to brave the wrath of these united nobles. He did it fearlessly, issuing the decree that there should be no fortresses in his States which were not necessary for the public defense. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... remote prehistoric period the horses of various kinds which abounded in North and South America rapidly and suddenly became extinct. It has been suggested, with some show of probability, that a previously unknown epidemic disease due to a parasitic organism—such as those which we now see ravaging the herds of South Africa—found its way to the American continent. And it is quite possible that this was brought from the other hemisphere by the first men who crossed the Pacific and populated ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester



Words linked to "Ravaging" :   plundering, ravage, pillaging, devastation, pillage, destructive



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