"Forlorn hope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took her from her home, kept her quiet for a time, and when the novelty was gone, abandoned her. The old story went on; poverty—a child—a mother's love struggling with a sense of shame—a visit to her father's house at the last moment, as a forlorn hope. There she had crawled on her knees to one of those relentless parents on whose heads lie the utter loss of their children's souls. The false pride, that spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of his house—when a Saviour's example should have bid him forgive and raise ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... celebrated "Storming Column" of one thousand men called for by General N. P. Banks the second day after the disastrous assault on that fortress (June 14, 1863). Birge was selected by Banks to lead the forlorn hope. ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... heart on having this virgin; ten weeks nearly had gone; I said if Camille was not back next week she might let the rooms. It passed; a bill was put up in the window, and the next morning calling as a forlorn hope, there was a letter for me,—she would be back in a week. I was in a state of excitement that week, and kept myself chaste, with the idea of the virgin cunt, and Camille's well paced roger-ing ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... by the kedge, a small anchor, which, however, was the only one left us, and on which the safety of the brig now depended. The breakers were close under our stern, and this was not expected to hold ten minutes; it was a forlorn hope, every eye was fixed on the raging surf, and our hearts thrilled with agitation, expecting every moment that the vessel would be dashed in pieces. A few long and awful minutes were passed in this state, which left an indelible impression ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... struggle went forward; a forlorn hope of saints led the way up the breach, and paved with their bodies a broad road into the new era; and the nation the meanwhile was unconsciously waiting till the works of the enemy were won, and they could walk safely in and take possession. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... tightened around his hilt. Apparently the son of Lodbrok was expecting him! Yet even on a forlorn hope, he deemed it wise not to commit himself. He said with what haughtiness he could muster, "What should a plain traveller want with a bower-thane, Danishman? I stand in more need of the cellarer who is to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... a vague desire to render my position more comfortable, ending in a forlorn hope that intense and continued sitting might, by some undefined process of evaporation, cure the evil. This suggested a speculation, half pleasing and half painful, as to what would be my mother's feelings ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... and Jack walked away to hide his quivering lip. To examine the islands again was a forlorn hope because already it seemed certain that nothing alive moved on any of them. The brig passed them closer than before as she made a long reach before turning out to sea. It was the intention to sail in to engage Blackbeard very early the next ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St Andrew's Castle,—when one day in their chapel, the Preacher after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, That there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to speak;—which gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name of him, had: Had he not? said the Preacher, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... valour and prowess of the great soldier-king, William of Orange. Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, the beloved of damsels and dames, was the hero of this period. A handsome, large-limbed, brawny soldier, towering over the tallest of his dragoons, and true as the steel he wore, he was a fitting leader of a forlorn hope. Originally, one of the "Gentlemen of the Guard" under the Merrie Monarch, his defence of Limerick was a military achievement worthy of the ambition of any general; nor were his Williamite opponents slow to cordially ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... blossoming and fruitage; it is the starlight dew that perfumes life with sweetness and besprinkles it with splendor; it is the music-tide that sweeps the soul, scattering treasures; it is the victorious and blessed leader of integrity's forlorn hope; it is the potent alchemy that transmutes failure into success; it is the hidden manna that nourishes when all other sustenance fails; it is the voice that speaks to hopes all dead, "Because I live, ye shall live also." For the loftiest friendships have no commercial element in them: they are founded ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming, such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance—her unique chance, in nowise to be missed—and, still more, those obscure hungers, fed by the excitement of this midnight tete-a-tete, rushed her forward upon the abyss; while at every sputtering sentence, whether of adulation, misplaced prudery, or thinly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of the testators were ready to accept the best settlement that could be obtained. Theirs was a rather forlorn hope, to begin with. When it was proposed that Agnes Deppingham and Robert Browne should accept L250,000 apiece in lieu of all claims, moral or legal, against the estate, they leaped ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... As a forlorn hope of escape, the bride was asked to make a declaration that she was free from all precontracts, which she did without the least hesitation, and there was nothing to be done but for Henry "to put his head into the yoke," and to make an insignificant political alliance, which would thenceforth serve ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... requires. His