Pretext Sentence Examples

pretext
  • But they served as a sufficient pretext, and in.

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  • To prevent this interference, or rather to give no pretext for it, was his guiding thought as to foreign policy.

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  • On the contrary it served as a pretext for Ivan to interfere in Lithuanian affairs.

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  • The duke went to England in 1360 as a hostage for the fulfilment of the treaty of Bretigny, returning to France in 1367 on the pretext of collecting his ransom.

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  • These acquisitions were made between 1328 and 1338; in the latter year Orkhan achieved his first conquest from Mussulman hands by the capture of Karassi, the pretext being the quarrel for the succession on the death of the prince, Ajlan Bey.

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  • Thus the Magyars were saddled with two rival kings with equally valid titles, which proved an even worse disaster than the Mohacs catastrophe; for in most of the counties of the unhappy kingdom desperadoes of every description plundered the estates of the gentry, and oppressed the common people, under the pretext that they were fighting the battles of the contending monarchs.

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  • Of metaphysics proper Voltaire neither then nor at any other time understood anything, and the subject, like every other, merely served him as a pretext for laughing at religion with the usual reservation of a tolerably affirmative deism.

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  • He must have found some pretext for giving her an injection.

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  • There was no doubt a plausible pretext for both proposals.

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  • The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the previous and of the impending battle.

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  • When she wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be Countess Mary.

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  • The English invasions of 1547, undertaken with a view to enforcing the English marriage, gave Mary the desired pretext for a French alliance.

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  • His courageous intervention in favour of the Girondists on the 2nd of June 1793 served Robespierre as a pretext to prevent his re-election to the Committee of Public Safety.

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  • He also summoned 300 leading citizens on the pretext of wishing to consult them, but fearing treachery they refused to come.

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  • In 1895 the Prussian police used a law of 1850 as a pretext for dissolving the Socialist organization in Berlin, as had been done twenty years before.

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  • When she needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext.

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  • Augustus continued the war against the Turks for a time, and being anxious to extend his influence and to find a pretext for retaining the Saxon troops in Poland, made an alliance in 1699 with Russia and Denmark against Charles XII.

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  • At the synod of the dissident cardinals, assembled at Pisa, views of this type were in the ascendant; and, although protests were not lacking, the necessities of the time served as a pretext for ignoring all objections.

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  • The Gurkhas, however, in 1788 and following years continued to strike coins of progressively debased quality, which were rude imitations of the old Nepalese mintage, and to endeavour to force this currency on the Tibetans, eventually making the departure of the latter from old usage a pretext for war and invasion.

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  • During the minority of the fifth (really the third) Dalai Lama, when the Mongol king Tengir To, under the pretext of supporting the religion, intervened in the affairs of the country, the Pan-ch'en Lo-sang Ch'o-kyi Gyal-ts'ang lama obtained the withdrawal of the invaders by the payment of a heavy war indemnity, and then applied for help to the first Manchu emperor of China, who had just ascended the throne.

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  • This, however, was a mere pretext, it was for his anti-monarchical sentiments that he was really prosecuted.

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  • When he heard of the murder he was panic-stricken; and his expedition to Ireland (1171), although so momentous for the future, was originally a mere pretext for placing himself beyond the reach of Alexander's censures.

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  • These leaders skilfully seized upon every breach of tradition to inflame popular passion, attacking especially the medical work as a pretext for mutilation, the schools as hotbeds of vice, and the orphanages as furnishing material for witchcraft.

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  • It was not until 1448, however, that he found a pretext for attack, and the war which lasted until 1453 ended in a victory for the Nurembergers, and the recognition of their independence.

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  • Under the pretext of seeking a passport, Gerard penetrated into the Prinsenhof at Delft, and firing point blank at William as he left the dining hall, mortally wounded him (loth of July 1584).

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  • The treatment of Robert by the English was put forward by William the Conqueror as a pretext for invading England.

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  • The expedition, however, did not take place, and was but a pretext for levying subsidies and for knightly entertainments.

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  • On the pretext that fair deliberation was impossible in the capital, the assembly was now ordered to meet in Brandenburg, while troops were concentrated near Berlin and a state of siege was proclaimed.

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  • The Chamber was summoned at intervals rather as a pretext for the subsequent employment of paragraph 14 than in the hope of securing its assent to legislative measures.

