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Butchery   /bˈʊtʃəri/   Listen
Butchery

noun
1.
A building where animals are butchered.  Synonyms: abattoir, shambles, slaughterhouse.
2.
The business of a butcher.  Synonym: butchering.
3.
The savage and excessive killing of many people.  Synonyms: carnage, mass murder, massacre, slaughter.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Butchery" Quotes from Famous Books



... disappearing all over the world before the uncontrolled persecution of the new steam whalers. The walrus is exterminated everywhere in Labrador except in the north. The seals are diminishing. Every year the hunters are better supplied with better implements of butchery. The catch is numbered by the hundreds of thousands, and this only for one fleet in one place at one season, when the Newfoundlanders come up the St. Lawrence at the end of the winter. The woodland caribou has been killed ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... homely narratives of the Indian wars in New England, there is a touching account of the desolation carried into the tribe of the Pequod Indians. Humanity shrinks from the coldblooded detail of indiscriminate butchery. In one place we read of the surprisal of an Indian fort in the night, when the wigwams were wrapped in flames, and the miserable inhabitants shot down and slain in attempting to escape, "all being dispatched and ended in the course of an hour." After a series of similar transactions, "our ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... established a special court for the speedy trial and condemnation of all those whose fidelity to Philip was suspected. This was popularly known as the Council of Blood, for its aim was not justice but butchery. Alva's administration from 1567 to 1573 was a veritable reign of terror. He afterwards boasted that he had slain eighteen thousand, but probably not more than a third of that number were ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... as well as of a French guard stationed within forty feet of the spot; and, declares the surgeon under oath, "none, either officer or soldier, protected the said wounded men."[522] The opportune butchery relieved them ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... left arm. As soon as the women were close to the ambuscade, Higbee, who was in charge of the detachment, gave a signal, which had evidently been prearranged, by saying to his command, “Do your duty”; and the horrible butchery commenced. Most of the men were shot down at the first fire. Three only escaped from the valley; of these, two were quickly run down and slaughtered; the third was slain at Muddy ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... sanity to suppose that, if we make them half a nation, they will not some day attempt to be a whole nation. But we shall come back to the place where we started, after another cycle of terror and torment and abominable butchery—and to a place where we might, in peace and perfect ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... the full fury of his vengeance. He caused, the tongues of the soldiers to be torn out, and then had them clubbed to death. He massacred the common folk in front of the great winged bulls which had already witnessed a similar butchery half a century before, under his grandfather Sennacherib; the corpses of his victims remained long unburied, a prey to all unclean beasts and birds. When the executioners and the king himself were weary of the slaughter, the survivors were pardoned; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... again—what part of the Mosaic economy could it more plausibly have been expected that God should vindicate by some memorable interference, since of all the Jewish institutions it was that one which only and which frequently became the occasion of wholesale butchery to the pious (however erring) Jews? The scruple of the Jews to fight, or even to resist an assassin, on the Sabbath, was not the less pious in its motive because erroneous in principle; yet no miracle interfered to save them ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... one of Priam's sons, Scarce slipt from Pyrrhus' butchery, and lame, Through foes, through darts, along the cloisters runs And empty courtyards. At his heels, aflame With rage, comes Pyrrhus. Lo, in act to aim, Now, now, he clutches him,—a moment more, E'en as before his parent's eyes he came, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. ...
