Definition of "break free"

[…] I saw his Lady, / Wild, with a Storm of Grief! Her Hair dishevel’d! / And her loose Robes, blown, careless, by the Wind! / Struggling, with weeping Servants, to break free.

1721, Aaron Hill, The Fatal Extravagance, London: T. Jauncy, [Scene 1], p. 9

When the soul breaks free from the arms of a superstition, bits of the claws and talons break themselves off in him. It is not the work of a day to squeeze them out.

1883 June, Ralph Iron [pseudonym; Olive Schreiner], “Times and Seasons”, in The Story of an African Farm, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: H. M. Caldwell Company, part II, section VII, page 171

[A]n elephant was captured for a time by the king's hunters and, ere he broke free, beringed with a grievous leg-iron.

1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter IX, in Kim (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; no. 414), London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, page 235

[…] the chopper slowed and wheeled around the treetop. It was one of the big ones whose crown had broken free of the rest to spread luxuriantly in the upper air […]

1968, Desmond Bagley, The Vivero Letter‎, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Chapter 8, section 7, p. 189

Tottenham left-back Benoit Assou-Ekotto broke free after a clever one-two with Emmanuel Adebayor, only to see his shot brilliantly saved by the Norwich keeper.

2012 April 9, Mandeep Sanghera, “Tottenham 1 - 2 Norwich”, in BBC Sport‎