"I have no purpose to
despoil your dear family, nor to ruin your servants.
Then they vowed that even as they themselves had been
despoiled they would
despoil their oppressors, whether baron, abbot, knight, or squire, and that from each they would take that which had been wrung from the poor by unjust taxes, or land rents, or in wrongful fines.
We have seen, in all the examples of ancient and modern confederacies, the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members, to
despoil the general government of its authorities, with a very ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the encroachments.
When he has nothing left, must not his desires, crowding in the nest like young ravens, be crying aloud for food; and he, goaded on by them, and especially by love himself, who is in a manner the captain of them, is in a frenzy, and would fain discover whom he can defraud or
despoil of his property, in order that he may gratify them?
Let us kill as many as we can; the bodies will lie upon the plain, and you can
despoil them later at your leisure."
But one day the chance was lost forever, in so far as it could come in time to save his loved ones, for he was ordered away upon a long expedition to the ice-clad south, to make war upon the natives there and
despoil them of their furs, for such is the manner of the green Barsoomian; he does not labor for what he can wrest in battle from others.
And if, as I said, it was necessary that the people of Israel should be captive so as to make manifest the ability of Moses; that the Persians should be oppressed by the Medes so as to discover the greatness of the soul of Cyrus; and that the Athenians should be dispersed to illustrate the capabilities of Theseus: then at the present time, in order to discover the virtue of an Italian spirit, it was necessary that Italy should be reduced to the extremity that she is now in, that she should be more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians, more scattered than the Athenians; without head, without order, beaten,
despoiled, torn, overrun; and to have endured every kind of desolation.
Within a week all the blooming roads had been
despoiled, hundreds of miles of yellow sunflowers had been transformed into brown, rattling, burry stalks.
This we did, and the sails were hoisted, but before we had made any way the rocs reached their
despoiled nest and hovered about it, uttering frightful cries when they discovered the mangled remains of their young one.
The poor people began by fearing them, but when they found that the men in Lincoln green who answered Robin Hood's horn meant them no harm, but
despoiled the oppressor to relieve the oppressed, they 'gan to have great liking for them.
My mother inherited an estate from her husband, you have assassinated her; my name would have secured me the paternal estate, you have deprived me of it; you have
despoiled me of my fortune.
Day after day through a cold streak of heavens as bare and poor as the inside of a rifled safe a rayless and
despoiled sun would slink shamefacedly, without pomp or show, to hide in haste under the waters.