— Candide • Voltaire

... into the very ranks of the soldiery, when I discovered that the corps was none other than that of the Artist Volunteers, which contains several of my friends. Seizing one of those whom I chanced to recognise, I hurriedly whispered in his ear the thoughts of impending butchery which were passing in my terrified mind. But he only laughed. "You will disturb their digestions, my dear Furniss, some other way," he said, "than by providing them with a piece de resistance. Make your mind easy, for we are only here to do honour to the guests. This is the banqueting ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude—had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot—had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... shock my readers with a description of the cool-blooded butchery that followed. The result of the combat was what anybody might have predicted. At the eleventh round, poor Ned refused to "give in"; the brawny pugilist, unhurt, in good wind, and pale with concentrated and as yet unslaked revenge, had the gratification of seeing his opponent seated upon his ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... hewing, with the precision of Sir Tristrem himself, and wrangling and disputing with all around him concerning nombles, briskets, flankards, and raven-bones, then usual terms of the art of hunting, or of butchery, whichever the reader chooses to call it, which ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... such passion as he depicts is not love. He took Hamlet and transformed him from a melancholy, a philosophizing Dane into a yelling man, a man of the steppes, soaked with vodka and red-handed with butchery. Hamlet, forsooth! Those twelve strokes of the bell are the veriest melodrama. And Francesca da Rimini—who has not read of the gentle, lovelorn pair in Dante's priceless poem; and how they read no more from ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... best wing-shot in the Tennessee Valley, and that his kennel of Gladstone setters had won more field trials than any other kennel in the South. No man has really hunted who has never shot quail in Alabama over a well-broken setter. All other hunting is butchery compared to the scientific sweetness of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... groans of the latter loading the night air. The poor wretches were carried away, and the troops remained on the spot all night. The next day the city was in a fever of excitement. The number of killed was greatly exaggerated, and the denunciations of the butchery, as it was called, were fierce and loud. On almost every corner groups of excited men were seen in angry discussion—multitudes gathered in front of the jail, and gazed with horror on the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... army. A party of cavalry were sent out to succour him. They brought him in wounded, exhausted, half-dead. The messenger was Dr Brydon, and he now reported his belief that he was the sole survivor of an army of some 16,000 men!'[3] From this wholesale butchery, which we are not disposed to detail, the women and children, the general, and the husbands of the ladies, were rescued by Akbar Khan. They were held for a time by the son of Dost Mahomed in a sort of captivity; where some of them had leisure to write narratives of their adventures, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... however all hope was gone. Huddled together by the wind and the deadly English fire, their sails torn, their masts shot away, the crowded galleons had become mere slaughter-houses. Four thousand men had fallen, and bravely as the seamen fought, they were cowed by the terrible butchery. Medina himself was in despair. "We are lost, Senor Oquenda," he cried to his bravest captain; "what are we to do?" "Let others talk of being lost," replied Oquenda, "your Excellency has only to order up fresh cartridge." But Oquenda stood alone, and a council ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... mind the points to which I have drawn your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose of the murdered. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you will admit that there ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... according to sentence, before he was dead, and the butchery begun on him; and when it was near over, he moved a little in his pain, and said that he forgave the Queen and all that caused or consented to his ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... "The British officers pronounced it downright butchery to lead the men afresh against ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... flag. He says he aimed at the cannon, which was trained on his vessel, and which had first fired on him. But you must know, my dear Stedman, that before his arrival, war vessels belonging to the several powers mentioned in my revised dispatches, had started for Opeki at full speed, to revenge the butchery of the foreign residents. A word, my dear young friend, to the wise is sufficient. I am indebted to you to the extent of twenty thousand dollars, and in return I give you this kindly advice. Leave Opeki. If there is no other way, swim. But ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... object to them, even disguised as floor-walkers. Surely that would be a besotted board which would pass the irregular amours of Lord Jim, the domestic brawls of Almayer, the revolting devil's mass of Kurtz, Falk's disgusting feeding in the Southern Ocean, or the butchery on Heyst's island. Stevenson's "Treasure Island" has been put upon the stage, but "An Outcast of the Islands" would be as impossible there as "Barry Lyndon" or "La Terre." The world fails to breed actors for such roles, or stage ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... me," declared Mart disgustedly putting down his rifle. "It doesn't give the brute a fair show and it's too much like butchery. I'm satisfied." ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... purpose was executed. At the bottom of the stairs she paused a moment, before entering the fatal apartment, then hurried through with a rapid step to the sleeping chamber beyond, followed closely by Lord Glenvarloch, whose reluctance to approach the scene of butchery was altogether lost in the anxiety which he felt on account of the survivor of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... act is done,— The most arch deed of piteous massacre That ever yet this land was guilty of. Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborn To do this piece of ruthless butchery, Albeit they were flesh'd villains, bloody dogs, Melted with tenderness and mild compassion, Wept like two children in their deaths' sad story. "O, thus," quoth Dighton, "lay the gentle babes,"— "Thus, thus," quoth Forrest, "girdling one another ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... the Ulster chiefs, the O'Rourke and O'Donnell, hurried down to stop the butchery and spare Ireland the shame of murdering helpless Catholic friends. Many—how many cannot be said—found protection in their castles. But even so it seemed as if some inexorable fate pursued all who had sailed in that doomed expedition. Alonzo de Leyva, with half a hundred young Spanish nobles ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... were placed in the position of having to fight for lawful supremacy and even for life? I think this might be trying to their faith in theoretic and sentimental government. But the question might be made more impressive still by devoting a chapter to the hideous butchery which horrified creation when the news came of the mutiny of the Flowery Land and the Caswell. I should like people who are so deadly virtuous as to repudiate self-preservation to picture the decks of these two vessels washed in human blood, and to imagine (if it is not too ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... indicated that the trial of the men guilty of assassinating my friends and of attempting to kill myself in the Hay Meadow butchery was one which reached a considerable importance at the time. The crimes were committed in that strange portion of the country called No Man's Land or the Neutral Strip. The accused were tried in the United States court at Paris, Texas. I myself ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... fifty thousand persons in the provinces had been put to death in obedience to the edicts. He was a moderate man, and accustomed to weigh his words. As a new impulse had been given to the system of butchery—as it was now sufficiently plain that "if the father had chastised his people with a scourge the son held a whip of scorpions" as the edicts were to be enforced with renewed vigor—it was natural that commerce and manufactures should make ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... fellow, was killed in the butchery at Franklin afterwards, goes up to the breastworks, and says, "Look here, Yank, we're ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... themselves comedies. Now neither tragedies nor comedies can be produced according to a prescription which gives only the last moments of the last act. Shakespear did not make Hamlet out of its final butchery, nor Twelfth Night out of its final matrimony. And he could not become the conscious iconographer of a religion because he had no conscious religion. He had therefore to exercise his extraordinary natural gifts in the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... you see?—They have let loose these hell-hounds upon us, and butchery must be sent into our soft and innocent homes;—beings that we have sheltered from the air of heaven, brows that have grown pale at the breath of an ungentle word, must meet the red knife of the Indian now. Oh God, this ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... atrocity, Alva, fatigued rather than satiated with butchery, resigned his hateful functions wholly into the hands of Vargas, who was chiefly aided by the members Delrio and Dela Torre. Even at this remote period we cannot repress the indignation excited by the mention ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... teaching and influence were not forgotten. Generations of Quaker influence and blood were not without effect. War was born in hell. It was an act of savagery, and not of Christian nations. He pictured the awful carnage, the indescribable butchery, the untold horror which were entailed. He saw hordes of men fighting like devils; realised the lust for blood which was ever the concomitant of war. Besides, they settled nothing. Wars always bred wars, ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... the first language of nations. The Lyric Muse has especially chosen the land of natural sublimity, of mountain and of flood; and such scenes she has only abandoned when the inhabitants have sacrificed their national liberties. Edward I., who massacred the Minstrels of Wales, might have spared the butchery, as their strains were likely to fall unheeded on the ears of their subjugated countrymen. The martial music of Ireland is a matter of tradition; on the first step of the invader the genius of chivalric song and melody departed from Erin. Scotland retains ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... pale; there was no place for them. I must say that I contrasted this isolation of the congregation with the joint act of worship as performed in our churches, both Free and Anglican. I looked at these "Christian" men and women and thought of the butchery of Petrograd and Moscow, the wells of Kushva and Taighill, and the ruthless disregard of human life by both sides in this brutal internecine strife. I wondered whether I had stumbled upon at least one of the causes. At any rate, I did not forget we ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... entered. The funeral of the ill-fated Dongo and of the other victims, took place the following day; and it was afterwards remembered that Aldama was there amongst the foremost, remarking and commenting upon this horrible wholesale butchery, and upon the probabilities of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... the hands of his brethren, and carries them to the abbot, who blesses him for so doing. Pulci here is holding up to ridicule and execration the horrid butchery or betrayal of friends by Popish converts, and the encouragement they receive from the priest. No sooner is a person converted to Popery than his principal thought is how he can bring the hands and feet of his brethren, however harmless they may be, and different from the giants, to the "holy ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... governments seem to have acted as if the people were formed only for them; and ingeniously confounding their rights with metaphysical jargon, the luxurious grandeur of individuals has been supported by the misery of the bulk of their fellow-creatures, and ambition gorged by the butchery ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery; in which the Greeks, the French and all the most civilised nations have indulged in hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generally mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton

... the shells. Yonder, under the mass of the rust-red sky and its sullen flames, there opens a yellow rift where trees stand forth like gallows. The soil is dismembered. The earth's covering has been blown a lot in slabs, and its heart is seen reddish and lined white—butchery as far as ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... spite of the hospital flags waving from almost every house, in spite of innumerable bulletin boards, notices and sign-posts that the intruder had thrust upon the defenseless town, peace still seemed to prevail here, scarcely fifty miles away from the butchery, which on clear nights threw its glow on the horizon like an artificial illumination. When, for a few moments at a time, there was a lull in the stream of heavy, snorting automobile trucks and rattling drays, and no train happened to be rumbling ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... prompted. Indian regiments dispersed in all directions, because the men cared less for fighting than for getting booty from the prisoners and wounded. There were hand-to-hand fights in many parts of the battlefield, which, owing to the fanatical rage of the combatants, degenerated into horrible butchery. Those falling into the hands of the Afghans were most to be pitied. For these devils in human shape cut off the heads of all their prisoners and all wounded, whether Mohammedans, Hindus, or English, without any further ado, and in their rapacity tore the valuables from the bodies ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... name as much as you can," cries the doctor; "but you have a wrong idea of the word, colonel. What were all the Greeks and Romans? were these cowards? and yet, did you ever hear of this butchery, which we call ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... away life,—no, not even the life of a murderer. I agree with that young statesman,—Maximilien Robespierre,—that the executioner is the invention of the tyrant. My very attachment to our advancing revolution is, that it must sweep away this legal butchery." ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... instead of that horrible butchery, why did you not try to give the Calvinists the wise indulgences which made the reign of the Fourth Henry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... brought many a wether to his end, but this is the first sheep, within all my experience, that hath kept the fleece while a portion of the body has been in the pot! Lie there, poor Straight-Horns, if quiet thou canst be after such strange butchery. Reuben, I paid thee, as the sun rose, a Spanish piece in silver, for the trifle of debt that lay between us, in behalf of the good turn thou didst the shoes, which were none the better for the last hunt in the hills. Hast ever that pistareen ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... plane, signalling it to descend. He wasn't going to let his men ride aloft to helpless butchery. Nothing could be done until some means was discovered of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... thousand Calvinists including Coligny were put to death. The movement spread through the provinces where about the same number suffered as in the capital, though many of the Catholic clergy, as for example, the Bishop of Lisieux, exerted themselves to put an end to the butchery. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... certainty. It is this which is being used on the Irish as on the Scandinavian coast, resulting in the pollution of the air and water by the carcases of the slaughtered beasts from which the oil has been extracted. This revolting butchery, without foresight or intelligence, is carried on solely for the satisfaction of human greed, and apparently will be stopped only by the extinction of the yet remaining whales. In forty years in the middle of last century the whale ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... there had been a real emeute round the murdered man's grave. When they had buried him, that day, in Sharpsburg, no one, suspected of Southern sympathies, could venture openly to appear. From all that I could learn, the authors of that butchery were not Confederate soldiers, or even guerrillas, but purely and simply horse-thieves, who had come over with the sole object of plunder, tempted by the enormous prices that horse-flesh ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... defence, of course, argued an aggressor, and he talked eloquent about Courts of Arbitration which would do away with the wholesale butchery and horror of war. And he called eloquent on Peace to fly down on her white wings bearing the olive branch, to come and stop this unutterable woe and crime ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... short, the Scarlet Pimpernel in the face of the proclamation did succeed in dragging his wife out of the clutches of the Terrorists, then it was equally certain that Collot d'Herbois would carry out his rabid and cruel reprisals to the full. And if in the course of the wholesale butchery of the able-bodied and wage-earning inhabitants of Boulogne, the headsman should sink worn out, then would this ferocious sucker of blood put his own hand to the guillotine, with the same joy and lust which he had felt when he ordered one hundred and thirty-eight women of Nantes to be stripped ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... struck by the frightened, cursing headsman. The martyrdom was accomplished, but the angry and nauseated crowd had gone mad, and, but for the guards, would have worked their will on Ketch and perchance on others who had had part in this butchery. It was a raging crowd, ripe for anything, fiercely lusting to wreak its revenge on someone; but it was a crowd without a leader. Had a strong man at that moment assumed command of it, Monmouth's death might have brought success to the rebellion ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... best