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Praetorium Honoris

Friday, January 13, 2023

The Forlorn Hope

Colin Campbell¹ leading the 'forlorn hope' at the Siege of San Sebastián, 1813.
William Barnes Wollen (PD)
I may have first encountered the term forlorn hope while reading the excellent Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell. (Though it's more than possible that I encountered the term in David Chandler's masterful work, The Campaigns of Napoléon.)

Collins English dictionary defines the term as follows -

forlorn hope
    1. a group of soldiers detached from the main group for a very dangerous mission
    2. a desperate undertaking; enterprise with very little chance of success
    3. a faint hope
During the Napoleonic wars the term usually was associated with a group of men selected to be the first into the breach at a siege. To explain, cannon fire (usually large, purpose-design siege cannon) would open a bombardment on the enemy walls along a stretch deemed most practical for breaking into the town. The guns would fire until a breach was made in the wall. That's when the forlorn hope went to work.

"The Devil's Own"
88th Regiment at the Siege of Badajoz.²

Richard Caton Woodville Jr.
The forlorn hope was considered nearly a suicide assignment. Men  (usually the officers) were promised promotions if they survived. In the French Army they were known as les Enfants Perdus, the lost children. Contrary to British practice, all of the survivors in les Enfants Perdus in the French Army were promoted.

Why were they known as the forlorn hope? Well, a siege was a nasty business. Ordinarily a town (or fortress, most of the big cities and towns in Spain were fortresses) would be offered the opportunity to surrender, sparing the citizens of the place from any slaughter or looting. The garrison would be allowed the "honors of war," allowed to march off with colors flying and still bearing arms.

Refusal to surrender could lead to a long siege, starvation was a possibility for the besieged. Due to time constraints the Peninsular War saw a number of sieges where the artillery would open after entrenchments were dug bringing the besieging army closer to the walls.

Once a breach was opened, the place would again be offered the chance to surrender, if they did not, the forlorn hope would go in, at night if possible, to engage the defenders of the breach. If a foothold was gained, then the rest of the army would make its assault. Once they got into the town, all bets were off.

The garrison would be cut down without mercy, the citizens were liable to be robbed, beaten, raped, and murdered. This would last until the attacking troops were either brought under control by their officers or sheer exhaustion rendered them hors de combat.

Losses in the assault parties were heavy. The Siege of Badajoz in 1812 provides an example -

When dawn finally came on 7 April, it revealed the horror of the slaughter all around the curtain wall. Bodies were piled high and blood flowed like rivers in the ditches and trenches. Surveying the destruction and slaughter Wellington wept openly at the sight of British dead piled upon each other in the breaches and bitterly cursed the British Parliament for granting him so few resources and soldiers. The assault and the earlier skirmishes had left the allies with some 4,800 casualties. The elite Light Division had suffered badly, losing some 40 percent of their fighting strength.

After the capture of the city, the victorious British troops became drunk on stocks of captured alcohol and began rampaging through the city. During the sack of Badajoz, numerous homes were broken into, private property was vandalized or stolen, civilians of all ages and backgrounds raped and many British officers shot by the men they were trying to bring to order. (Source)

Very few of the forlorn hope would survive such a bitterly contested assault. Still and all, they were necessary to make that initial push into the defenses. The cost could be high, but the rewards might well be worth it.

I'm thinking of twenty conservatives who opposed Kevin  McCarthy’s bid for speaker of the House, a forlorn hope perhaps?  Will some good finally come out of Washington, DC?

Who knows?




¹ Sir Colin Campbell also fought in the Crimean War, commanding the Highland Brigade. The term "Thin Red Line" came from this war at the Battle of Balaclava when a two-deep line of Scotsmen stood off a massive Russian cavalry attack. (Same battle where the Charge of the Light Brigade took place.)
² It should be noted that the 88th Foot was an Irish regiment.

32 comments:

  1. Politically speaking, a very forlorn hope indeed.

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  2. Perhaps time will tell if the Uni-Party has been checked but I fear too many Rinos.

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    1. Cut the flow of money to the pigs at the trough and it might, might, fix things. Separate those who truly wish to serve from all the grifters.

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    2. The Uni-Party is again firmly in control. There will be distractions and other things we can seriously argue about but the main money will keep going where where it's been going.

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    1. D'oh! (Fixed it. it looked funny when I wrote it, but in my defense, I was tired. 🙄)

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  4. The Twenty should have taken their shoes and pounded on their desks with them. Use the enemy's tools against them.