face was pale; his hand was moist; his heart beat with tumult. He had occasionally been summoned by Dr. Keate; that, too, was awful work, but compared with the present, a morning visit. Music, artillery, the roar of cannon, and the blare of trumpets, may urge a man on to a forlorn hope; ambition, one's constituents, the hell of previous failure, may prevail on us to do a more desperate thing; speak in the House of Commons; but there are some situations in life, such, for instance, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... later than he was accustomed to keep the church open, still he lingered, unwilling to give up a last forlorn hope that his boy might yet keep his promise. With eyes fixed on the Tabernacle door, the priest knelt and commenced to recite the rosary, pleading, pleading for his boy. The joyful mysteries were finished and no one came; the sorrowful, still no one; finally, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... and women pleased themselves long ago. Ronsard's poems are a kind of epitome of his age. Of one side of that age, it is true, of the strenuous, the progressive, the serious movement, which was then going on, there is little; but of the catholic side, the losing side, the forlorn hope, hardly a figure is absent. The Queen of Scots, at whose desire Ronsard published his odes, reading him in her northern prison, felt that he was bringing back to her the true flavour of her early days in the court of Catherine at the Louvre, with its exotic Italian gaieties. Those ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... Thousands of the crusaders fell in battle with the natives of the countries through which they marched, and thousands more perished miserably of hunger and exposure. Those that crossed the Bosporus were surprised by the Turks, and almost all were slaughtered. Thus perished the forlorn hope ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... "As a forlorn hope, we tried one publishing house more. Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on which experience had taught him to calculate, there came a letter, which he opened in the dreary anticipation of finding two hard hopeless lines, intimating that "Messrs. Smith and Elder were not disposed to publish ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... dark as was this January day, I remember leaving the classe, and running down without bonnet to the bottom of the long garden, and then lingering amongst the stripped shrubs, in the forlorn hope that the postman's ring might occur while I was out of hearing, and I might thus be spared the thrill which some particular nerve or nerves, almost gnawed through with the unremitting tooth of a fixed idea, were becoming wholly ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... performing now the office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... in the office marked the hour as one. A toddied individual in a great buffalo coat waited for her outside, hiccoughing and bandying jest with the half-frozen men who had spent the night with him in the forlorn hope of finding THE GIRL. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... along with his two half-dead companions, his feet frozen, food gone, fuel gone, and a hurricane beating him helpless to the ground. He knows he cannot get through to his goal, he knows there is no living soul within hundreds of miles to bring him succor. On March 19th he speaks of their "forlorn hope"; on the 22nd he confesses that "he must be near the end"; on the 29th he speaks of death and says flatly, "I do not think we can hope for any better things now. * * * We are getting weaker, and the ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... that had been given him—and she knew she would never forget that phrase of his—willingly, and it seemed to her that the gifts he had been entrusted with were rare and precious ones—steadfast, unflinching courage, compassion, and the fine sense of honour which had sent him out on that forlorn hope. He had gone down, unyielding and undismayed—she felt curiously sure of that—amidst the blinding snow, but this was his vindication which had crowned him ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... was of a party in the forlorn hope, and was commanded on what seemed almost a desperate service, to dispossess the French of the church-yard at Ramillies, where a considerable number of them were posted to remarkable advantage. They succeeded much better than was ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... the asperity of Miss Jemima's feelings softened a little by that, especially as she reflected that her father would be obliged to lead Mrs. Mellen into the dining-room. But that dreadful Elsie destroyed even that forlorn hope. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... "I have met men qualified to lead a Forlorn Hope; but never before a woman. Allow me to express my regret that it is such a forlorn one." Then, with a twinkle in his eye which bespoke a lighter mood, he remarked in a curiously ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... and she sobbed hysterically. It seemed that she was making an appeal to someone in whom she had only a forlorn hope. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... it will be no such forlorn hope as that—at least not according to the German expectation; what they expect, however, and what they may get ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... The forlorn hope had failed; he was limping back to Ruth wounded and broken. He had sent her a wireless message. She would be at the dock to meet him. How could he face her? Fate had been against him, it was true, but he was in no mood to make excuses for himself. He had failed. That was ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... failure, and we learn nothing by experience, the next incumbent may be a hundred-fold worse. Furthermore, in many places, selection by trial is an impossibility, as in marriage, in the presidency of a bank, or in a general to lead a forlorn hope. There ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... So desperate was the defence, and so insuperable appeared the obstacles to an entrance by the breaches, that Graham adopted the heroic expedient of causing his artillery to fire a few feet only over the heads of the forlorn hope, until a clear opening had been made, and deadly piles of combustibles had been exploded behind the main breach, blowing into the air 300 of the garrison. A hideous conflagration destroyed the greater part of the town. A few days later ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... prepare the fort for their reception. Goaded to desperation by these taunts, and by Duquesne, who harangued them to the onset, they often rushed up to the fort, as if they purposed to storm it. Dropping dead under the cool and deliberate aim of the besieged, the remainder of the forlorn hope, raising a yell of fury and despair, fell back. Other infuriated bands took their place; and these scenes were often repeated, invariably with the same success, until both parties were incapable of taking aim ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... seas sufficient in strength to tear a limpet from its grip, the peril of doing so was extreme, but still, out on that fore air-box, determined to do or die, crept Richard Roberts, at that time the second coxswain of the lifeboat, leading the forlorn hope of rescue, and not counting his life dear to him. Up as the lifeboat rose, and down with her into the depths, still Roberts held on with the tenacity of ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... performance of its duties there was an infinite deal of kindly attention, consummate skill, and unwearying labour. Its associations were certainly unhappy, and had, I am sure, a depressing effect upon at least the physically disordered patients. It may be that as the Bicetre is a sort of forlorn hope of hospitals, where the more desperate or inexplicable cases only are admitted, it naturally acquires a sombre and ominous character; but in no establishment of a similar kind (and I have seen many) did I meet with ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... very weighty parcels. Boys who had changed into uniform with the others and gone down to the gate, though not really expecting any one as they were from out back and had no city friends, but still feeling lonesome, and, perhaps, having a forlorn hope that there might be some one, had helped rather bewildered girls, carrying their baskets and finding the man they wanted—these boys now looked longingly around at these groups, hoping some one would invite them ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... the storm of his own raising; and to make it more apparent that he had been as great a sufferer as the rest, he only threw a quilt over his shoulders and did not draw on his stockings. In this plight he scaled the stairs and joined the storming party, where the little man was leading the forlorn hope, with his candlestick in one hand and the remnant of his burnt stocking between the finger and thumb of ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... of itinerants, who frequented the numerous fairs and markets held up and down Wessex during the summer and autumn months. Although Phillotson had never spoken to one of these gentlemen they now nobly led the forlorn hope in his defence. The body included two cheap Jacks, a shooting-gallery proprietor and the ladies who loaded the guns, a pair of boxing-masters, a steam-roundabout manager, two travelling broom-makers, who called themselves widows, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... he added, with the instinct of a business man ready to nurse a forlorn hope, "There would be no harm in trying. I don't believe, though, that you have ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... game" had now become a wild debauch. Except for the few unfortunates who had been detailed by Hovey to guard the prisoners and see that the fugitives in the wireless house made no attempt to rush the main cabin as a forlorn hope, every man of the crew was gathered in the captain's cabins or on the deck nearby. The fireroom was deserted; the engines stopped; the Heron floated idly on the swell of the sea; but heedless of this the mutineers ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... too, there are many varieties. The courage of the soldier and the courage of the martyr are not the same, and it by no means follows that either would possess that of the other. Not a few men who are capable of leading a forlorn hope, and who never shrink from the bayonet and the cannon, have shown themselves incapable of bearing the burden of responsibility, enduring long-continued suspense, taking decisions which might expose them to censure ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... of offensive means. His personal assault on Firmstone had met with defeat. In the mental rout that followed he was casting about to find means of concealing from others that which he could not hide from himself. The irruption of Bennie and Zephyr threatened disaster even to this forlorn hope. Firmstone knew what was coming. Hartwell could not even guess. As he had seen Firmstone as his first object, so now he saw Zephyr. Blindly as he had attacked Firmstone, so now he lowered his head for an equally blind charge on ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Polly's forlorn hope vanished with the little man; but no tears came until she was on her pillow, shut from all eyes. Then they gushed forth in ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... been made for the child, he had never been found. "It is a many years ago," she said, "and he would be a fine young man now, if he were alive." And she sighed deeply, and still seemed to cling to the idea that he might possibly be living, with