see how the play symbolises and summarises Bernard Shaw if we compare it with some other attack by modern humanitarians upon war. Shaw has many of the actual opinions of Tolstoy. Like Tolstoy he tells men, with coarse innocence, that romantic war is only butchery and that romantic love is only lust. But Tolstoy objects to these things because they are real; he really wishes to abolish them. Shaw only objects to them in so far as they are ideal; that is in so far as they are idealised. Shaw objects not so much to war as to the attractiveness of war. He does ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... high. I concluded—it may be said uncharitably, but then I know some of the ways and customs of these people—that these are small kinds of teocallis, and that on the bare rock already mentioned the natives have performed, and will again perform, their horrid rites of human butchery, and that the drippings of the pellucid fountains from the rocky basins above have been echoed and re-echoed by the dripping fountains of human gore from the veins and arteries of their bound and helpless victims. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... associated in a great degree with this building; "The Christians to the Lions" often being the cry throughout the city, and hundreds of innocent persons were "butchered to make a Roman holiday." The first Christian Emperor tried to put a stop to this butchery (statistics say that the combats of this amphitheatre cost from twenty to thirty thousand lives per month), but the custom was too deeply rooted to be stopped all at once. In the reign of Honorius, however, it was altogether abolished. It is very marvellous how this piece of masonry should ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... the city were given up to pillage, the citizen had at least the satisfaction of dying in the excitement of a contest, and in the defence of himself and his children. Here the prospect is—the actual scene is almost arrived and present—that all the Christians of Rome will be given over to the butchery, first, of the Prefect's court, and others of the same character, established throughout the city for the express purpose of trying the Christians—and next, of the mob commissioned with full powers to search out, find, and slay, all who bear the hated name. The Christians, it is true, die ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... against the "savage and boundless butchery" into which the conflict between "Christian princes, bound to the exactest laws of honor and generosity," was degenerating; but the only way to stop it appeared to be to extirpate the perpetrators; and to that ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... of that horrid butchery was present to the mind of the Apostle when he sends Onesimus back into slavery. Moreover, he knew that by our laws Philemon could put Onesimus to death; yet ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... there was a call for fighting. What chance would he have in the dim and bewildering light of that moon against the surety of Sinclair who shot, he knew, as other men point the finger —instinctively hitting the target? It would be a mere butchery, not a battle. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... his troops, and as they heard his words, they fell upon the unarmed men in the market-place, and hewed them down with their scimitars without pity or remorse—sparing none in their eagerness for the butchery, and which, in spite of their haste, was not ended till between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. Of all our citizens, only two escaped the slaughter, and they contrived to hide themselves in the tower; but those who fled out of the town ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... the highest rank. For this decline political confusion is the chief cause; first, in the renewal of the Hundred Years' War, with its sordid effort to deprive another nation of its liberty, and then in the brutal and meaningless War of the Roses, a mere cut-throat civil butchery of rival factions with no real principle at stake. Throughout the fifteenth century the leading poets (of prose we will speak later) were avowed imitators of Chaucer, and therefore at best only second-rate writers. Most of them were Scots, and best known is the Scottish king, James ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... with unseemly contumely in Dolabella's presence. This was in February, 43; and thus two of Caesar's murderers, in less than a year's time, felt the blow of retributive justice. When the news of this piece of butchery reached Rome, Cicero, believing that Octavian was a puppet in his hands, was ruling Rome by the eloquence of his Philippics. On his motion Dolabella was declared a public enemy.[81] Cassius lost no time ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... despondency. For three days I had been as if trampled on, without energy and without thought for the future. It was the excessive fatigue, indeed, that had just awakened me. Now, lying on my back, with my eyes wide open, I was thinking whilst gazing into the night, I thought of this battle, this butchery, which the sun was about to light up. For more than six years, at the first shot in each fight, I had been saying good-bye to those I loved the most fondly, Babet and uncle Lazare. And now, barely a month before ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... conquest of the sword which gave to Mohammed in India, as in other lands, a place and a possession. And those early days of Mohammedan triumph are, in the main, a record of cruel butchery and of widespread massacre. They fulfilled, to the letter, the command of the founder of their faith, which says: "When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads, until ye have made a great slaughter among them; and bind them in bonds; and either give them a free dismission afterwards, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... still uncaptured refused to surrender, their defenders still hoping against hope for a divine intervention, as in the days of Sennacherib. At length the city fell. The Romans, pouring in, began by slaying indiscriminately. Tiring of butchery, they turned their thoughts to plunder, but stood aghast at the houses filled with dead and putrefying corpses. The Temple of Herod was