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  5. Sarge (and I had to refresh my memory), the concept of the Forlorn Hope dates to the era of the Landsknects, when a group of soldiers went forward to either hew their way into the massed pike formations and create a breach or alternatively as a temptation to the opposing forces to attack (and again, open a breach). Pay was double, they got their own special banner - the Blutfahne (blood banner) - but survivability was low.

    Do I have high hopes? Well, their is always hope. This is more life I have certainly seen in the Governmental Gathering since perhaps the mid 1990's. It is odd that most would prefer seamless operation of the machinery, even if thereby they gain nothing by it. Somehow we have reached the point where a certain amount of disorder in our governing body represents something "bad".

    (I am not sure if I have recommended David Drake's excellent book The Forlorn Hope before, I will do (or do so again) now. It is one of the best pieces of future military science fiction I have read).

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    1. Sigh. "Well, their is always hope" is obviously meant to be "Well, there is always hope". Typing before caffeination saturation strikes again...

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    2. TB #1 - Yes, I saw that (also the Dutch translation as forlorn or lost heap, heap and hope being the same word in Dutch, "hoop").

      I'll have to track down that book.

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    3. TB #2 - The keyboard doth betrayeth us all.

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  6. I see it going as it has for the past few decades. GOP will thump its chest and proclaim This Time Will Be Different. The other party will pontificate about the need to Put Past Differences Behind Us and Work For the Good Of Our Democracy, and how there must be compromise and a meeting in the middle. Then will shout that any attempt to rein in the power and spending of the federal government is racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. The GOP, with all the backbone of an undercooked blancmange, will cave, give the other party 99% of what it wants and call it victory.

    Re: compromise, this is about firearms, but applies to almost every issue.
    https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2013/11/08/cake-and-compromise-illustrated-guide-to-gun-control/

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    1. The idiots in DC either don't know how to compromise or it's all a farce and the Uniparty is real. (I lean towards the latter.)

      Excellent link!

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    2. Thanks. I think that link is a perfect example of how we have compromised away our civil rights. Give half of what they want, get nothing in return. A year later give them half, and again get nothing. So in two moves they have gotten three quarters of what they want. Penn & Teller have a good short video on the subject.

      The idea of compromise, for the other party anyway, is "Give us all we demand or you're racist."

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    3. An excellent summation, Joe! The Democrats are evil, but are very good at getting what they want.

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    4. Thank you, Scott.

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    5. https://youtu.be/pz2p4EQtEXs

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  7. I liked how that ended! I think their constituents will be happy, but the leadership will cut them down- crappy committee assignments and such.

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  8. Very enlightening, the historical part. I won't comment on the likely futile actions of a few brave souls against a formidable and intractable horde of self-serving, self-dealing, lying opportunists from both parties. There is a chance they will succeed even a little, but very likely not very much. The odds of me being pursued by a nymphomaniac heiress to a distillery fortune are probably a lot higher.

    In some "Serendipity History" about a sword a while back (https://oldafsarge.blogspot.com/2022/12/john-blackshoe-sends-serendipity_01084675873.html) then Private Henry Johns used the term "forlorn hope" in his letters/book describing the action for which he and Corporal Francis Warren (and two other privates) earned the Medal of Honor at the siege of Port Hudson in 1863. Being unfamiliar with the term, I took it to be a phrase this former preacher chose to describe the events, not an actual military term with a long history. The citation, prepared in 1893 read "Volunteered in response to a call, and took part in the movement that was made upon the enemy's works under a heavy fire therefrom in advance of the general assault." That certainly fits the "forlorn hope" scenario.

    A cynic might wonder if the heroism of these four men was belatedly recognized in 1893 (30 years after the event) because one of them was now a sitting U.S. Senator. However, there were a lot of MOH awards made in that period, so I think they were all earned.

    Thanks for the history lesson!
    John Blackshoe

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    1. It's one of the things we try to do here, entertain a little, teach a little, provide a place to hang out, and what-have-you.

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    2. Hey John, if that Nympho bourbon heiress has a sister, let me know.

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  9. Well...we'll see, won't we? I applaud the Twenty and some of the initial moves by mccarthy seem apropos. IF he releases ALL of the 6 Jan videos, that will be another good sign. I've put my well-honed cynicism on a brief hold, but range-time, workouts and preps continue apace. Every day that we don't go kinetic is a gift - until it's not and we have no choice. That day is not yet here.
    I don't expect a political solution to our Republic's malaise, but if such could be effected without large-scale bloodshed; I'd be one happy, happy boy.
    Boat Guy

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    1. It all depends on how much crap the public is willing to swallow I suppose. So far that amount has surprised me, it's almost as if no one if really paying attention to what's going on.

      It's sad, heartbreaking in many ways.

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Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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