Sentence Examples:
The French kings, driven hither and thither, with a decimated people, and with the loss of some of their finest provinces, still retained their sovereignty.
He knew that the nobles abused their privileges; he would have taken them away rather than attempt to annul their order, and decimate them by horrid butcheries.
At close quarters, their muskets may pick off a seaman or two in the rigging, but at long-gun distance they must passively stand in their ranks and be decimated at the enemy's leisure.
Hundreds of miles are traversed by caravans, and how many unhappy wretches fall by the way, under the agents' whips, killed by fatigue or privations, decimated by sickness!
You forge these things prettily; but I have heard you are as poor as a decimated cavalier, and had not one foot of land in all the world.
Under military authority an army may be decimated, and a few men may properly be punished, while the rest are left unpunished.
Let us bare our heads, then, in all reverence, to the memory of those battered, decimated, indomitable legions which saved us from utter extinction at the beginning.
Were he to deal thus with an emigrant's herd, he would be shot without mercy; why, then, should whites decimate his without excuse?
Covered with blood, wounded in the face and the right leg by flying splinters, her captain preserved his magnificent coolness, and his decimated crew responded nobly to his call.
That corresponds to what in warfare is a decimating fire, upon which an officer, without danger of reproof, may withdraw his men.
This regiment, often decimated but always the same in character, acquired a great reputation for valor in the field and for wickedness in private life.
When, every day, we hear of persons being starved to death, and when the Right Hon. gentleman himself admits that in many parts of the country the population has been decimated, I cannot say, that I think ministers have done all they might have done to avert the fatal consequences of this famine
Even he had no protection and no safety; for any new excursion of less fortunate barbarians would desolate his possessions and decimate his laborers.
The troops, impotent to make effective reply, turned in panic and fled toward the upper terraces to get beyond the decimating artillery.
Besides this, the winter was terrible, and, decimated by the cold, only a small part of these hordes returned to the steppes of Tartary.
If you don't stop fighting, disband your armies and turn your fleets into liners and cargo boats, she'll proceed to sink your ships and decimate your armies until you learn sense.
To blame society with criminality is a current method, but untrue and unwise; for thus we will multiply, not decimate, criminals.
What overwhelming losses has art not sustained by having the ranks of its artists and their most creative audiences decimated by the dullness of mediocre health!
Here were some Indian girls from tribes that had been almost decimated in the savage wars, some of whom were bound out afterward as servants.
Philip, but the extreme severity of winter decimated the inhabitants, and those who had struggled through the cold died subsequently of starvation.
Fifteen minutes after the first shot was fired, the whole of the works were in our possession and the Burmese, who gathered in a confused mass, had been decimated by our volleys.
The First corps maintained its line of battle and held its foe at a distance in spite of the deadly fire which was decimating its ranks.
Apollo sent a pestilence which decimated the people, and Poseidon a flood, which bore with it a marine monster, who swallowed in his huge jaws all that came within his reach.
Malignant fevers, brought from the hulks or prisons, propagated in the stagnant atmosphere, and, when combined with low and crude diet, more than decimated the list.
I fell in with a New Jersey brigade, that had been decimated of nearly half its quota, and a spruce young Major attempted to convey an idea of the battle to me.
Winter closes again on the brave, the sick, and the suffering; cold, disease, and privation are fast decimating the available hands.
Though inoculation and vaccination had made it less fatal among the upper classes, this frightful scourge still decimated the poor, especially children.
Quentin in a town where hardly a stone wall had been left upright, and the population had been ruthlessly decimated by his predecessors.
If that appeal, in these days of decimated ideals, be at times strained and feverish, it scarcely lies in the mouths of the apostles of hate to deride us.
This ghastly carnage will drag on, with all its horrors; homes will be decimated, lives will be sacrificed all because we believe more in material things than in spiritual things.
As the companies were decimated by disease, wounds, desertions, and death, it became necessary to consolidate them, and the social pleasures received another blow.
As they emerged from the cavalry fight, the gunners opened upon them again, cutting new lines of carnage through their decimated ranks.
Some of his higher officers representing to him the danger of such a proceeding, he changed his mind, and gave orders that these legions should be decimated.
The allied powers defeated and decimated the armies of the French Emperor, and forced him to capitulate in his own capital.
At first sight the place looked like an encampment deserted by trappers, or some village decimated by deadly sickness; anything but the abode of human beings.