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  • Beside the other canonical books of the Old Testament, translated in many cases with modifications or additions, it included translations of other Hebrew books (Ecclesiasticus, Judith, &c.), works composed originally in Greek but imitating to some extent the Hebraic style (like Wisdom), works modelled more closely on the Greek literary tradition, either historical, like 2 Maccabees, or philosophical, like the productions of the Alexandrian school, represented for us by Aristobulus and Philo, in which style and thought are almost wholly Greek and the reference to the Old Testament a mere pretext; or Greek poems on Jewish subjects, like the epic of the elder Philo and Ezechiel's tragedy, Exagoge.

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  • The amirs Salr and Bibars having usurped the whole of the sultans authority, he, after some futile attempts to free himself of them, under the pretext of pilgrimage to Mecca, retired in March 1309 to Kerak, whence he sent his abdication to Cairo; in consequence of which, on the 5th of April 1309, Bibars Jashengir was proclaimed sultan, with the title Malik al-Mozajar.

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  • This offered a fair pretext to the Mamelukes to rid themselves of a man proved to be a perfidious tyrant.

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  • He also, on pretext of his disloyalty, put to death Selim, pasha of Delvinon.

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  • Ali's authority in the great part of the peninsula subject to him now overshadowed that of the sultan; and Mahmud II., whose whole policy had been directed to destroying the overgrown power of the provincial pashas, began to seek a pretext for overthrowing the Lion of Iannina,whose all-devouring ambition seemed to threaten his own throne.

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  • Justinian began the war in 535, taking as his pretext the murder of Queen Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric, who had placed herself under his protection, and alleging that the Ostrogothic kingdom had always owned a species of allegiance to the emperor at Constantinople.

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  • But the other professors rose in arms, forbade him to enter the mosque, and in 1879 procured his exile on the pretext that he entertained democratic and revolutionary ideas.

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  • The validity of his acts was contested on the pretext that, having been originally bishop of Porto, he could not be a legitimate pope.

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  • The one idea of Kruger and his faction was to oust Burgers from office on any pretext, and, if possible, to put Kruger in his place.

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  • In 168 B.C. Antiochus returned and found that the pretext for his presence there was gone.

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  • His policy, consistently maintained, was to permit no kind of foreign interference, on any pretext, with the interior concerns or the economical conditions of his country.

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  • Religion is always the original pretext of these gatherings or melas, at some of which nothing is done beyond bathing in the river, or performing various superstitious ceremonies.

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  • This is generally known as the Breviarium Alaricianum, or Breviary of Alaric. Alaric was of a peaceful disposition, and endeavoured strictly to maintain the treaty which his father had concluded with the Franks, whose king Clovis, however, desiring to obtain the Gothic province in Gaul, found a pretext for war in the Arianism of Alaric. The intervention of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths and father-in-law of Alaric, proved unavailing.

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  • Alexander henceforth did his best for his country by humbling himself before the Tatars so as to give them no pretext for ravaging the land again.

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  • Having determined to fix the order of succession in so formal a manner as to take away all pretext for future contentions, he executed a deed by which he appointed his eldest son Mahommed his immediate heir, and after him the second, Abdallah, and after Abdallah the third, Qasim.

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  • The Alids seized on the elevation of Mamun as a pretext for fresh revolts.

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  • In August 1905 disturbances arose owing to an attempt by some merchants to obtain special assistance from the treasury on the pretext of embarrassment caused by Japanese financial reforms; these disturbances spread to some of the provinces, and the Japanese were compelled to make a show of force.

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  • He at once arrested his march; but the pressure of famine in the capital, caused by the cutting off of supplies from Asia and the presence of the large Russian force, compelled Mahmud to yield, and on the 3rd of May a firman ceded Adana to Ibrahim under the pretext of appointing him muhassil, or collector of the revenue.

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  • To complete the desperateness of the situation the news reached the capital that Ahmed Pasha, the Ottoman admiral-in-chief, had sailed to Alexandria and surrendered his fleet to Mehemet Ali, on the pretext that the sultan's advisers were sold to the Russians.

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  • But all attempts to remove the accused from the civil prison in Saragossa to that of the Inquisition raised popular tumults, which in the end led to Perez's escape across the Pyrenees, but unfortunately also furnished Philip with a pretext for sending an army into Aragon and suppressing the ancient.

