"Forlorn Hope" was what these semi-suicide squads were called in the Revolutionary War. "Forlorn Hope" was what these semi-suicide squads were called in the Revolutionary War.It’s also a reference to the latter-day desperate stand of the dwindling Confederate army once Atlanta had fallen and the end was inevitable.
While true, this phrase considerably predates the US Revolution. The term probably comes from the "Low Country Wars" between the Catholic Spanish Empire and the Protestant Rebels in the Netherlands in the 1500s. In Dutch, "Verloren Hoop" is 'lost troops', and in usage means a military company sent or ordered to remain where their personal survival was secondary to the task ordered.
England had been deeply involved in this area with the wool trade and under the latter Tudors and early Stuart monarchs, decided to aid this fellow Protestant country as another method to fight Spain. With the English troops fighting alongside the 'Dutch Rebels', the Dutch term of 'verloren hoop' morphed via homonym transfer into English as 'forlorn hope'.
FYI: This revolt / war lasted from the mid-1500s to 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia which divided the area into Holland (Protestant) and Brussels (Roman Catholic). Shortly thereafter came the Anglo-Dutch trade & maritime wars that were then followed by the anti-French 'War of the League of Augsburg' and the 'War of the Spanish Succession'. Lots of fighting because absolutism gives religious and autocrats excuses to send the peasants out to fight!