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Suzerain   Listen
Suzerain

noun
1.
A state exercising a degree of dominion over a dependent state especially in its foreign affairs.






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"Suzerain" Quotes from Famous Books



... him to eat. Hence, when the natives wish to signify that the sovereign reigns, they say, "He has eaten the king." A custom of the same sort is still practised at Ibadan, a large town in the interior of Lagos, West Africa. When the king dies his head is cut off and sent to his nominal suzerain, the Alafin of Oyo, the paramount king of Yoruba land; but his heart is eaten by his successor. This ceremony was performed not very many years ago at the accession of a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... mounted on white steeds, will of a sudden bear down the hordes of the infidel; an angel stands glorious behind the throne of Charlemagne; or in narrative of Celtic origin angels may be mingled with fays. God, the great suzerain, to whom even kings owe homage, rules over all; Jesus and Mary are watchful of the soldiers of the cross; Paradise receives the souls of the faithful. As for earth, there is no land so gay or so dear as la douce ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... members of chambers of commerce and marine insurance companies. Great numbers were to be present, and the Empress Eugenie was to be the Cleopatra of the occasion. But suddenly the khedive was threatened with a serious disappointment: the sultan, his suzerain, wanted to join in the festivities; and if he were present, he must be the chief personage, the khedive would be thrust into a vassal's place, and all his glory, all his pleasure in his fete, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... fiefs that stretched from Mantua across the plain of Lombardy, over the Apennines to Lucca, and southward to Spoleto. Thus the ancient Italy of Lombards and Franks was superseded by a new Italy of German feudalism, owing allegiance to a suzerain whose interests detained him in the provinces beyond the Alps. At the same time the organization of the Church was fortified. The Bishops were placed on an equality with the Counts in the chief cities, and Viscounts were created ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... is sole proprietor, and the possessions of the family are vested in him, and he governs as proprietor as well as father. In the tribe, the chief is the proprietor, and in the nation, the king is the landlord, and holds the domain. Hence, the feudal baron is invested with his fief by the suzerain, holds it from him, and to him it escheats when forfeited or vacant. All the great Asiatic kings of ancient or modern times hold the domain and govern as proprietors; they have the authority of the father and the owner; and their subjects, though theoretically ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... places of the absent Sirens. It was in a chamber of yonder turret, still standing, that the Doge Mansone II., blinded by a brother's vengeance, dragged out years of utter misery in pain and darkness, until the Emperor of the East, suzerain of Amalfi, at last took compassion upon the prisoner's wretched plight and allowed him to be removed into honourable confinement at Byzantium. For many hundreds of years the Isles of the Sirens have lain untenanted, nor ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... all his requisites without delay. This occupied him three days, and on the dawn of the fourth he took leave of his King and marched right away, over desert and hill' way, stony waste and pleasant lea without halting by night or by day. But whenever he entered a realm whose ruler was subject to his Suzerain, where he was greeted with magnificent gifts of gold and silver and all manner of presents fair and rare, he would tarry there three days,[FN5] the term of the guest rite; and, when he left on the fourth, he would be honourably escorted for a whole day's march. As soon as ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Roc-Amadour was intimately associated with that of England. Henry II. did not at first claim the Quercy as a part of Eleanor's actual possessions in Aquitaine; but he claimed homage from the Count of Toulouse, who was then suzerain of the Count of Quercy. Homage being refused, Henry invaded the county, captured Cahors, where he left Becket with a garrison, and thence proceeded to reduce the other strongholds. Roc-Amadour appears to have offered little if any resistance. The Quercy was formally made over to the English in 1191 ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... was the founder of the Syrian kingdom. From Babylon he extended his dominion to the Black Sea, to the Jaxartes, and even to the Ganges, so far as to make the Indian prince, Sandracottus, acknowledge him as suzerain. From Babylon he removed his capital to Antioch on the Orontes, which he founded,—a city destined to be the rival of Alexandria among the cities of the East. The effect of this removal, however, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... Burgundy was himself as basely murdered while at prayer in the church of Payerne by these same vassals, and with him the brothers-in-law of Guillaume de Gruyere, Pierre and Philippe de Glane. Guillaume de Glane, son and nephew of the murdered protectors of their young suzerain, profoundly moved by the tragedy which had befallen his house, determined to renounce the world and commanding that not one stone should remain of his great castle of Glane dedicated these same stones to the enlargement of the monastery of Hauterive, where, ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... patriots under Paoli, reserving only the possession of the two loyal coast-towns of Bonifazio and Calvi. [See Boswell's Corsica, 1766-8.] At Paoli's instance these conciliatory terms were refused. Genoa, in desperation and next door to bankruptcy, resolved to sell her rights as suzerain to France, and the compact was concluded by a treaty signed at Versailles in 1768. Paoli was finally defeated at Ponte Novo on 9th May 1769, and fled to England. On 15th August the edict of "Reunion" between France and Corsica was promulgated. On the same ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... to be at the present day the recognized, as well as the de facto, representatives of the Mogul monarchs, there can be no doubt that, on the death of Jankojee Sindiah, his dominions might fairly have been annexed to the Anglo-Indian empire as a lapsed fief which had reverted to the suzerain by the failure of heirs—a rule which would have been equally applicable to the case of the rival Mahratta house of Holkar, the male line of which also became extinct last year, and was replaced on the musnud of Indore by a boy seven years old, a adopted son of Hurry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... the expedition is now continued. Legazpi makes a treaty with the chiefs of Cebu, who acknowledge the king of Spain as their suzerain. Gradually the natives regain their confidence in the Spaniards, return to their homes, and freely trade with the foreigners. Legazpi now is obliged to contend with drunkenness and licentiousness among his followers, but finds that these evils do not annoy the natives, among whom ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... advance by tumult, spoil, and bloodshed. 'Wat Tyler and his bands had menaced London; and the communes of Flanders, under the command of Philip van Artevelde, had broken out into open war with the counts, their seigneurs, and with their suzerain lord, the Duke of Burgundy. On the issue of that attempt the fate of the royal and baronial power seemed to hang in France, not less than in Flanders.'[5] The drama composed by Mr Taylor to represent ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Suzerain" :   res publica, country, land, state, nation, commonwealth, body politic



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