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  • Some attention was attracted to this arrangement when in 1906 it was asserted that Russia, under pretext of stopping the smuggling of arms into Finland, was massing considerable naval and military forces at the islands.

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  • In the words of Saint-Simon, the Huguenots were " a sect that had become a state within the state, dependent on the king no more than it chose, and ready on the slightest pretext to embroil the whole country by an appeal to arms."

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  • At the very time his father died, the news was on its way to Constantinople that the Turkish army had been signally defeated at Nezib by that of the rebel Egyptian viceroy, Mehemet Ali; and the Turkish fleet was at the same time on its way to Alexandria, where it was handed over by its commander, Ahmed Pasha, to the same enemy, on the pretext that the young sultan's advisers were sold to Russia.

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  • But this outrage was made a pretext for a general rising against William, whose legatine commission had now expired, and whose power was balanced by the presence of the archbishop of Rouen, Walter Coutances, with a commission from the king.

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  • He was again hampered by his political opponents at home, and at *the end of 1446 was recalled, on the pretext that his term of office had expired.

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  • As some pretext, he intended to affirm that his life was in danger from these men, who were in league with the Spaniards.

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  • His doing so, while it brought upon him the anathema of the patriarch of Constantinople, failed to secure the favour of Anastasius, who in 511 found in the riots which were occurring between the rival parties in the streets of Antioch a pretext for deposing Flavian, and banishing him to Petra, where he died in 518.

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  • On pretext of incapacity, he dethroned Tahmasp II.

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  • The wrongs of Hilderic, a Catholic, and with the blood of Theodosius in his veins, afforded to Justinian a long-coveted pretext for overthrowing the Vandal dominion, the latent weakness of which was probably known to the statesmen of Constantinople.

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  • The latter was now formally proclaimed as co-emperor, and not long afterwards, on the pretext that divided rule was injurious to the Empire, he caused Alexius to be strangled with a bow-string (October 1183).

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  • He contributed to the prosecution of the Hebertists, and was responsible for the law of the 22nd Prairial, which in the case of trials before the Revolutionary Tribunal deprived the accused of the aid of counsel or of witnesses or their defence, on the pretext of shortening the proceedings.

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  • Mecia Lopez de Haro, furnished a pretext.

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  • It has been insinuated both by contemporary and by later critics that being disappointed at his loss of popularity, and convinced of the impossibility of co-operating with his colleagues, he exaggerated his malady as a pretext for the inaction that was forced upon him by circumstances.

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  • He persuaded the estates to vote a general levy of the forces of the country under the somewhat disingenuous pretext that Bohemia was menaced by the Turks; for at that period no armed force could be raised in Bohemia without the consent of the estates of the realm.

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  • Nothing came of the proposed engagement, but the wrongs of Honoria, his affianced wife, served as a convenient pretext for some of the constantly recurring embassies with which Attila, fond of trampling on the fallen majesty of Rome, worried and bullied the two courts of Constantinople and Ravenna.

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  • The enthusiasm with which he was welcomed, not only by the populace, but by the emperor's own praetorians, was so great that the earliest pretext was seized to remove him from the capital.

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  • The pretext of the rupture was the attempt of the knights to crush the Prussian diet, which, bearing as it did most of the burdens, claimed fairly enough a proportionate share in the government of the Prussian provinces.

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  • This agreement was soon violated on the pretext that garrisons had been placed in some of the free Greek cities by Antigonus, and Ptolemy and Cassander renewed hostilities against him.

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  • In 1689 the name of Ivan was used as a pretext by Sophia in her attempt to oust Peter from the throne altogether.

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  • The claims of Stanislaus were supported by France, Spain and Sardinia, those of the Saxon prince by Russia and the empire, the local quarrel being made the pretext for the settlement of minor outstanding claims of the great powers amongst themselves.

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  • The patriarch feared on the one hand that the growing influence of the Russian Church would give a colour of Slavism to the whole church, and that a Russian might eventually be appointed oecumenical patriarch at Constantinople, while the Rumanians hoped by means of the independence of their church to deprive the Russians of all excuse for interfering in their internal affairs under the pretext of religion.

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  • They were thus mere puppets of the Divan, and could be deposed and shifted with the same facility as so many pashas - an object of Turkish policy, as each change was a pretext for a new levy of baksheesh.