a sort of forlorn hope, that to me seemed more melancholy than the certainty of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... agitation, did not perceive the confusion of his uncle, who, at once overcome with conviction and fear, again ventured to speak: "It is too sure you speak truth, Andrew; but what am I, or any other private individual, that we should make ourselves a forlorn hope for the whole nation? Will Baliol, who was the first to bow to the usurper, will he thank us for losing our heads in resentment of his indignity? Bruce himself, the rightful heir of the crown, leaves us to our fates, and has become a courtier in England! For whom, then, should ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... The Round-Table was merely an interrogation covering a forlorn hope. It failed because you remained loyal ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... a cheerful view of a forlorn hope. Clark grasped the hand extended by Beverley and they looked encouragement into ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Officers Killed or Mortally Wounded Port Hudson Forlorn Hope Articles of Capitulation Note on Early's ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... not be discouraged at his apparent little influence, even though every sally of every young life may seem like a forlorn hope. No man can see the whole ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... something—about the match—and get that girl quietly home. I bag the back seat and Adrien. It is hard on me, I know, but fifteen minutes more of Patsy and I shall be counting my tootsies and prattling nursery rhymes. Here they come," he breathed. "Now, 'a little forlorn hope, deadly breach act, if you love me, Hardy.' ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... rights we think the ablest. Why, Susan B., of course. Without her, the organization would have been utterly broken to pieces and scattered. She is the guiding spirit, the executive power that leads the forlorn hope and brings order out of chaos. Others seek to promote their own interests, but Susan, earnest, honest, self-sacrificing, much-enduring, thinks only of the work she has in hand, and speculates solely on the chances of living long ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... It proved a forlorn hope. The girl behind the counter assured them that a party on bicycles, wearing brown tam-o'-shanters, had come and claimed their purchases, and ridden off up the street ringing their bells. The next motor-omnibus ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... her heart of hearts all the same that it was a forlorn hope. The old sexton had probably seen Monica walk through the village, and had come to lock the church as usual after her practice, quite unaware that anyone was exploring the belfry. By this time he would be at home again, with the keys in his pocket. The two girls shouted themselves hoarse, ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... five thousand mercenaries, who formed the garrison of one of the neighbouring towns, hastened to attack him under the command of Clinias of Cos, and suffered a severe defeat. As a result, the gates of the town were thrown open to the enemy, and if the Persians, encouraged by the success of this forlorn hope, had followed it up boldly, Nectanebo would have run the risk of being cut off from his troops which were around Pelusium, and of being subsequently crushed. He thought it wiser to retreat towards the apex of the Delta, but this very act of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... say, for the British army. Ghuzni, the strongest fortress in Afghanistan, was taken by assault in three-quarters of an hour, by the four European regiments of the army—viz., the Queen's, 13th Light Infantry, 17th regiment, and Bengal European regiment. The storming party, or forlorn hope, consisted of the Light Companies of the four regiments. The whole right in front—ergo, our company (the Light Company of the Queen's) was the first in. I may well remember it, as it was the first time I smelt gunpowder and saw blows given ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... the Kid with the idea that a battle might possibly take place somewhere in the vicinity of Stevensville or Ridgeway; as he knew that the leader of the Irish Republican Army, or forlorn hope, as so small a body of men might be termed, would attempt to intercept a junction of the enemy somewhere near one or the other of these points, as both lay on the line between Chippewa and Port Colborne, taking the Sodom Road and the Grand Trunk Railway as the surest and speediest route between both ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... inhabited. He had studied the criminal laws, so that he might be sure in his reckonings; but he had always felt that he might be carried by circumstances into deeper waters than he intended to enter. As the soldier who leads a forlorn hope, or as the diver who goes down for pearls, or as the searcher for wealth on fever-breeding coasts, knows that as his gains may be great, so are his perils, Melmotte had been aware that in his life, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... speak of these things, however, just then, for the storm, or rather the squall, burst forth again with increased violence, and the pass was still before them—so like the men of a forlorn hope who press up to the breach, they braced themselves to renew the conflict, and pushed on. The truth of the proverb, that "fortune favours the brave," was verified on this occasion. The storm passed over almost as quickly ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... altered in no essential; he was at that period of man's life—between fifty and sixty—when ravaging time seems to give him a respite for a couple of lustrums. As soon as Lynde could regain his self-possession he examined Dr. Pendegrast with the forlorn hope that this was not HIS Dr. Pendegrast; but