burnt, the city was desolate, while those whose miseries had not been relieved by death, were carried away into yet ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... handed down as a weighty precedent. Wherefore, your individual and common interests equally demand that you should sustain the dignity of the State, and not permit this brutal murderer to escape the penalty of the wholesale butchery that resulted from his bloody deeds. And do not think that I am influenced by any private motives, or giving vent to personal animosity. For I am in command of the night watch, and up to this time I think there is no one who will question ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... neighbour,' he shouted in Serbian. They did so. It took a long time, and was a pitiable sight. Some young boys were crying. Many of the men shouted defiance at the guards, who looked expectantly on, and at the cavalry, whose swords were drawn ready for the butchery. They blindfolded each other with strips torn from their waistcloths, or whatever else they had. 'Now kneel down,' came the harsh order, and one by one the victims crouched on the ground. The captain turned again to his troopers. 'Start work,' was the ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... same sight, the allies drawing steadily back, showering shot from every post of vantage, and leaving not a prisoner or a caisson in the conquerors' hands. "What!" said Napoleon, "after such a butchery, no results? no prisoners?" Scarcely had he spoken these words, when a cannon-ball tore through his staff, killing one general outright, wounding another, and shattering the frame of Duroc, Duc de Friuli. Napoleon was deeply affected by this occurrence. He ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... realize what the white people of that day underwent in their long struggle with the Ohio Indians. Cruelty so fiendish could never have a cause, but it cannot be denied that the torture of Crawford was the effect of the butchery of the Christian Indians. That awful deed was an act of even greater wickedness, for it was the act of men who were not savage by birth or race or creed. It was against the white man's law, while the torture of Crawford was by the red man's law. It is because of their laws ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... None of the bloody butchery has been Danton's. He has been too busy fighting Prussia, Austria and Savoy. Today, as he sits in the chair of state acknowledging the acclamations, his heart wells in gratitude to Henriette who had once saved his life—no face ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... were turned into shambles; the settlers were allowed a few minutes for prayer; then, in couples, they were summoned to their doom; and in cold blood the soldiers, with tomahawks, mallets, clubs, spears and scalping knives, began the work of butchery. At the end of the performance ninety corpses lay dabbled with blood on the ground. Among the victims were six National Assistants, a lady who could speak English and German, twenty-four other women, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... ever see man himself in common, as they call him, though he be (as you know) bigger than was ever any giant, yea, and pointed to of us even with our finger.') He is very severe on the sports of the gentry; the Utopians count 'hunting the lowest, the vilest, and the most abject part of butchery.' He quotes the words of the Republic in which the philosopher is described 'standing out of the way under a wall until the driving storm of sleet and rain be overpast,' which admit of a singular application to More's own fate; although, writing twenty years ...
— The Republic • Plato

... themselves, the victims of a rotten government and of their own delusions. Hofer's Tyrolese, Charette's Vendeans, or Bruce's Scotchmen never fought a finer fight than these children of the veld, but in each case they combated a real and not an imaginary tyrant. It is heart-sickening to think of the butchery, the misery, the irreparable losses, the blood of men, and the bitter tears of women, all of which might have been spared had one obstinate and ignorant man been persuaded to allow the State which he ruled to conform to the customs of every other civilised ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the Catholic side sufficient warrant for this work was found in the bull of Pope Innocent VIII, and the bishops' palaces of south Germany became shambles,—the lordly prelates of Salzburg, Wurzburg, and Bamberg taking the lead in this butchery. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... for them but to draw up thus, and await their butchery, defending the Eagle to the last; looking till the last toward that "woman's face of their leader," as they had often termed it, that was to them now as the face of Napoleon was to the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... different, and one should look to see the contrivers of greedy wars and the mighty marauders of the money-market in one troop of self-lacerating penitents with the meaner robber and cut-purse and the murderer that doth his butchery in small with his own hand. No doubt wickedness hath its rewards to distribute; but who so wins in this devil's game must needs be baser, more cruel, more brutal than the order of this planet will allow for the multitude born of woman, the most of these carrying a form of conscience—a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... of a fair, friendly, and humane commerce with the Africans; without which, it is not possible the inland trade of that country should ever be extended to the degree it is capable of; for while the spirit of butchery and making slaves of each other, is promoted by the Europeans amongst the Negroes, no mutual confidence can take place; nor will the Europeans be able to travel with safety into the heart of their country, to form and cement such ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet

... turn; nothing was spared except the cathedral, before which axes and crowbars seemed to lose their power, and the church of Ste. Eugenie, which was turned into a powder-magazine. The day of the great butchery was called "La Michelade," because it took place the day after Michaelmas, and as all this happened in the year 1567 the Massacre of St. Bartholomew must be regarded as ...