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  • In that year the rash and wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the government a pretext for prosecuting the nonconformists; and scarcely one eminent divine of the Presbyterian, Independent or Baptist persuasion remained unmolested.

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  • Pierluigi being an uncompromising opponent of the emperor Charles V., Don Ferrante Gonzaga, the imperial governor of Milan, was ever on the watch for a pretext to deprive him of Piacenza, which the emperor greatly coveted.

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  • Pompey's refusal to submit gave Caesar a good pretext for declaring war and marching at the head of his army into Italy.

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  • But he marched no further than Dumfries, and then turned back, on the vain pretext that he must conduct his parents funeral in person.

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  • But Mary had, under a specious pretext, recommenced to a slight extent the evil practice, and Elizabeth had gone a little further in the same direction.

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  • He began by making use of the necessity of resisting Monmouth to increase his army, under the pretext of the danger of a repetition of the late rebellion; and ir, the regiments thus levied he appointed many Roman Catholic officers who had refused to comply with the Test Act., Rather than submit to the gentlest remonstrance, he prorogued parliament, and proceeded to obtain from the court of kings bench a judgment in favor of his right to dispense with all penalties due by law, in the same way that his grandfather had appealed to the judges in the matter of the post-nati.

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  • The Jewish nobility at Jerusalem seized upon this high-handed action as a pretext for satisfying their jealousy of their Idumaean rulers.

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  • His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive with the public pretext of transactions."

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  • The death of Marat, who was stabbed by Charlotte Corday to avenge the Girondins, gave yet another pretext for terrible measures of repression.

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  • The pretext for this irregular proceeding was to be a vast Jacobin conspiracy.

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  • Under the pretext that a true believer could commit no sin, the Amalricians indulged in every excess, and the sect does not appear to have long survived the death of its founder.

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  • Under pretext of grave news received from his father, and of an interview at Metz with his uncle, the emperor Charles IV., he begged the states to adjourn till the 3rd of November 1356.

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  • In order not to countenance by his presence an act which had been the pretext for hie opposition, Cond rebelled once more in August 1615; but he was again pacified by the governorships and pensions of the peace of Loudun (May 1616).

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  • Beam was the pretext for a rising among the Protestants, who had remained loyal during these troublous years; and although the military organization of French Protestantism, arranged by the assembly of La Rochelle, had been checked in 1621, by the defection of most of the reformed nobles, like Bouillon and Lesdiguires, de Luynes had to raise the disastrous siege of Montauban.

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  • The prince indeed was soon released and solemnly pardoned; but, meanwhile, Napoleon had seized the opportunity afforded by the effect of this public scandal in lowering the prestige of the royal family to pour his troops into Spain, under pretext of reinforcing J unots corps in Portugal.

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  • Sagasta loyally furnished the queen with a constitutional pretext for carrying out her desire, and tendered the resignation of the whole cabinet, so that Her Majesty might consult, as usual, the party leaders and generals on the grave question of the expediency of entrusting to new ministers or to the Liberals the mission of testing the new electoral system.

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  • Nevertheless, his bill did not find favor with the Conservatives or the majority of the Liberals, and Sagasta, trimming according to his inveterate habit, found a pretext to get rid of Maura and Gamazo.

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  • The systematic raiding of Lithuania by the knights under the pretext of converting it had long since united all the Lithuanian tribes against the common enemy; but Gedymin aimed at establishing a dynasty which should make Lithuania not merely secure but mighty, and for this purpose he entered into direct diplomatic negotiations with the Holy See.

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  • Many of those who could not hold out were able to secure certificates which gave them immunity from punishment without actually renouncing the faith, just as "parliamentary certificates" of conformity used to be given in England without any pretext of fact.

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  • On assuming power in 1432, Sigismondo was already affianced to the daughter of Count Carmagnola; but when that famous leader was arraigned as a traitor by the Venetians, and ignominiously put to death, he promptly withdrew from his engagement, under the pretext that it was impossible to marry the child of a criminal.

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  • The evils natural to state communism have been increased ten-fold under the pretext that all our misery is due to foreign intervention.

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  • The attack on civil liberties under the pretext of fighting terrorism draws parallels with the rise of Hitlerite fascism.

