Word Finder - despotic

definition

Of or pertaining to a despot or tyrant.

example

This despotic age of the empire ended in a revolt.

definition

Acting or ruling as a despot, tyrannical.

example

The despotic king dissolved the parliament, and took personal control of the country.

Men thought him more cruel and more despotic than he actually was.

In other cases a more despotic monarchy has grown up - the prowess of one man leading to the subjugation of other clans.

The Internet is still able to be "turned off" by despotic rulers.

The Prussian people were keenly irritated by the cordial relations between their court and the most despotic power in Europe.

The new king was a man of excellent intentions and did his Louis Bonaparte best to promote the interest of his subjects, but finding King of himself unable to protect them from the despotic Holland.

The discovery of Anne's misdeeds coincided in an extraordinary manner with Henry's disappointment in not obtaining by her a male heir, while the king's despotic power and the universal unpopularity of Anne both tended to hinder the administration of pure justice.

During the first half of the 19th century civil war and despotic government seriously restricted the natural growth of the country, but since the definite organization of the republic in 1860 and the settlement of disturbing political controversies, the population had increased rapidly.

Alexander's diplomatic skill and moral authority, reinforced by the Capetian alliance and the revulsion of feeling caused by the murder of Becket, enabled him to force the despotic Henry to yield, and even to do penance at the tomb of the martyr.

In a monarchy, despotic or constitutional, there cannot in strictness be an aristocracy, because the whole political power cannot be vested in the noble Venice class.

In all things political it was purely despotic; in all things commercial, it was purely monopolist.

The name of Torquemada stands for all that is intolerant and narrow, despotic and cruel.

The first British governors at Sydney, from 1788, ruled with despotic power.

The acquiescence of these bodies in the transition to despotic methods predisposed the public to a similar attitude of mind.

His rule was subservient to Austria, reactionary and despotic. On the outbreak of the French Revolution of 1830, Francis IV.

It is a matter of history that under Louis XIV., who created the police of Paris, and in succeeding times, the most unpopular and unjustifiable use was made of police as a secret instrument for the purposes of despotic government.

These various movements proved in the first place that the masses were by no means ripe for revolution, and that the idea of unity, although now advocated by a few revolutionary leaders, was far from being generally accepted even by the Liberals; and, secondly, that, in spite of the indifference of the masses, the despotic governments were unable to hold their own without the assistance of foreign bayonets.

The leading burghers were, however, soon alienated by his violent and despotic methods, by his defence of Kieft, and by his devotion to the interests of the company; the nine men became (as early as 1649, when they sent the famous Vertoogh, or Remonstrance, to the states-general asking for burgher government and other reforms) the centre of municipal discontent; and a bitter quarrel ensued.

One of the freest states in the world, they encouraged a despotic misrule in which falsely-called free citizens were enslaved.

The king has been held responsible for the fall of Spain, which was, however, due in the main to internal causes beyond the control of the most despotic ruler, however capable he had been.

With true philosophic insight he shows that France failed in the struggle not because of any inferiority in the ability and character of the men to whom the work was entrusted, but chiefly by reason of her despotic and protective regime.

Gradually the podestas became more despotic and more corrupt, and sometimes a special official was appointed to hear complaints against them; in the 13th century in Florence and some other cities a capitano del popolo was chosen to look after the interests of the lower classes.

Vienna again became the centre g of a despotic government the objects of which were to Germanize the Magyars and Sla y s, to check all agitation for a constitution, and to suppress all attempts to secure a free press.

The failure of the Habsburg emperor to perpetuate this despotic regime was due (1) to the Crimean War, (2) to the establishment of Italian unity, and (3) to the successful assertion by Prussia of its claim to the leadership in Germany.

What might have begun as a useful idea becomes despotic.

It was only crushed by forces generated in the nation that produced it, by the Inquisition and by despotic Catholic absolutism.

Before Elizabeth's accession to the English crown, and after the queen mother in Scotland had disappointed his hopes, he had published a treatise against what he called "The Monstrous Regiment (regimen or government) of Women"; though the despotism of that despotic age was scarcely appreciably worse when it happened to be in female hands.