it was he, with those round eyes like small blue-faience saucers, and that slight, wiry figure. If any doubt had lingered in the young man's mind, it would have vanished as the doctor drew forth from his fob ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... death. Look at him, as with face red with British blood he waves his sword and shouts to his legions. Now you may see him fighting in that cannon's glare, and the next moment he is away off yonder, leading the forlorn hope up that steep cliff. Is it not a magnificent sight, to see that strange soldier and that noble black horse dashing, like a meteor, down the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... they're all professionals, at any rate," said the Captain. "I admit that the officers lead; but the men follow pretty close. And in a forlorn hope there are fifty men to one officer, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a Zetland Udaller, a pure Scandinavian, a descendant of the old Vikings, and she inherited from them a poetic imagination and a nature dreamy and inert, though capable of rousing itself into fits of courage that could dare the impossible. Colin would have led a forlorn hope or stormed a battery; but the bare ugliness and monotony of his life at the works ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... send the aid asked for. But who should be the leader? There were danger and difficulty in the enterprise, with little hope for profit, and none of the Corinthian generals or politicians seemed eager to lead this forlorn hope. The archons called out their names one by one, but each in succession declined. The archons had come nearly to their wits' end whom to choose, when from an unknown voice in the assembly came the name "Timoleon." The ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I loved him; he was my only relative. That he might live near me was the last forlorn hope of my life. Before you condemn me, remember how few people exist in this world for me to love. I have no friends. I was so cold, so dreary! There was nothing left to me but your child and this one brother. How could I part with ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... mocking gaze, I looked round sharply for Dost, and a chill ran through me as I failed to see him. For the moment I hesitated to speak, in the hope that he might have escaped, and inquiries might only lead to his pursuit; but it was such a forlorn hope that I gave it up at once, and turned to speak to ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... and courage only. What one comes to feel from the reading of Conrad is that there is nothing in the world which has enduring value—nothing in the world which gives the mad convoluted hurly-burly any kind of dignity or beauty—except only love. And love like this, which is the forlorn hope of the race, is as far from lust as it is far from sentiment or indolent pity. It is the "high old Roman virtue." It is the spirit of comradeship defiant still, under the tottering ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... a piebald horse came clattering over a hedge—as carelessly as if the air was not full of lead and steel at all. Another man rode behind him with a lance and a red pennon on it. I think he must have been the enemy's General coming to tell his men not to throw away their lives on a forlorn hope, for directly he said they were captured the enemy gave in and owned that they were. The enemy's Colonel saluted and ordered his men to form quarter column again. I should have thought he would have had about enough of ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... by one which, like Aaron's rod, was to swallow up the rest. Its approach was regarded by the Queen with ominous reluctance. At length, however, the moment for the meeting of the States General at Versailles arrived. Necker was once more in favour, and a sort of forlorn hope of better times dawned upon the perplexed monarch, in his ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... two questions at the same time, I blundered. The first was a poser and might have elicited some interesting revelation of feminine mental process. In forlorn hope I repeated it. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... in the kitchen, and could hardly find time to answer my application; soldiers and officers' servants, scullions and men of all-work, almost knocked each other down in the inn-yard, the landlady, generally so affable a personage in provincial France, gave me the cold shoulder. I turned out in the forlorn hope of finding a good Samaritan. Of course, to present a letter of introduction under such circumstances, was quite out of the question, my errand would have been the last hair to break the camel's back, final embarrassment of an already overdone hostess. But night was at hand; the last ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the girl's cool statement with growing admiration. The plan began to look feasible. It came within the bounds of reason. The odds were against it, of course, but the law of probability is seldom in favor of a forlorn hope. Suarez, too, making the best of a situation which gave him no option, agreed that they had a fair chance if once they got hold of the canoes. Nevertheless, he warned them that he knew nothing of the surroundings of Guanaco ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... it is." She opened the basket and handed him a jug of coffee and showed him the rolls inside. Without the slightest embarrassment he thanked her and drank his coffee, walking; he ate the bread, and felt, as he expressed it, like leading a forlorn hope. They went on, the cutting sunshine and sparkling breeze alluring them to vague distances. It was long after midday when they marched back at a slower pace, Gerald swinging the basket like a light-hearted boy, instead of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the land of an evil thing. Well did he know how