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  • Consumer groups however expressed some concern that weighing costs and benefits might be used as a pretext to justify inaction.

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  • The young marchioness had beautiful ear-rings, and two rings, which gave me a pretext for admiring the beauty of her hands.

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  • Reports of large Yugoslav troop movements around Kosova have created a further pretext for NATO to repeat its threat to launch military action.

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  • The church in this village had been harassed by local authorities, who may have been seeking a pretext to arrest the church leaders.

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  • Often the van will have the name of a shop or utility company to provide some pretext for its being in the area.

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  • These were genuine enough but became the pretext for excessive equity valuations, fueling a general economic boom.

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  • It did not finish the job and, according to the FFH, gave no plausible pretext to justify interrupting the work.

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  • Was taking the country to war on a false pretext not an error of judgment?

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  • Many people to whom the Colonel owed a grudge were, on the slightest pretext, incarcerated in the dungeon.

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  • Weapons of mass destruction offered little more than a convenient pretext for a war conjured up to serve a multiplicity of ends.

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  • It would be a very unprofitable pretext for murder.

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  • It was recognized and protected first in Bavaria, thanks to the minister Freiherr Johann von Lutz, then in Saxony, Baden, Wurttemberg, Prussia, where it was the pretext for, if not the cause of, the Kulturkampf, and finally in Switzerland, especially at Geneva.

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  • The consequences of this marriage were to alienate many of the most powerful of the nobility, especially the earls of Arran and Home, and to make Margaret entirely dependent on the house of Douglas; while it furnished the council with a pretext for removing her from the regency and guardianship of the king in favour of Albany in July 1515.

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  • Italian politics; prosperous republics, with plenty of money to spend but no leisure or inclination for camp-life; cautious tyrants, glad of every pretext to emasculate their subjects, and courting popularity by exchanging conscription for taxationall combined to favor the new system.

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  • Seizing the agitation in Romagna as a pretext, he had the town of Ferrara occupied by Austrian troops, which provoked the indignation not only of the Liberals but also of the pope, for according to the treaties Austria had the right of occupying the citadel alone.

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  • Prudence, moreover, counselled avoidance of all action likely to serve the predominant anti-Italian party in France as a pretext for violent intervention in favor of the pope.

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  • This was seized upon as a pretext for violent anti-clerical demonstrations all over Italy and for brutal and unprovoked attacks on unoffending priests; at Spezia a church was set on fire and another dismantled, at Marino Cardinal Merry del Val was attacked by a gang of hooligans, and at Rome the violence of the teppisti reached such a pitch as to provoke reaction on the part of all respectable people, and some of the aggressors were very roughly handled.

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  • Their leniency, which was notorious, alienated the king or probably furnished him with a pretext for breaking with them.

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  • After the fall of Acre he inflicted a gross insult upon Leopold of Austria; and his relations with Philip were so strained that the latter seized the first pretext for returning to France, and entered into negotiations with Prince John (see John, king of England) for the partition of Richard's realm.

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  • But then his brother Geoffrey, who had received as appanage the three fortresses of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau, tried to seize upon Anjou, on the pretext that, by the will of their father, Geoffrey the Handsome, all the paternal inheritance ought to descend to him, if Henry succeeded in obtaining possession of the maternal inheritance.

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  • It was held unrighteous to invade another nation without a solemn embassy to warn their chiefs of the miseries to which they exposed themselves by refusing the submission demanded, and this again was followed by a declaration of war, but in Mexico this degenerated into a ceremonial farce, where tribute was claimed or an Aztec god was offered to be worshipped in order to pick a quarrel as a pretext for an invasion already planned to satisfy the soldiers with lands and plunder, and to meet the priests' incessant demands for more human sacrifices.

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  • The three powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia, made this a pretext for extinguishing this independent state; and as the outcome of a conference at Vienna (November 1846) the three courts, contrary to the assurance previously given, and in opposition to the expressed views of the British and French governments, decided to extinguish the state of Cracow and to incorporate it with the dominions of Austria.

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  • Henry never forgave the audacity; but, for the moment, the only revenge he could take was upon More's father, whom upon some pretext he threw into the Tower, and he only released him upon payment of a fine of £ioo.