— Widger's Quotations from Celebrated Crimes of Alexandre Dumas, Pere • David Widger

... squadron of horse grenadiers came up to reinforce me, and thus enabled me to hold ground against the reserves of the Russian Guard. We charged again, and this charge was terrible. The brave Morland was killed by my, side. It was downright butchery. We were opposed man to man, and were so mingled together that the infantry of neither one nor the other side could venture to fire for fear of killing its own men. At length the intrepidity of our troops overcame every obstacle, and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... magistrates. The Church herself was well aware of the credit she derived from these displays of the constancy of her children; and hence, in an address to the persecutors which appeared about the beginning of the third century, the ardent writer boldly invites them to proceed with the work of butchery. "Go on," says he tauntingly, "ye good governors, so much better in the eyes of the people if ye sacrifice the Christians to them—rack, torture, condemn, grind us to powder—our numbers increase in proportion as you mow us down. The blood of Christians is their ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... soldiers. They had nothing to do but retreat. And now? They are still retreating, fighting with empty guns and clubs and even their naked hands. And still, trainloads of soldiers go out of Kiev every day without a gun in their hands. What a butchery! Can you imagine how horrible it is to see them march through the streets, swinging their arms and singing their stirring songs,—tall, able-bodied men,—while the beggars, cripples from the Russo-Japanese War, stand whining at ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce

... interesting to observe the steps by which, were it only through impulses of self-conservation, and when searching with a view to more effectual destructiveness, war did and must refine itself from a horrid trade of butchery into a magnificent and enlightened science. Starting from no higher impulse or question than how to cut throats most rapidly, most safely, and on the largest scale, it has issued even at our own stage of advance into a science, magnificent, oftentimes ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... They, too, had to win honor for the New Army and old London. They were a different crowd from the Scots, not so hard, not so steel—nerved, with more sensibility to suffering, more imagination, more instinctive revolt against the butchery that was to come. But they, too, had been "doped" for morale, their nervous tension had been tightened up by speeches addressed to their spirit and tradition. It was to be London's day out. They were to fight for the glory of the old town... ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... reasons are in readiness to justify the punishment of it. But, alas! in this case many hundreds were punished who had never been in rebellion, never thought of it, never knew it, were incapable of it. The vengeful spirit of their "High Mightinesses" in Batavia, was glutted to the throat. Butchery could not do her work more thoroughly. Not a drop of blood was left in Chinese veins to circulate disaffection, or boil in the agony of despairing hate. Extermination smiled in the gloom of Death,—merciful in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... While this butchery was at its height, the young queen with the Infanta entered, accompanied by Don Francesco, her husband, and the Duke of Montpensier. Aumale had arrived earlier. The queen looked very happy and is by no means so ugly as the papers say. She is blonde, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... wonted jollity his face wore an expression of the greatest seriousness. He, after a casual glance at Lawrence, suddenly insisted that it was necessary to exchange a cartel, and opening his secretary, with much pomp proceeded to write. "You see—if things were not regular it would be butchery," he explained, considerately, to Lawrence, who winced slightly at the word. "I don't want to see you murder each other," he went on in a slow comment as he wrote, "I wish you, since you are determined to shoot—each other—to do it ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... you remember Malvern Hill— That night of dreadful butchery! Round the top Of the entrenched summit, parked and aimed, Blazed like Vesuvius when he bellows fire And molten lava into the midnight heavens, An hundred crashing cannon, and the hill Shook to the thunder of the mighty guns, As ocean trembles to the bursting ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... walking-tours through Holland and Germany in search of bargains, and that he made 'a priceless collection of ballads.' It might be said also for a further plea that what one age regards as sport another condemns as butchery. The Ferrar family at Little Gidding were the inventors of 'pasting-printing,' as they called their barbarous mode of embellishment; and Charles I. himself, in Laud's presence, called their largest scrap-book 'the ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... Echoes of the great disaster which ensued rise from a pious tablet inscription left by a priest, who was convinced that the conquerors would be called to account for the sins they had committed against the great god Nin-Girsu. He lamented the butchery and robbery which had taken place. We gather from his composition that blood was shed by the raiders of Umma even in the sacred precincts of temples, that statues were shattered, that silver and precious stones were carried away, that ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... years since she had visited the