dangerous was the task before him, and he gave directions for the disposal of all that he valued should he never return from his quest. To the King, who feared greatly that he was going forth on a forlorn hope, he said: ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... later Jonah had left for Brooch to see the Chief Constable about the missing jewels and arrange for the printing and distribution of an advertisement for Nobby. The rest of us, doing our utmost to garnish a forlorn hope with the seasoning of expectation, made diligent search for the necklace about the terrace, gardens and tennis-lawn. After a fruitless two hours we repaired to the house, where we probed the depths of sofas and chairs, emptied umbrella-stands, settles, flower-bowls ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... interest) seek to overthrow the Church of England—all, again, who are distressed in point of patriotism, as in Ireland many are, hoping to establish a foreign influence upon any prosperous body of native prejudice against British influence, are now throwing themselves, as by a forlorn hope, into this rearmost of their batteries, (but also the strongest)—a deadly and combined struggle to pull down the Irish Protestant establishment. And why? because nothing else is left to them as a hopeful subject of conspiracy, now that the Repeal conspiracy is crushed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... courageous. We call it courage in a soldier merely to face death—say to lead a forlorn hope—although he has a chance of life and a certainty of "glory." But the suicide does more than face death; he incurs it, and with a certainty, not of glory, but of reproach. If that is not courage we must reform ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... back to the hotel, trying to adjust himself to this new phase of the question. Once more he had been called upon to lead the charge of the forlorn hope. He had not the same thrill of zealous loyalty as before. He was a little hurt because the Governor had made the affairs of his heart of so small importance. An old man's austerity could not understand, perhaps, but nevertheless Harlan ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... height of men," and so popular that every one, even the King, called him Dick. Those troublous times had reduced the fortunes of both Harrisons and Fanshawes to the lowest ebb, and the young couple started their married life on 20 pounds and the forlorn hope of their Sovereign's promise of eventual compensation. When her husband went to Bristol with the Prince of Wales, we see the young wife left at Oxford, in delicate health, with scarcely a penny and a dying first-born. She relates how she was sitting ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... gentry to accept money. They are eternally in need, but I usually find the information they give in return to be either unimportant or inaccurate. There remains, then, the third method, which is to place a spy among them. The spy battalion is the forlorn hope of the detective service. In one year I lost three men on anarchist duty, among the victims being my most valuable helper, Henri Brisson. Poor Brisson's fate was an example of how a man may follow a ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... bravos who form the forlorn hope of the cavalry, and always begin the action. [See Childe Harold, Canto II., Poetical Works, 1899, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... chronicle, "kings, counts, nobles, and knights, in order to be ready at all hours, kept their horses in the rooms in which they slept with their wives." The viscount in his tower defending the entrance to a valley or the passage of a ford, the marquis thrown as a forlorn hope on the burning frontier, sleeps with his hand on his weapon, like an American lieutenant among the Sioux behind a western stockade. His dwelling is simply a camp and a refuge. Straw and heaps of leaves cover the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... added, in the forlorn hope of justifying my moral ineptitude to myself, "If you take my advice, you will ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... was not yet over. A forlorn hope of the disinherited, headed by John d'Eyville, established themselves about Michaelmas in the isle of Ely, where they made themselves the terror of all East Anglia, plundering towns so far apart as Norwich and Cambridge, maltreating the Jews, and ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... gallant to somebody's inconstant wife, and the carver spoke of them. Satterlee impetuously bade him halt his work and wrote a wild letter to Ann Westfall begging her to let him hide the truth in the well of the candlestick with the forlorn hope that one day Carl might know. This she granted. Later he had the candlesticks brought to his apartments to be sealed in his presence. As he took from his pocket the written account intended for Carl, another ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... rang out the preliminary command, "draw sabres. By fours, left. March. Trot," and the first of the forlorn hope was started. The troops swung by the little group which held Trusia in its centre. As the head of the scanty column came abreast of where she sat in her saddle, the lieutenant, Casimir, turned on his horse, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... "With the forlorn hope," said O'Shaughnessy. "Beauclerc is so badly wounded that we've sent him back; and Charley, like a good fellow, has ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... forlorn hope, but he slipped out amidst the darkness, by way of a loosened picket in the rear of the stockade, and vanished. The garrison strained their ears, listening. They heard nothing, and breathed a sigh of relief. For an hour more they listened, fearing ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... day, at dawn, he went out with eighty men to an outpost that had been an abandoned farm. It was rather a forlorn hope. They had one machine gun. At nine o'clock the enemy opened fire on them and followed it by an attack. The major in charge went down early. At two Cecil was standing in the loft of the farmhouse, firing with a revolver on men who ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... scouts spread in organised network around, not a shipload of foodstuff could reach the country. They know that; they can calculate how many days of independence and starvation they could endure, and they will make no attempt to bring about such a certain fiasco. Brave men fight for a forlorn hope, but the bravest do not fight for an issue they know ...