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  • An insurrection in the north, headed by the earl of Huntly under pretext of rescuing from justice the life which his son had forfeited by his share in a homicidal brawl, was crushed at a blow by the Lord James against whose life, as well as against his sister's liberty, the conspiracy of the Gordons had been aimed, and on whom, after the father had fallen in fight and the son had expiated his double offence on the scaffold, the leading rebel's earldom of Murray was conferred by the gratitude of the queen.

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  • But that neither plea would avail her for a moment in Scotland she had ominous evidence on the thirteenth day after her marriage, when no response was made to the usual form of proclamation for a raid or levy of forces under pretext of a campaign against the rievers of the border.

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  • At last, when, in 1689, on the most frivolous pretext, Louis poured into southern Germany armies which were guilty of shameful outrages, a number of princes came forward and aided the emperor.

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  • On the Pacific, however, there were great gains; long-established plans for obtaining a port in China which might serve as a base for the growing trade at Tientsin were carried out at the end of 1897; the murder of two Catholic missionaries was made the pretext for landing troops in the bay of Kiao-chau; and in amends China granted the lease of some 50 sq.

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  • The chiefs who had planned to hurl the famished warrior host upon the colony had committed an incredible blunder in neglecting to call the nation together under pretext of witnessing the resurrection.

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  • A definite agreement was made between them at Joinville (December 31, 1584), the religious and popular pretext being the danger of leaving the kingdom to the king of Navarre, and the ostensible end to secure the succession to a Catholic prince, the old Cardinal de Bourbon, an ambitious and violent man of mean intelligence; while the secret aim was to secure the crown for the Guises, - who had already attempted to fabricate for themselves a genealogy tracing their descent from Charlemagne.

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  • In spite of the vigorous protest of Great Britain, which saw in this demand only a pretext for reviving the traditional Bourbon ambitions in the Peninsula, the mandate was granted by the majority of the powers; and on the 7th of April 1823 the duke of French in- Angoulme, at the head of a powerful army, crossed tervengion, the Bidassoa.

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  • Meanwhile, whenever a " suitable " pretext presents itself, Israeli troops use bulldozers to inflict " collective punishment.

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  • Under the pretext of snuffing the candle, they put it out.

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  • Unlike the priest, Mayer made no pretext that Byrne wasn't as dead as a Jacob Marley's knocker and, as Mayer described, was "walking the streets of gold with the angels."

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  • In 1291 he attempted to secure the election of his son Albert as German king; but the princes refused on the pretext of their inability to support two kings, but perhaps because they feared the increasing power of the Habsburgs.

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  • The rupture, therefore, took place in the middle of May; and on a flimsy pretext the First Consul ordered the detention in France of all English persons.

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  • The emperor Manuel I., urged on by the Genoese and other rivals of Venice, seized the pretext.

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  • The fur trade of the Black Sea furnished the pretext for the next war (1355-54), which ended in the crushing defeat of Venice at Sapienza, and the loss of her entire fleet.

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  • Napoleon was determined to destroy the oligarchical government, and seized the pretext that Venice was hostile to him and a menace to his line of retreat while engaged in his Austrian campaign of 1797.

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  • In 1521 war was declared against the king of Hungary on the pretext that he had sent no congratulations on Suleiman's accession.

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  • Beyond appearing at the meetings of learned societies he took little part in public affairs; he lived alone, conducting his investigations in a deliberate and exhaustive manner, but in the most rigid seclusion, no person being admitted to his laboratory on any pretext.

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  • Though otherwise progressive, this law committed the injustice of temporarily disfranchising the nonYugoslav minorities, on the convenient pretext that they could not claim the vote until the expiry of the two years during which the Treaty of Trianon secures their right to choose citizenship in a neighbouring State.

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  • After the murder of Othman, `Ali (656-661) became caliph, but Moawiya, governor of Syria, soon rebelled on the pretext of avenging the death of Othman.

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  • The conquest of Algiers by the Turks gave a dangerous neighbour to Tunisia, and after the death of Mohammed the Hafsite in 1525 a disputed succession supplied Khair ad-Din Barbarossa with a pretext for occupying the Turk* city in the name of the sultan of Constantinople.

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  • It was now late in the day, and a storm shower gave the authorities a pretext for declaring that heaven was against the ordeal.

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  • If it was desired to get rid of these, an effort was made to impute to them some deviation from the rule of faith; and under this pretext the church freed herself from the Montanists and the Monarchians.

