stronghold🔊

With the numerous soldiers of Asia, with all of their warlike stores, ships, and military engines, that wealth and power could command, the Turks at once resolved to crush an enemy which, creeping on by degrees, had from their strong-hold in the Morea acquired Thrace and Macedonia, and had led their armies even to the gates of Constantinople, while their extensive commercial relations gave every European nation an interest in their success.

The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and blood-thirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.