noun
verb
definition
To treat as a vassal or to reduce to the position of a vassal; to subject to control; to enslave.
definition
To subordinate to someone or something.
adjective
definition
Resembling a vassal; slavish; servile.
Examples of vassal in a Sentence
An instance of the latter is furnished by John of Margat, a vassal of the seignory of Arsuf.
In 1873 he attacked Khiva, took the capital, and forced the khan to become a vassal of Russia.
The vassal was bound to pay military service, not, as in western Europe, for a limited period of forty days, but for the whole year - the Holy Land being, as it were, in a perpetual state of siege.
When the king acted in an arbitrary and illegal manner he needed the reminder that though he was king over men he was only "God's silly vassal."
The principality is divided between the sultan (vassal of the Dutch government) and the so-called independent prince Paku Alam; Ngawen and Imogiri are enclaves of Surakarta.
He was more or less effectively the supreme temporal chief of the kingdom of Sicily and Naples, Sardinia, the states of the Iberian peninsula (Castile, Leon, Navarre and Portugal), Aragon (which, under Peter II., was the type of vassal and tributary kingdom of the Roman power), the Scandinavian states, the kingdom of Hungary, the Slav states of Bohemia, Poland, Servia, Bosnia and Bulgaria, and the Christian states founded in Syria by the crusaders of the 12th century.
Catherine would have preferred to control the country through a vassal sovereign of the type of Stanislaus Poniatowski, the old lover whose election she secured in 1763.
From the time of Darius the Persian monarchs issued a gold coinage, and reserved to themselves the right of doing so; but they allowed their satraps and vassal states to coin silver and copper money at discretion.
After routing the chivalry of Christendom at the battle of Nikopoli in 1396, he pursued his victorious career in Greece, and Constantinople would doubtless have fallen before his attack, had not the emperor Manuel Palaeologus bought him off by timely concessions which reduced him practically to the position of Bayezid's vassal.
In fact, during the reign of Assur-bani-pal Moab played the vassal's part in helping to repulse the invasion of the Nabayati and nomads of Kedar, a movement which made itself felt from Edom nearly as far as Damascus.
During Ahab's reign Moab, which had been conquered by his father, remained tributary; Judah, with whose king, Jehoshaphat, he was allied by marriage, was probably his vassal; only with Damascus is he said to have had strained relations.
The Saxons had been slowly reconquering the lost ground, and now Henry, advancing with his victorious army into Jutland, forced Gorm, the Danish king, to become his vassal and regained the land between the Eider and the Schlei.
The German king treated his foe generousli and was rewarded by receiving to the end of his reign the servic of a loyal vassal; he also gained the goodwill of the Poles by helping to bring about the return of their duke, Casimir I., who willingly did homage for his land.
He had put down the disorder in Bavaria, in Saxony and in Lorraine; a diet held at Magdeburg in 1135 was attended by representatives from the vassal states of Denmark, Hungary, Bohemia and Poland; and in 1136, when he visited Italy for the second time, Germany was in a very peaceful condition.
Early in his reign, by settling a dispute over the crown of Denmark, Frederick brought the king of that country once more into the position of a German vassal.
He was fully occupied in restoring order in Saxony, in the diocese of Salzburg and elsewhere; in adding to his hereditary lands; in negotiating for a better understanding with France and England; and in reminding the vassal states, Hungary, Poland and Bohemia, of their duties towards the Empire.
About this time some discontent arose in the allied army, and to allay this Bernhard was granted the bishoprics of Wurzburg and of Bamberg, with the title of duke of Franconia, but on the strange condition that he should hold the duchy as the vassal of Sweden, not as a vassal of the Empire.
From Assyrian inscriptions it has been gathered that Padi, king of Ekron, was for a time the vassal of Hezekiah of Judah, but regained his independence when the latter was hard pressed by Sennacherib.
From 1358 to 1526 the republic was a vassal state of Hungary, and no longer controlled by its greatest commercial rival.
The amir Abul-afar became a Roman vassal, and, like Alaric of old, became magister militum in the Roman army.
At Catania Becumen was set up again as Roger's vassal, and he did good service till he was killed.
The battle closed with the celebrated stand of Reginald of Boulogne, a revolted vassal of King Philip, who formed a ring of seven hundred Brabancon pikemen, and not only defied every attack of the French cavalry, but himself made repeated charges or sorties with his small force of knights.
Originally herdsmen in the western and central Sudan, they extended their sway east of the Niger, under the leadership of Othman Dan Fodio, during the early years of the 19th century, and having subdued the Hausa states, founded the empire of Sokoto with the vassal emirates of Kano, Gando, Nupe, Adamawa, &c.