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  • Thus, by degrees, the reproduction of the original text became of secondary importance, and merely served as a pretext for the discussion of topics that had little or no bearing on the context.

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  • The capture of Mahe on the coast of Malabar in 1779, followed by the annexation of lands belonging to a dependent of his own, gave him the needed pretext.

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  • He took refuge in Morocco, and induced that power to declare war on the French on the pretext that they would not give up the frontier post of Lalla-Maghnia.

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  • He returned almost immediately, on the pretext that Spain was intriguing against Mexican independence, and on landing (having been previously outlawed) was arrested and executed (July r, 1824).

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  • His pretext was the plea of an exiled vizier, and Shirkuh was ordered to Egypt in 1164, taking Saladin as his lieutenant.

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  • They were again condemned by a synod held at Cologne in 1306; and at the synod of Trier in 1310 a decree was passed against those "who under a pretext of feigned religion call themselves Beghards.

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  • Now when we consider that at that time there were many Moslems who had heard the Koran from the mouth of the Prophet, that other measures of the imbecile Othman met with the most vehement resistance on the part of the bigoted champions of the faith, that these were still further incited against him by some of his ambitious old comrades until at last they murdered him, and finally that in the civil wars after his death the several parties were glad of any pretext for branding their opponents as infidels; - when we consider all this, we must regard it as a strong testimony in favour of Othman's Koran that no party found fault with his conduct in this matter, or repudiated the text formed by Zaid, who was one of the most devoted adherents of Othman and his family, and that even among the Shiites criticism of the caliph's action is only met with as a rare exception.

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  • But the pretext for censure was trivial and baseless, and during the armistice Jomini did as he had intended to do in 1809 - To, and went into the Russian service.

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  • A favourable pretext for gratifying their revenge was discovered in the shelter which Chrysostom had given to four Nitrian monks, known as the tall brothers, who had come to Constantinople on being excommunicated by their bishop, Theophilus of Alexandria, a man who had long circulated in the East the charge of Origenism against Chrysostom.

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  • He was arrested in March 1593, and efforts were made to find some pretext for a capital charge.

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  • Pilate fulfilled his pledge by giving them the man of their choice, and Jesus, whom he had vainly hoped to release on a satisfactory pretext, he now condemned to the shameful punishments of scourging and crucifixion; for the cross, as Jesus had foreseen, was the inevitable fate of a Jewish pretender to sovereignty.

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  • Before the election was decided Kruger took care to conciliate the volksraad members, as well as to see that at all the volksraad elections, which occurred shortly before the presidential election, his supporters were returned, or, if not returned, that his opponents were objected to on some trivial pretext, and by this means prevented from actually sitting in the volksraad until the presidential election was over.

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  • Fearing that his followers might surrender him to the Turks, he gave out that Austria had declared war on Turkey, caused a Te Deum to be sung in the church of Kosia, and, on pretext of arranging measures with the Austrian commander-in-chief, crossed the frontier.

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  • Thus in the morning--especially if she had eaten anything rich the day before--she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest pretext Belova's deafness.

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  • The accession of Russia to the anti-Prussian coalition (1756) was made over his head, and the cowardice and incapacity of Bestuzhev's friend, the Russian commander-in-chief, Stephen Apraksin, after the battle of Gross-Jagersdorf (1757), was made the pretext for overthrowing the chancellor.

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  • In 1881 a French force crossed the Algerian frontier under pretext of chastising the independent Khmir or Kroumir tribes on the north-east of the regency, and, quickly dropping the mask, advanced on the capital and compelled the Bey to accept the French protectorate.

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  • Alive to the danger, the pope knew that his foe must be crushed, and the religious carnival of 1496 afforded a good pretext for stronger proceedings against him.

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  • The time was come for Philip to assert himself in Greece, and the Phocians, who still dominated Delphi and held Thermopylae, could furnish a pretext to the champion of Pan-Hellenism and Apollo.

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  • The pretext was the contumacy shown by the Locrian town Amphissa to the rulings of the Amphictyonic Council.

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  • The French ambassador, de la Haye, had delayed bringing him the customary gifts, with the idea that he would, like his predecessors, speedily give place to a new grand vizier; Kuprili was bitterly offended, and, on pretext of an abuse of the immunities of diplomatic correspondence, bastinadoed the ambassador's son and cast him and the ambassador himself into prison.

