"_The Forlorn Hope_" (Vol. viii., pp. 411. 569.).--For centuries the
"forlorn hope" was called, and is still called by the Germans, _Verlorne
Posten_; by the French, _Enfans perdus_; by the Poles and other Slavonians,
_Stracona poczta_: meaning, in each of those three languages, a detachment
of troops, to which the commander of an army assigns such a perilous post,
that he entertains no hope of ever rescuing it, or rather gives up all hope
of its salvation. In detaching these men, he is conscious of the fate that
awaits them; but he sacrifices them to save the rest of his army, _i. e._
he sacrifices a part for the safety of the whole. In short, he has no other
intention, no other thought in so doing, than that which the adjective
_forlorn_ conveys. Thus, for instance, in Spain, a detachment of 600
students volunteered to become a _forlorn hope_, in order to defend the
passage of a bridge at Burgos, to give time to an Anglo-Spanish corps
(which was thrown into disorder, and closely pursued by a French corps of
18,000 men) to rally. The students all, to the last man, perished; but the
object was attained.
It much grieves me thus to sap the foundation of the idle speculation upon
a word the late Dr. Graves indulged in, and which Mr. W. R. Wilde inserted
in the _Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science_ for February, 1849;
but, on the other hand, I rejoice to have had the opportunity of
endeavouring to destroy the very erroneous supposition, that Lord Byron had
fallen into an error in his beautiful line:
"The full of hope, misnamed _forlorn_."
What the late Dr. Graves meant by _haupt_ or _hope_, for head, I am at a
loss to conceive. _Haupt_, in German, it is true, means _head_; but in
speaking of a small body of men, marching at the head of an army, no German
would ever say _Haupt_, but _Spitze_. As to _hope_ (another word for
_head_) I know not from what language he took it; certainly not from the
Saxon, for in that tongue _head_ was called _heafod_, _hefed_, or _heafd_;
whilst _hope_ was called _hopa_, not _hope_.