He had decimated his brigade, but the wounded and dying had cheered him as he passed, and the survivors had pursued the enemy until the bugle called them back.
The reverses affected the buoyancy of his troops, disease decimated their ranks, and desertions further depleted their numbers.
In times past, it was the gaunt Avenger which decimated the people and which kept down the population within the range of tolerable existence.
Many tribes were decimated and others wiped out entirely by the ravages of strong drink and disease, especially smallpox and cholera.
Dark, ferocious faces grin with exultation as the panic-stricken inhabitants, decimated by that deadly volley, turn wildly in headlong flight for the only side of the stockade apparently left open.
This may have been directly suggested by a pestilence which, decimating the nation, was interpreted as implying the need of greater purity.
Other surgeons of the period contributed to the improvement of medical practice by enlightened measures of quarantine to prevent contagious diseases from decimating armies.
They also procured, with much difficulty and at a high price, a quantity of lemons, for preventing or curing the scurvy, that terrible disease which decimates crews in the icy regions.
For a few minutes the regulars held their ground, returning the fire as best they might, yet decimated by the American bullets, and seeing their officers falling all about them.
This skeleton of a city was scarcely inhabited by the remnant of a people, decimated by hunger and pestilence, and in perpetual fear to see its ill-defended gates broken into by Lombard savages.
Owing to the merciless slaughter to which they have been subjected, their ranks have been woefully decimated, and it is to be hoped that the remaining ones may be safely protected.
Even the elements have of late seemed to combine against her, decimating whole cities of her southern possessions by earthquakes, and smiting her people with pestilence.
He was very successful in capturing towns until he came before Ypres, where he was checked, his humiliation being completed when his army was defeated by the French and decimated by a pestilence.
He remembered that his army was destroyed, his strongest fortresses dismantled, his treasury empty, and the manhood of his country decimated.
The enemy, expecting their attack, poured a volley into the Georgians that decimated their ranks, killing and wounding nearly every field officer in the brigade.
At intervals pestilence robbed them of their flocks, the crops failed, and hunger decimated the tribes; then the strong devoured the weak.
At length the Normans, being decimated by this practice of stealthy revenge, passed a law that every Saxon in the parish should answer for every Norman found killed within its limits.
And the Boers, who were almost taken by surprise, poured murderous volleys into their ranks as they marched in quarter column, and almost decimated them.
Imagine a susceptible population decimated by a scourge, and the survivors are plainly those who have evidenced a higher power of resistance.
And, out of so many of the rich and powerful, no one thinks of the mortality which decimates his brothers, thus forced to eat homicidal bread!'
Besides, the appearance of those plagues, which from age to age decimate the population of whole countries, has almost always been accompanied by a sort of mental excitement, which none of those who have been spared by the contagion can hope to escape.
First its native inhabitants, so numerous, so gentle, so industrious, were decimated by a plague that came to them from the white men.
Tacitus belonged to the senatorial order who had held high office, and had seen its ranks decimated, and its dignity outraged under the tyranny.
It would stamp out diphtheria, scarlet fever, summer complaint, consumption and a host of other diseases which now decimate the ranks of the unfit, and often, no doubt, of the comparatively fit.
At the clarion's first notes my archers bent their bows and a hail storm of murderous bolts, shot by my soldiers from above into the compact mass of Jacques in the hollow, decimated the bandits.
If hunger, thirst and fatigue decimated the masses, the noble Crusaders, thanks to their wealth, almost always escaped privations.
Our quail have many natural enemies; they are often decimated by the severity of winter, and there are human beings so degraded and so lost to shame as to seek their destruction in ways most foul.
Even a charge by cavalry going at full gallop must fail; they would be decimated, or utterly destroyed, long before arriving at the entrenched line.
We have not, therefore, to contemplate a devastated country and a decimated peerage at the time when our last Plantagenet King ascended the throne.
For these fatal epidemics decimate men as well as cattle, and we may at least ward off from our children the desolating disease which at present afflicts ourselves.
Finally, although the typhus be one of the gravest maladies which destroy and decimate cattle, all sick animals are not mortally affected thereby.
Opportunity now is wanting; for the uneasy eye of government penetrates our ranks, and the iron hand of despotism decimates us.
Their soiled and worn out garments, and their decimated ranks contrasted greatly with our well filled ranks and new clothes.