Amphitheater, where the horrible butchery was an abomination to her; but to-day her heart bade her conquer her old aversion, and accompany ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... some of the divisions of the army corps under Steinmetz had already had, during the intervening days since the 14th, somewhat prepared the soldiers of the Waterloo veteran for butchery. They could plainly perceive from his tactics that their general was one who would spare no sacrifice of human life in order to gain his end and defeat the enemy. The corpses piled high on the field of Vionville of the Cuirassiers and Ziethen Hussars, who had been ordered to charge batteries ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... sickness and a bitter flood of tears—for a whiter and a nobler neck never fell before low beast—I strode away towards Westminster, cured of half my indignation at the death of Charles the First. Many people hurried past me, chiefly of the more tender sort, revolting at the butchery. In their ghastly faces, as they turned them back, lest the sight should be coming after them, great sorrow was to be seen, and horror, and pity, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... says Captain Furneaux, "that this butchery was premeditated on the part of the natives, for in the morning Mr. Rowe said that he observed two vessels pass us, and remain all the forenoon in sight of the ship. The bloodshed was most likely the result of a quarrel which was instantly fought out, or ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... standing outside of the Rich Bar graveyard, when all who felt disposed to engage in so revolting a task lifted the poor wretch from the ground in the most awkward manner possible. The whole affair, indeed, was a piece of cruel butchery, though that was not intentional, but arose from the ignorance of those who made the preparations. In truth, life was only crushed out of him by hauling the writhing body up and down, several times in succession, by the rope, which was wound round a large bough of his green-leaved gallows. Almost ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... alone. At the very entrance he beheld the dead bodies of some of his slaughtered kinsmen; drawing his sword, he fought his way back to his friends, who barely escaped with their lives to Dysart. Four hundred victims, including 180 of the name of O'Moore, are said to have fallen in this deliberate butchery. Rory O'Moore, the chief of his name, avenged this massacre by many a daring deed. In rapid succession he surprised Naas, Athy, and Leighlin. From the rapidity with which his blows were struck in Kildare, Carlow, and Kilkenny, he appeared to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... oh, my liege, my gracious lord, the city of Trier is threatened with the same fate! For three days the people have been crying in vain for mercy.—At your feet, sire, I implore you, have pity, and save them from butchery!" ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... instant, with a wild yell of fury, the hidden men burst out of the cabin, and then followed a scene of butchery which I pray Heaven it may nevermore be ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... not stop the butchery entirely because they were not strong enough in numbers. On the fourth day, the Jewish people of Odessa, through Dr. P——, succeeded in communicating to the Mayor of a different State. Soldiers from outside, ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... acting, a negro woman, who was [71] endeavoring to escape, was followed by her crying child.—To save it from savage butchery, she turned round and murdered ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... married a little factory girl, a pale, plump, quiet thing with sly eyes and a wheedling voice, who insinuated herself into him and bore him a child every year and made a fool of him. When he had taken over the butchery business, already a growing callousness to it, and a sort of contempt made him neglectful of it. He drank, and was often to be found in his public house blathering away as if he knew everything, when in reality he was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... Captain Raleigh," said Lord Grey, "as you have been so earnest in preaching this butchery, I have a right to ask none but you ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... butchering, butchery, assassination, massacre, strangulation, immolation, holocaust, execution, fusillade, carnage, murder, manslaughter, chaud-medley, lynching, guillotine, burkism, garrote, chance-medley, decimation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... In 1572, the butchery of the Hugnenots took place at Paris and throughout France; while at the same time the murderous power of Philip II. reigned supreme in the Netherlands. The sailors knew what they had to expect from the Spanish king in the event of his obtaining his threatened revenge upon England; ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... than half of my own crew perished in this action. I lost in it one of my cousins, first Lieutenant of my own ship, and two other kinsmen on board the Sans-Pareil, with many other officers killed or wounded. It was an awful butchery." ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... walking with swift strides, supporting Osbert on his horse, continued to cheer him with promises of rest and relief there, and listened to no entreaties from Philip or Humfrey to take one of their horses. Had not Osbert borne him on his shoulders through the butchery at Paris, and endured three years ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge



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