The administration of the Dutch East India Company was of an extremely despotic character.

The administration became more and more despotic, and Tangier was abandoned in order to reduce expenses and to increase the forces at home for overawing opposition.

That Wellington actively assisted despotic governments against the constitutional movements of the time is not true.

If Watermeyer's formula, " In all things political, purely despotic; in all things commercial, purely monopolist," was true of the government of the Dutch East India Company in the 18th century, it was equally true of Kruger's government in the latter part of the 19th.

It is not a despotic monarchy governed from one centre and by a monarch in whom plenitude of power resides.

His master passion is imperious pride - the lust of despotic dominion.

When Greek became the sole language of the East Roman Empire, imperator was rendered sometimes by Octort,Xc13 and sometimes by airroKparwp, the former word being the usual designation of a sovereign, the latter specially denoting that despotic power which the imperator held, and being in fact the official translation of imperator.

He strove to realize his democratic ideals by despotic methods.

Instead of advocating the priesthood of all believers, the Lutheran pastors had made themselves a despotic hierarchy, while they neglected their practical pastoral work.

Till 1813 it was in the hands of Major de Bosset, a Swiss in the British service, who displayed an industry and energy in the repression of injustice and development of civilization only outdone by the despotic vigour of Sir Charles Napier, who held the same office for the nine years from 1818 to 1827.

It had only gained a partial success cause the despotic rule of Pombal, like the Inquisition before im, hindered freedom of fancy and discussion, and drove the Arcadians to waste themselves on flattering the powerful.

The rule of the prince over two distinct nations in the same land was necessarily despotic; the old Teutonic freedom was necessarily lost.

Another vast social change has been that from the patriarchal condition, in which the unit is the family under the despotic rule of its head, to the systems in which individuals make up a society whose government is centralized in a chief or king.

By a strange but not infrequent irony of fate the most imperious and despotic spirit of his day laboured to enthrone a power which, had he himself been in authority, he would have utterly detested and despised.

So despotic did the tyranny become in the West, that in the time of Charlemagne it was necessary to restrain abbots by legal enactments from mutilating their monks and putting out their eyes; while the rule of St Columban ordained loo lashes as the punishment for very slight offences.

It would seem that the key to his conduct was that he hated the hard work without which a despotic king cannot hope to assert his personality, and preferred leisure and vicious self-indulgence.

For fourteen years he was his masters chief ministerthe person responsible in the nations eyes for all the more unpopular assertions of the royal prerogative, and for all the heavy taxation and despotic acts which Henrys policy required.

The warden and chaplain are clergy, and the visitor is commonly a bishop. In one important regard there has been hesitation, and authorities like Dr Littledale and Bishop Grafton contend strongly for the primitive ideal of the convent as family, with a constitutional government, as against the later and widespread Jesuit ideal of the convent as regiment, with a theory of despotic rule and absolute obedience.

By imbuing Frenchmen with such a mutual hatred as nothing but the arm of despotic power could control the Reign of Terror rendered political liberty impossible for many years.

Under Prince Ferdinand he pursued the same despotic methods of government which had characterized his administration during the regency; Major Panitza, who had organized a revolutionary conspiracy, was tried by court-martial and shot at Sofia in 1890; four of his political opponents were hanged at Sofia in the following year, and Karavelov was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.

The native Malagasy government, though theoretically despotic, was limited in various ways.

The same reign saw also an important constitutional change, the substitution of a board of patronomi for the ephors, whose power had become almost despotic, and the curtailment of the functions exercised by the gerousia; these measures were, however, cancelled by Antigonus.

They became petty local tyrants, all the more despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant authority of the kings missi, and the more rapacious because they had no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that they contrived to multiply.

Italy not only gave him a taste for art and letters, but furnished him with an arsenal of despotic maxims. Yet his true masters were the jurists of the southern universities, passionately addicted to centralization and autocracy, men like Duprat and Poyet, who revived the persistent tradition of Philip the Fairs legists.