— When William Came • Saki
... The Hollow, but the hidden bird did not break it by another call. At last it became evident that Cynthia was beyond the reach of her slave's desires, and so poor Sandy gathered together his flagging strength and spirits and turned toward home with the forlorn hope that he might meet Cynthia on the way there. Now that the parting time had come he knew that the girl was his only real friend on earth in the sense that youth knows a friend. They were near each other, though so far apart. They spoke a ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... crushed Paoli's hopes of maintaining the nationality of Corsica. Retiring to Corte, and thence, almost as a fugitive, to Vivario, in the heart of the mountains, though he might still have maintained a guerilla warfare against the French, he resolved to abandon a forlorn hope, and, pressed by a large body of the enemy's troops, embarked in an English frigate at Porto Vecchio, with his brother Clemente ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Bourbon. It was decided to attempt to take the place by storm, and on February 4th, the 1st Division, which, under Sir George Prevost, had marched over from Surirey, advanced to the assault, the grenadier companies forming the "forlorn hope." The fire from the enemy's guns was, however, so heavy and well-directed that the attempt failed, notwithstanding the most conspicuous gallantry on the part of the British, and the troops retired with a loss of 330 killed and wounded, ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... unusually glorious Fourth. He was magnificently befuddled, and for the first time in three months he was the regnant intoxicated ideal of what a gentleman and a soldier should be. He was a man among men, equal to any emergency, capable of leading a forlorn hope, or entering the lists for a lady's hand. He had forgotten, if he had ever known, the object of this meeting; but when he heard his name loudly called, he understood at once; he recalled the fact that he had something ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... However, of this we cared little, when the water had crept up to the furnaces and put the fires out, and we realized for the first time that the ship had met her match and was slowly filling. Without a pump to suck we started the forlorn hope of buckets and began to bale her out. Had we been able to open a hatch we could have cleared the main pump well at once, but with those appalling seas literally covering her, it would have meant less than 10 minutes to float, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... that Jameson (with or without the orders of Rhodes) forced the hand of the conspirators by invading the country with a force absurdly inadequate to the work which he had taken in hand. Five hundred policemen and two field-guns made up the forlorn hope who started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal border upon December 29, 1895. On January 2 they were surrounded by the Boers amid the broken country near Dornkop, and after losing many of their number killed and wounded, without food and with spent horses, they were compelled to lay down ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to grip the wheel so tightly," said Jack, and I became aware that I had been clinging to it as if it were a forlorn hope. "A light touch is best, you know; it's rather like steering a boat. A very slight movement does it, and in half an hour it has got to be automatic. Of course, always start on the lowest, that is, the first speed, and ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... such a condition one would suppose that any ray of hope which might previously have existed would have died out, yet, with the persistent courage and sanguine temperament of the sailors, they dared to believe in the possibility of escape; and with this forlorn hope, attempted to gain the summit of the cliffs, which a few effected in a very wonderful manner. The quarter-master and cook, succeeding first, gave the alarm, when a number of quarrymen, together with a Mr. Garland, hastened down to the beach to ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... see through it. It will never,—it can't possibly be reckoned on to appear. I knew that the signorina was heart and soul with us; but who could guess that her object was to sacrifice herself in the front rank,—to lead a forlorn hope! I tell you it's like a Pagan rite. You are positively slaying a victim. I beg you all to look at the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for the coveted heights. On! never blenching, never faltering—with great gaps crashing through them—filling the places of the dead with the living next to die—On! into the jaws of death goes the forlorn hope! They are at the rise—they reach the crest; and then their batteries are ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... me, which I do not hope to find elsewhere. I like Bath very much; I have not been here since I was six years old, when I spent a year here in hopes of being bettered by my aunt, Mrs. Twiss. A most forlorn hope it was. I suppose in human annals there never existed a more troublesome little brat than I was for the few years after my first appearance on ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... plutocracy, but one feels sure that he would take his stand with those who are trying to win for themselves some kind of moral and intellectual as well as economic freedom. One feels sure he would be of that forlorn hope of civilization that carries on a sporadic and ineffective war against officialism and militarism on the one hand, and puritanism and superstition on the other. One feels sure that, however little he might like new developments ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... a tree to rest for this was June and pretty warm. I was now alone in a big territory, thinly settled, and thought of my father's home, the well set table, all happy and well fed at any rate, and here was my venture, a sort of forlorn hope. Prospects were surely very gloomy for me here away out west in Wisconsin Territory, without a relative, friend or acquaintance to call upon, and very small means to travel two hundred and fifty miles of lonely road—perhaps all the way on foot. There were no laborers required, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... that if I should run now there was a warrant out for me, I might by so doing make them afraid to stand, when great words only should be spoken to them. Besides I thought, that seeing God of His mercy should choose me to go upon the forlorn hope in this country; that is, to be the first, that should be opposed, for the gospel; if I should fly, it might be a discouragement to the whole body that might follow after. And further, I thought the world thereby would take occasion at my cowardliness, to have ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... The captain began to let himself hope that the forlorn hope of Yeager had brought safety to his friends. Surely by this time he must either have won or ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... time a familiar figure in a much-observed London set, had been mixed up in an ugly money-lending business ending in suicide, which had excluded him from the society most accessible to his race. His alliance with Mrs. Newell was doubtless a desperate attempt at rehabilitation, a forlorn hope on both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because it represented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from social extinction. That Hermione's marriage was a mere stake in their game did not in the least ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... would taste none the more palatable for his being reminded of it by his wife, and Roy drove her back with a shower of harsh words. He shut the door with a bang, and went out, a forlorn hope lighting him that ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... duke, applying to me, "M. Marston, you have been later on the spot than any of us. What can you tell of this M. Dumourier, who, I see from my letters, is appointed to the forlorn hope of France—the command of the broken armies of Lafayette ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... General Wayne took post in a hollow, within two miles of the fort on Stony Point, and there remained unperceived until midnight, when he formed his men into two columns, Lieutenant-Colonel Fleury leading one division and Major Stewart the other. At the head of each was a forlorn hope of twenty men. Both parties were close upon the works before they were discovered. A skirmish with the pickets at once ensued, the Americans using the bayonet only. In a few moments the entire works were manned, and the Americans were compelled to press forward in the face of ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... seemed as the most familiar objects of her daily life; for had they not been impressed on her mental vision by the strength of despair? The Austrian soldiers at the frontier could not detain them, though without passports, for even they would not prevent a dying child from being conveyed on a forlorn hope. Such grief could scarcely be rendered more or less acute by circumstances. They arrived at their inn in a gondola, but only for Clara to die in her ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... Maluka's hopes always died hard. "There's still the Government yacht," he said, going to a huge iron punt that lay far above high-water mark. Mac called it a forlorn hope, and it looked it, as it lay deeply sunk in the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... little doubt that a compromise would have been willingly accepted twelve months earlier. But the report had made all compromise impossible. William, however, was bent on trying the experiment; and Vernon consented to go on what he considered as a forlorn hope. He made his speech and his motion; but the reception which he met with was such that he did not venture to demand a division. This feeble attempt at obstruction only made the impetuous current chafe the more. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... none to us—we know him. The kraken has a tongue dripping with honey—one that would smooth a newly-picked millstone. There they go, each of them laughing and cheerful, except himself; yet the fellow, though conscious of his own influence, enters the public-house as if he were going on the forlorn hope, or trailing his straggling limbs to confide his last wishes to the ear of the sheriff or hangman. He is, however, an Irishman at heart, though little indeed of the national bearing is ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... hundred excellent rifles with flint locks and screwed barrels made at Monghyr (Munger) on the Ganges, so as to fit into small boxes. These boxes were sent up on the backs of four hundred brave volunteers for this forlorn hope. Gregory had got a passport for the boxes as rare merchandise for the palace of the prince at Kathmandu, in whose presence alone they were to be opened. On reaching the palace at night, these volunteers were ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman |