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  • But Henry, duke of Hereford, whose milder sentence was doubtless owing to the fact that he was the popular favourite, came back within a year, having been furnished with a very fair pretext for doing so by a new act of injustice on the part of Richard.

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  • To meet the expenses entailed by his liberality and extravagance, Gregory resorted to confiscation, on the pretext of defective titles or long-standing arrearages.

    1
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  • In 385 the Spartans seized a pretext to besiege and dismantle Mantineia and to scatter its inhabitants among four villages.

    1
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  • He died in 1504 and his direct descendants held the sultanate of Berar until 1561, when Burhan Imad Shah was deposed by his minister Tufal Khan, who assumed the kingship. This gave a pretext for the intervention of Murtaza Nizam Shah of Ahmednagar, who in 1572 invaded Berar, imprisoned and put to death Tufal Khan, his son Shams-ul-Mulk, and the ex-king Burhan, and annexed Berar to his own dominions.

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  • That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to them to defend their country--the very incitement which was the chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the Tsar's personal presence in Moscow--was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.

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  • Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or too damp or not rubbed fine enough.

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  • On the pretext 01 consolidating that republic, he invited 450 of its leading men tc come to Lyons to a consulta.

    1
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  • The first seat of the Holy Office was in the convent of San Pablo, where the friars, however, resented the orders, on the pretext that they were not delegates of the inquisitor-general.

    1
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  • The Blancos, using the fraudulent elections in 1896 as a pretext, now broke out in armed revolt under the leadership of Aparicio Saraiva.

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  • After a dilatory war of three years he concluded a peace on the ground of free commercial relations, and then he attacked the Livonian Order, on the pretext that the Livonian town of Dorpat had not paid tribute according to ancient treaties.

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    3
  • At the time of her accession the duchy was ruled by a son of the Polish king Augustus III., and he gave a pretext for aggression by refusing to allow Russian troops returning from the Seven Years' War to pass through his territory.

    1
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  • Phelim and his followers committed much depredation in Ulster on the pretext of reducing the Scots; and he attempted without success to take Drogheda, being compelled by Ormonde to raise the siege in April 1642.

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  • In 1589 mutinies of troops took place all over the empire, and in the two following years there were several risings of the Janissaries at Constantinople, the pretext being everywhere that the soldiers were being robbed of their pay.

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  • The press promulgated the wildest alarms as to the intentions of Louis Napoleon, who was represented as contemplating a sudden and piratical descent upon the English coast without pretext or provocation.

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  • A local quarrel in the Hawran was seized as a pretext in 1910 for dispatching thither some 30,000 men, with artillery, to crush the Druses.

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  • They looked at one another (now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a pretext ready to account for it.

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  • Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not always occur.

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  • Just as she needed to work off her spleen so she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of thinking--and the pretext for that was a game of patience.

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  • When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same stories over and over again to the same audience.

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  • Louis retaliated by refusing to sanction the duke of Burgundy's projected expedition against Calais, whereupon John quitted the court in chagrin on the pretext of taking up his mother's heritage.

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  • The reasons on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for aggression.

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  • This, together with certain outstanding grievances and the pretext of enforcing the settlement of the Greek Question approved by the powers, gave Russia the excuse for declaring war against Turkey.

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  • He was consequently imprisoned, on the pretext of having fought a duel, and only released when selected to accompany Prince Henry of Prussia in a visit to Vauban's fortifications.

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  • It may serve as a pretext for a serious quarrel whether the alleged " outrage " be great or small.

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  • Of the ordinary teaching of Greek in his day, Fleury wittily observed that most boys " learned just enough of that language to have a pretext for saying for the rest of their lives that Greek was a subject easily forgotten."

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  • At the beginning of his reign he ordered a recast of the coinage, with serious results to commerce; civil officials were deprived of offices, which had been conferred free, but were now put up to auction; duties were imposed on exported merchandise and on goods brought into Paris; the practice of exacting heavy fines was encouraged by making the salaries of the magistrates dependent on them; and on the pretext of a crusade to free Armenia from the Turks, Charles obtained from the pope a tithe levied on the clergy, the proceeds of which he kept for his own use; he also confiscated the property of the Lombard bankers who had been invited to France by his father at a time of financial crisis.

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