He was an independent king, no vassal of England; as such (1093) he invaded Northumberland, and was slain at Alnwick.
As Henry had once declared that he could only meet a Scottish king, in England, as a vassal, James's council had good reason for their attitude.
James was " Christ's silly vassal," so Andrew Melville told him, and " Christ" in practice meant the preachers who possessed the power of the keys, the power to bind and loose on earth and in heaven.
In 722 Samaria, though under an Assyrian vassal (Hoshea the last king), joined with Philistia in revolt; in 720 it was allied with Gaza and Damascus, and the persistence of unrest is evident when Sargon in 715 found it necessary to transport into Samaria various peoples of the desert.
About 1157 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, forced his vassal, the count of Holstein, to give up Lubeck to him; and in 1163 he removed thither the episcopal see of Oldenburg (Stargard), founding at the same time the dioceses of Ratzeburg and Schwerin.
The Assyrian king held him as his vassal (and indeed claims to have set him on the throne), and exacted from him a yearly tribute.
The documents of the Portuguese expedition of the 16th century and other Ethiopian records show that all the country north of the Mareb enjoyed relative autonomy under a vassal of the Ethiopian emperor.
The Russian experiment of maintaining the integrity of Turkey while practically treating her as a vassal state, ended with the compromise of 1841; and the emperor Nicholas I.
A strict line of demarcation, however, remains in the mutual oath which forms the basis of the civic community in both varieties of the latter, and in the fact that the ville libre stands to its lord in the relation of vassal and not in that of an immediate possession.
Sultan Mahmud was to the last degree embittered against the powers which, with lively protestations of friendship, had forced him to humiliate himself before his hated vassal.
The old sultan thirsted to crush his rebel ous vassal, at any cost; and on the 21st of April 1839 the Ottoman army, stationed at Bir on the Euphrates, crossed the stream and invaded Syria.
A military post was established, but it was destroyed in 1775 by the natives under the ddto', or vassal chiefs, who resented the cession of their territory.
Whether he came to the throne before or after the fall of Samaria (722721 B.C.) is disputed,' nor is it clear what share Judah took in the Assyrian conflicts down to 701.2 Shortly before this date the whole of western Asia was in a ferment; Sargon had died and Sennacherib had come to the throne (in 705); vassal kings plotted to recover their independence and Assyrian puppets were removed by their opponents.
In 1276 Edward entered Wales from Chester, and after a short campaign brought his obstinate vassal to submit to the ignominious treaty of Conway, whereby Llewelyn lost almost all the benefits conferred on him by the compact of Montgomery ten years before.
With this object he formed a national party among the Hindus of the Deccan, and opposed in turn the vassal power of Bijapur and the imperial armies of the Mogul of Delhi.
Consequently it is uncertain whether Edom was the vassal of the next great Israelite king Jeroboam II., or whether the Assyrian evidence for its independent position belongs to this later time.
Under the sway of the now dominant faction, Sweden, already the vassal, could not fail speedily to become the victim of Russia.
When Tigranes had submitted, Pompey received him into favor and extended the Roman supremacy over the vassal states of Gordyene and Osroene; though he had allured the Parthian king with the prospect of the recovery of his old possessions as far as the Euphrates.
Phraates complained, and simultaneously attacked Tigranes, now a Roman vassal (64 n.c.).
There were indeed vassal states on every hand, but the actual possessions of the kingsthe provinces governed by their satrapsconsisted of a rather narrow strip of land, stretching from the Euphrates and north Babylonia through southern Media and Parthia as far as Arachosia (north-west Afghanistan), and following the course of the great trade-route which from time immemorial had carried the traffic between the west of Asia and India.
In return, the Parthian dominion in Babylonif and the other vassal states was left undisputed.
The remainder of the vassal statesCarmania, Susiana, Mesenc were ended by Ardashir; and the autonomous desert fortress of Hatra in Mesopotamia was destroyed by his son Shapur (Sapor) I., according to the Persian and Arabian traditions, which, in this point, are deserving of credence.
Ardashir I., moreover, and his successors endeavoured to establish the validity of the royal will by absorbing the vassal states and instituting a firmer organization.
The empire, which in extent did not exceed that of the Arsacids with its vassal states, was protected on the east and west by the great Mlii deserts of central Iran and Mesopotamia.
It is even related that, in his zeal for uniformity of creed, Ardashir wished to extinguish the holy fires in the great cities of the empire and the Parthian vassal states, with the exception of that which burned in the residence of the dynasty.
Aga Mahommed now demanded that Heraclius should return to his position of tributary and vassal to Persia, and, as his demand was rejected, prepared for war.
The peace between the king and his powerful vassal was not seriously disturbed until about 921.