Dragoon

Near the capital lay also the corps which is now designated as the first regiment of dragoons on the English establishment. […] A single troop of dragoons, which did not form part of any regiment, was stationed near Berwick, for the purpose of keeping the peace among the mosstroopers of the border. For this species of service the dragoon was then thought to be peculiarly qualified. He has since become a mere horse soldier. But in the seventeenth century he was accurately described by Montecuculi as a foot soldier, who used a horse only in order to arrive with more speed at the place where military service was to be performed.

I have served as a Dragoon in my day; and a comrade of mine that I was once rather partial to, was, if I don't deceive myself, a brother of yours.

If you want a receipt for that popular mystery, / Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon, / Take all the remarkable people in history, / Rattle them off to a popular tune.

His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men—physicians and lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained indefinitely at Malvern Hill; an only brother at Montauk Point having sickened in the trenches before Santiago.

[T]o my great surprise two persons in the habit of gentlemen attacked me with such indecent discourse as I cannot repeat to you, so you may conclude not fit for me to hear. […] [F]ancy your wife or daughter, if you had any, in such circumstances, and what treatment you would then think due to such dragoons.

The Normans came out of France into England worse men than they went into it, one hundred and sixty years before. […] These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates.

Dragoons were originally bred between a Tumbler and a Horseman; by frequently matching them with the Horseman, they will acquire very great strength and agility. […] One of the principal beauties of the Dragoon is the straightness of the top of its skull, and that of its beak, which ought almost to make a horizontal line with each other.

Since the prevalence of low wages the weaver's garden has disappeared, and his pigeon-cote, even if its timbers have not rotted away, is no longer stocked with carriers, dragoons, horsemen, jacobins, monks, poulters, turtles, tumblers, fantails, and the many varieties of what is in itself a variety—the fancy-pigeon.

She [Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné] appears to have exulted in the extirpation of protestantism in Provence, by the power of her son-in-law, count de Gregnan [i.e., François Adhémar de Monteil, Comte de Grignan]; she even speaks with levity of the sufferings of the huguenots, dragooned into the bosom of the true church.

This was the pious lady [Ninon de l’Enclos] who, in after times, expiated the faults of her youth by dragooning Huguenots into Catholics.

In Politicks, I hear, you're ſtanch, / Directly bent againſt the French; / Deny to have your free-born Toe / Dragoon'd into a VVooden Shoe: […]

The next step was that suggested by Mr. Townsend, of quartering large bodies of troops upon the chief towns in the colonies, and demanding of the several colonial legislatures, a provision for their comfortable support and accommodation. […] Their object was perfectly understood: it was to curb the just and honourable spirit of the people; to dragoon them into submission to the parliamentary claim of taxation, and reduce them to the condition of vassals, governed by the right of conquest.

[A]t any rate, he had shown Hardy that he wasn't to be dragooned into doing or not doing any thing.

For months and months and from one end of the country to the other the whole official force has been engaged in pulling wires to dragoon the party into the renomination of the President.

[T]he union leaders in Pennsylvania are trying to dragoon the most exalted personage in the nation [the President] into a wrangle with which he has no official connection whatever.

He [Samuel Wilson] says, for example, that he is opposed to locking men up without trial, but he refrains from pledging himself to releasing the suspects. He says nothing about the necessity for dragooning the Irish for abolishing trial by jury.