They are never found in numbers greater than a single brood, even though the brood may be decimated by the gun of the sportsman or the cunning of the vermin to no more than two or three.
And in the hot summer months, when the streams, at lowest summer-level, run almost dry, the heaviest trout are decimated by "tickling."
Decimated by scurvy and privations, and in extreme danger from the hostility of the Indians, he determined to return to France, taking with him the remnants of his expedition.
Thrown in former days upon a station where the yellow fever was epidemic, he had seen the seamen of the fleet decimated around him, and had himself barely escaped, as if by miracle.
Thither they sailed, and hoped to settle; but a terrible pestilence came upon them, and decimated their already sparse ranks.
Lying down in the fern, we waited impatiently for the signal to charge; had not we, on the last occasion worth speaking of, outrun our elders, and been nearly decimated in consequence?
To wage war on war, which comes like the visitation of a physician, to cure ills, would be like waging war on the medical profession to cure a decimating pestilence.
The army of the allied enemies increased daily, while that of the Austrians was decimated partly by contagious diseases, partly by a division of their forces, for the defense of the only fortress which was in a condition to arrest the advance of the Turks.
Many battles and many marches had so decimated it that the little fragment left had been disbanded and transferred into a regiment of cavalry.
Twenty-eight officers of rank were among the killed, regiments were decimated, and even the unhurt were so exhausted that they could scarcely stand.
The mortality is awful, even when there is no epidemic or plague, not to speak of their own feuds, which are decimating at times.
Seeing his gunners so cruelly decimated by the Texan bullets, he undertook to take their place, loading the guns at his own peril, and firing them at the insurgents.
Fighting ensued between the Arabs and the Portuguese, the city was destroyed; and in 1512 the Portuguese, whose ranks had been decimated by fever, temporarily abandoned the place.
In his anger, he broke his cane on the back of the first soldiers he met with, calling them cowards and traitors, and threatening to decimate the whole troop entrusted with the guard of the trench.
Five hundred Apache warriors, commanded by an intrepid chief, would defeat in the prairie your best soldiers, whom they would decimate, while not giving a chance for retaliation.
Thus ravaged by fire and sword, and decimated by disease, the unhappy natives had good cause to curse the ambition of which they were victims.
They rushed forward across the open space, while a terrific fire from the guns of the citadel turned full upon them further decimated their ranks.
Conquering is nothing; the white men have been several times defeated by the Redskins, and yet they have enslaved, decimated, and dispersed them like the leaves the autumn breeze bears away.
The Americans, though themselves surprised, when they expected to surprise their enemies, fought with indescribable fury, returning instantly to the attack in spite of the bullets that decimated them, and seemed resolved to fall to the last man, rather than give way an inch.
In communities where the mental development has been retarded, imitation easily spreads the contagion and this is probably the reason why entire villages are decimated by that curious malady.
It had become a mere desert, and the people, decimated by the war, and by voluntary or compulsory emigration, were plunged in utter destitution and savagery.
Their decimated regiment was disbanded, to be reformed of fresh recruits, and a long furlough given to the faithful but exhausted remnant.
Thucydides draws an awful picture of the decimating feuds, which seemed tinged with barbaric fury, between aristocracy and commons.
When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men.
Again the bereft and decimated brigade was called to perilous and responsible duty, which they nobly fulfilled; and when the second evening came, they could count their total loss.
We learned that to our cost, at the time of the war of intervention, when our soldiers were literally decimated by this fearful scourge.
It gave strict injunctions to the Colonels and Committees of War to apprehend all those, both of horse and foot, who ran away from their colors, and empowered them, if they thought it expedient for the good of the army, to "decimate the fugitives, and cause hang the tenth man".
He reminded them of their grievous plight before his legions freed them; of their decimated armies, of their ravaged land, of the heavy tributes, the noble hostages wrung from them.
To the South it meant decimated families, smoking homesteads, and the passing forever of a civilization unique in human history.
This work of giants was completed by a community of poor men, destitute of resources, without talent as without fortune, incessantly persecuted and frequently decimated.
The gallant and invincible legion came through in this way with fearfully decimated ranks, drawing away by hand two pieces of our artillery.
The less hardy, too, succumbed to the fever and ague, which decimated the settlers of the wooded country until they had cleared the forests and drained the marshes.