"Vassalage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will then show some moderation in his covetousness. Does he wish to rule over all the countries of the North? Will he eat up all the kail in England? He shall do so, and reduce that country to a desert, before I lay my head in his hands, or show him any other kind of vassalage. Now ye shall tell him these my words,—I will defend Norway with battle-axe and sword as long as life is given me, and will pay scat to no man ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... still better loved Queen Berthe, and their son Conrad, resisted the Saracen invasion and preserved for a hundred and fifty years the autonomy of their kingdom. Nobles with their serfs and freemen already divided the land, their prerogatives and vassalage long since established by the laws of Gondebaud. The Oberland, or Pays-d'en-Haut, Hoch Gau, or D'Ogo, in the German tongue, a country no longer wild but rich in fertile valleys and wooded mountain sides, was given ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... territory between the Durance and the Isere, which Theodoric had wrested from his brother in 523. The occasion of this cession was probably some league of mutual defence against the Franks, which Cassiodorus could without dishonesty represent as a kind of vassalage of Burgundy to Ostrogothia. If so, it availed Godomar little, as his territories were overrun by the Frankish Kings in 532, and the conquest of them was apparently completed ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written embassage, To witness duty, not to show my wit: Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good conceit of thine In thy soul's thought, ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... days conquest hath undone them. And sold them to their vassalage; for what Have I else toyl'd my brains, profusely emptied My moneys, but to make them slaves to Venice, That so in case the sword did lose his edge, Then art might ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... dominated by feudalism. This feudalism differed somewhat from the French feudalism, for it represented a sort of overlordship of absentee feudal chiefs, which, leaving the people more to themselves, made vassalage less irksome. ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... of this country in their keeping? Why, if the most abject slave that ever toiled on a Southern plantation, cast off by his master and compelled to claim the rights of a freeman, should, of his own deliberate choice, elect to return to his miserable vassalage, who would not pronounce him unfit to enjoy the priceless boon of liberty? who would hesitate to say that natural stupidity, or the acquired imbecility of long enslavement, had doomed him to remain, to the day of his death, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the second man, with a querulous protest, which did not, however, conceal his admiring vassalage to his friend; "that's what I'm allus telling Jim. 'Jim,' I says, 'how is folks to know you're the man that shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped three o' them Mariposa Vigilants? They didn't see you do it! They just look at your fancy style ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... himself in course of time, that he was errand-goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then only as some servant's deputy), but also that he was one of the house's retainers and owed vassalage to it and was bound to leal and loyal interest in it. For this reason, he always spoke of it as 'Our House,' and, though his knowledge of its affairs was mostly speculative and all wrong, claimed to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... already begun in these parts. As for the Portuguese factory there, I meant not to harm it, as both it and our factory might continue to trade, and I saw no reason they had to oppose us, as the country was free for all nations, the Mogul and his subjects not being under vassalage to the Portuguese. I therefore desired him to tell his captain, that I expected he would, in a friendly manner, permit any English who were at Surat to come on board to confer with me, and hoped he would not reduce me to the necessity of using force, as I was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... "Indio bravo;" south of it dwells his degenerate and conquered kinsman, the "Indio manso"—not in the "tents," but in the towns of his Spanish conqueror—the former, free as the prairie wind; the latter, yoked to a condition of "peon" vassalage, with chains as strong as those of slavery itself. The neutral belt of hostile ground lies between—on the one side half defended by a line of garrisoned forts (presidios); on the other, sheltered from attack by the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Native Country. But this King being forced to fly to avoid the Spanish slaughter and Cruelty, deprived of all he was Master of, died in the Mountains; and all the rest of the Potentates and Nobles, his subjects, perished in that servitude and Vassalage; as you shall find ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... without success, to persuade the neighbouring chiefs of Swat, Bajour, and Dir, to follow his example. Now Chitral and Cashmere are not only far apart, but are separated by lofty mountain ranges, inhabited by other tribes, so that this sudden offer of vassalage seems rather inexplicable. It transpired, however, a few years afterwards, that his real motive in seeking the friendship of Cashmere was due to his fear of aggression by the Ameer of Cabul.[Footnote: ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... our posterity to groan under the galling chains of our murderers? Has our blood been expended in vain? Is the only benefit which our constancy till death has obtained for our country, that it should be sunk into a deeper and more ignominious vassalage? Recollect who are the men that demand your submission, to whose decrees you are invited to pay obedience. Men who, unmindful of their relation to you as brethren; of your long implicit submission to their laws; of the sacrifice which you ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... if to review his subjects as they passed, giving each dog a cuff beside the ears as he went by. This clapper-clawing was always taken in good part; it appeared to be, in fact, a mere act of sovereignty on the part of grimalkin to remind the others of their vassalage; which they acknowledged by the most perfect acquiescence. A general harmony prevailed between sovereign and subjects, and they would all sleep ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... which they think their right by inheritance, whilst the Danes, when they boast of their negative happiness, always mention it as the boon of the Prince Royal, under the superintending wisdom of Count Bernstorff. Vassalage is nevertheless ceasing throughout the kingdom, and with it will pass away that sordid avarice which every modification of slavery is ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... easily judge of the remainder. And indeed to what purpose would it be singly to recount the commonalty and rabble of mankind, who beyond all question are entirely on my side? and for a token of their vassalage do wear my livery in so many older shapes, and more newly invented modes of Folly, that the lungs of a thousand Democrituses would never hold out to such a laughter as this subject would excite; and to these thousand must be superadded one more, to laugh at them as much as they ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... the vassalage to the slave power displayed by northern congressmen of both parties, though forming a majority in the House during all the great days of the slavery battle. The gag history is one example. Resolutions against unquestionably ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... organise her forces for resistance. Of the great empires which the modern age has brought into being, the Russian would have survived as a helpless and blinded mammoth; the French Empire would have vanished, and the proud and noble land of France would have sunk into vassalage and despair; the British Empire would assuredly have dissolved into its component parts, for its strength is still too much concentrated in the motherland for it to be able to hold together once her power was broken. After a few generations, that will no longer be the case; but to-day it ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... of complaint is, that no native Indian, or descendant, is allowed by us to be a man, or to make himself a man, whatever may be his disposition and capacity. They are all kept in a state of vassalage, under officers, appointed sometimes by the Governor, and sometimes by the Legislature. The spot of his own ground, which he may cultivate, is annually rented out to the Indian by an overseer; and provisions are doled out to the tribe according to ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... since condemned as inefficient by all progressive minds, and in the doctor's acre of grass a flock of two whole sheep was grazing,—no doubt he'd taken them on account. Two men and one old woman made gestures of abject vassalage, and my uncle replied with a lordly gesture of his great ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... jealousy, as an upstart. The new monarchic constitution of 1808-12, which has immortalized the names of Frederick William III., and of his ministers, Stein and Hardenberg, altered this system, and abolished the vassalage and feudal service of the peasants in those provinces that lie to the east of the Elbe. The fruits of this wise act of social reform were soon apparent, not only in the increase of prosperity and of the population, but also in that steady and progressive elevation ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag |
