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Hard-pressed   /hɑrd-prɛst/   Listen
Hard-pressed

adjective
1.
Facing or experiencing financial trouble or difficulty.  Synonyms: distressed, hard put, in a bad way.  "Financially hard-pressed Mexican hotels are lowering their prices" , "We were hard put to meet the mortgage payment" , "Found themselves in a bad way financially"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Hard-pressed" Quotes from Famous Books



... and succeeded in making their retreat. For nearly three hours this furious conflict had raged within the city. Regiment after regiment had been marched up to the assault, but none had proved brave enough to fight their way up the counter-scarp to the aid of the hard-pressed grenadiers in ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty

... taxes of 15 million hard-pressed working families to make sure that no parents who work full-time would have to raise their children in poverty, and to encourage people to move from welfare to work. This expanded earned income tax credit is now worth about $1,800 a year to a family of four living on $20,000. The budget ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton

... marked by a decisive change for the better in the position of the States. Alarm at the rapid growth of the French power brought at last both Spanish and Austrian assistance to the hard-pressed Netherlands; and the courage and skill of De Ruyter held successfully at bay the united fleets of England and France, and effectually prevented the landing of an army on the Dutch coast. Never did De ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... "Reason in Religion," reveals his scepticism and frowns upon personal immortality. "It is pathetic," he comments, "to observe how lowly are the motives that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity, and from what a hard-pressed and bitter existence they have been drawn. To be given the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly and punctiliously, these have been thought points of honor with the gods, for which they would dispense favors and punishments on the most exhorbitant scale.... The idea ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... told him some part of my troubles. He was called Quentin Kennedy, and now he is dead. He told me that in Scotland he had a lonely chateau, where I could hide secretly and safely, and against the day when I might be hard-pressed he gave me a letter to his steward, bidding him welcome me as a guest when I made application. At that time I did not think I would need such sanctuary, but a month ago the need became urgent, for the hunt in France ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... station of Malakand languished and ceased. The tribesmen, sick of the slaughter at this point, concentrated their energies on Chakdara, which they believed must fall into their hands. To relieve this hard-pressed post now became the duty of the garrison ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... the attacks moderated, although they never departed. Sleeplessness pursued him always, the slightest excitement would deprive him of the power of exertion, his sight was always sensitive, and at times he was bordering on blindness. In this hard-pressed way he fought the battle of life. He says himself that his books took four times as long to prepare and write as if he had been strong and able to use his faculties. That this should have been the case is ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... score a point, he introduces the argument that "probably the British farmer ... does not regard this competition of German with English manure manufacturers as altogether disadvantageous." This is all very well; but even a hard-pressed critic cannot serve two masters; he cannot set out to prove that the Germans are not beating us, and then, when he tumbles against an instance to the contrary which repulses all attempts to explain it away, turn round and say that it is a very good thing. ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox

... with their heads separated from their bodies, and having none to lead them in that fearful battle, they were slaughtered by the enemy. And then the god Purandara (Indra), the slayer of Vala, observing that they were unsteady and hard-pressed by the Asuras, tried to rally them with this speech, "Do not be afraid, ye heroes, may success attend your efforts! Do ye all take up your arms, and resolve upon manly conduct, and ye will meet with no more misfortune, and defeat those wicked and terrible-looking Danavas. May ye be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... and clothing advanced him during the year. Thus we have a laborer without capital and without wages, and an employer whose capital is largely his employees' wages. It is an unsatisfactory arrangement, both for hirer and hired, and is usually in vogue on poor land with hard-pressed owners. ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... application, diligence and elbow-grease. They are, every one, excellent. Their inventors deserve our gratitude. But our gratitude to their inventors must be nothing compared with their inventors' gratitude to the person who decreed that the hard-pressed T. Atkins of the Great War should wear (at least in part) the same needless finery as the relatively otiose T. Atkins of Peace. May that despot, whoever he be, depart to a realm of bliss—I suppose it would be bliss to him—where he has ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... was too far away, and life at home was still running in its accustomed grooves. They could not take the European war to themselves, nor realize that it might sweep away their prosperity, their liberties—even their homes. Fear had not yet been aroused; pity for our suffering and hard-pressed allies was still lightly considered; the war had not struck home to the hearts of the people as it has since. I doubt if even Mary Louise fully realized the vital importance of the ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... into position and the British raked the German line wherever heads appeared. In this method they relieved the hard-pressed ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake

... boys were out of sight, and not one instant too soon, for a moment later they could see through the hedge what seemed to be an endless line of gray uniforms going past at the double quick. They were evidently hurrying forward to reinforce their hard-pressed comrades farther down ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall

... been the atrium; the round shield, with its pointed boss, the spear, sword, and small curved saex of the early Teuton, were suspended from the columns on which once had been wreathed the flowers; in the centre of the floor, where fragments of the old mosaic still glistened from the hard-pressed paving of clay and lime, what now was the fire-place had been the impluvium, and the smoke went sullenly through the aperture in the roof, made of old to receive the rains of heaven. Around the Hall were still left the old cubicula ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... may be more honest and more sincere than I am in their reticence of language and in their determination not to deceive themselves, even by an iota. Their fierce preservation of the citadel of agnosticism, till they are sure, may make them unhappy and hard-pressed in spirit. It can never ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... sent to the apparently hard-pressed left wing, and a distinct weakening of the centre took place, without a clear idea having been formed as to the intention of the Russians. Heideck's conviction was that such probably had been the Russian tactics. He was of opinion that they probably raised a great battle din by Shah Dara, in ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... morality, in an idealistic sense, seems from a sociological standpoint to be those forms of conduct which conduce to social harmony, to social efficiency, and so to the survival of the group. Groups, however, as we have already pointed out, cannot do as they please. They are always hard-pressed in competition by other groups and have to meet the standards of efficiency which nature imposes. Morality, therefore, is not anything arbitrarily designed by the group, but is a standard of conduct which necessities ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... and emptying it into the fender. And now, after parting company with my fellow-traveller at Hamburg, I was nearing the land where once more I should see old Dannebrog, the flag that fell from heaven with victory to the hard-pressed Danes. Literally out of the sky it fell in their sight, the historic fact being apparently that the Christian bishops had put up a job with the Pope to wean the newly converted Danes away from their heathen pirate flag and found their ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... falls upon the authority of the synoptic Gospels. If their report on a matter of such stupendous and far-reaching practical import as this is untrustworthy, how can we be sure of its trustworthiness in other cases? The favourite "earth" in which the hard-pressed reconciler takes refuge, that the Bible does not profess to teach science,[33] is stopped in this instance. For the question of the existence of demon: and of possession by them, though it lies strictly within the province ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... The innkeeper intimated that Flegne was a poor place at the best of times, but the war had made it worse, and the poorer folk—the villagers who lived in the beach-stone cottages—were sometimes hard-pressed to keep body and soul together. They did what they could, eking out their scanty earnings by eel-fishing on the marshes, and occasionally snaring a few wild fowl. Mr. Glenthorpe's researches in the district had been a godsend because of the employment he had given, which had brought a little ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... men suddenly swept from the right of the hard-pressed battalion, swept by in silence, and in silence swept the remaining Boches up one side of the ridge and ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... the appearance of a city of peace, but the rapid approach of the forces of the enemy soon transformed it into a scene of desperation and panic. Men with drawn faces dashed through the city to assist their hard-pressed countrymen in the field; tearful women with children on their arms filled the churches with their moans and prayers; deserters fleeing homeward exaggerated fresh disasters and increased the tension of the ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... experience to hear Mr. Feuerstein say the word "money." Elocution could go no further in surcharging five letters with contempt. His was one of those lofty natures that scorn all such matters of intimate concern to the humble, hard-pressed little human animal as food, clothing and shelter. He so loathed money that he would not deign to work for it, and as rapidly as possible got rid of any ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... life, so well sustained throughout that grown-up readers may enjoy it as much as children. This 'Covey' consists of the twelve children of a hard-pressed Dr. Partridge out of which is chosen a little girl to be adopted by a spoiled, fine lady. We have rarely read a story for boys and girls with greater pleasure. One of the chief characters would not have ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... take refuge in the haunts of men, not because they expect human protection, but because they are desperate, and oblivious to everything save some means of escape. If the hunted deer or fox rushes into an open shed or a barn door, it is because it is desperately hard-pressed, and sees and knows nothing but some object or situation that it may place between itself and its deadly enemy. The great ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... Turks, after repeated assaults upon the British lines, massed for a final attempt to drive the invaders into the sea. On and on they came, concentrating on the hard-pressed Third Brigade as the weak spot in the British defense. Fighting gamely against heavy odds, this Australian Brigade which had borne the brunt of the landing attack and which had been almost continually ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... kept in front of the two in so far as they could, but with Jeremiah in front and Grater at one side they were hard-pressed. ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo

... this had virtually been the military policy of Belgium up till quite recently. Lord French has referred in "1914" to the "terrible temptation" which Maubeuge offered to him at the time of the retreat from Mons. If Maubeuge suggested itself as an asylum for the hard-pressed Expeditionary Force, Antwerp would assuredly suggest itself still more strongly as an asylum for King Albert's field army, confronted as it was by an overwhelming hostile array and not in direct contact with the troops under Joffre and ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... soil, And feeling, as the hard-pressed masses feel, The things which mar and spoil, And bind life down with bonds as strong as steel, He knows the men who toil, And truth to these he can ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard

... good beginning; and it sent us to sea with lightsome hearts; nor was it till long after we landed in South Africa that we learned what had really taken place during our cheerful voyage;—that on the very day we embarked, the battle of Elandslaagte had been won by our hard-pressed comrades, but at a cost of 260 casualties; and that the very next day—The Nubia's first Sunday at sea—Dundee with all its stores had perforce been abandoned by 4000 of our retreating troops, for ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... through the rippling brown tresses and commenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, and head bent now to this side, now to that. He had been a hard-pressed man since sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night might find him yet employed by some belated dame. Evelyn was very pale, and shadows were beneath her eyes. Moved by a sudden impulse, she took from the table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers rubbed bloom ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... hard-pressed miner made no haste to accept the offer. To leave Aurora meant the surrender of all hope in the mines, the confession of another failure. He wrote Barstow, asking when he thought he might be needed. And at the same time, in a letter to Orion, ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... him just how things were with you. Maybe you slept on a lounge in his studio that night, because it was warmer there. And next morning you could face life and work feeling that God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. That's what Peter Champneys meant to many a hard-pressed youngster. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... dogs with black and yellow spots swam uncertainly about the pool and searched the bank; a group of men stood in the rapid, while another group watched the tail of the pool. Somewhere between them a hard-pressed otter hid. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... comparative clearness. It made him feel, this acquired faculty, like some monstrous stealthy cat; he wondered if he would have glared at these moments with large shining yellow eyes, and what it mightn't verily be, for the poor hard-pressed alter ego, to be confronted with such ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James

... purposes of / careful study, the superiority is / readily apparent of the / / Interlinear Translations / / over other translations. For the / self-teaching student and also for / the hard-pressed teacher they make / possible as well as convenient and / easy, a correct solution of / idioms, a quick insight into the / sense, a facile and lucid / re-arrangement of the context in / the English ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... the platform, on these social subjects is the result of the truths of socialism meeting my earlier impulse, and giving it a definite and much more serious aim; and I can only hope, in conclusion, that any of my readers who have found themselves hard-pressed by the sordidness of civilization, and have not known where to turn to for encouragement, may receive the same enlightenment as I have, and that even the rough pieces in this book may help them ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... the Indians looked back and discharged his rifle in defiance, and it now became a race worthy of the name—Death fled from Death. The fresher mounts of the cowboys steadily cut down the distance and, as the rifles of the pursuers began to speak, the hard-pressed Indians made for the smaller of two knolls, the plain leading to the larger one being too heavily strewn ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... the alderman is expected to pay rent for the hard-pressed tenant when no rent is forthcoming, to find "jobs" when work is hard to get, to procure and divide among his constituents all the places which he can seize from the city hall. The alderman of the ward we are considering at one time could make the proud boast that he had twenty-six hundred ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... inn, high perched as Cassel is above a wide plain, one looked back upon the roads to St. Omer and the south, and thought of the days last April, when squadron after squadron of French cavalry came riding hot and fast along them to the relief of our hard-pressed troops, after the break of the Portuguese sector of the line at Richebourg St. Vaast. But our way lay north, not south, through a district that seemed strangely familiar to me, though in fact I had only passed ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the whole house grew clamorous now with a mounting and increasing tumult? What mattered it though he could hear more and more startled voices commingled with the shattering shrieks emanating from the Braydon apartment beneath his feet? He, the hard-pressed and sore-beset and the long-suffering, was at last beyond the sight of mortal eyes. He was locked in, with two rooms and a bath to himself, and he meant to maintain his present refuge, meant to hold this fort against all comers, until Bob Slack came home. He would barricade ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... conquest of China carrying, or having carried for him, a yellow axe in the left, and a white flag in the right hand. In 660 one of the minor federal princes was crushed because he did not lower his standard in time; nearly a century later, this precedent was quoted to another federal prince when hard-pressed, in consequence of which a sub- officer "rolled up his master's standard and put it in its sheath." In 645 "the cavaliers under the ruler's flag "—defined to mean his body-guard—were surrounded ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... the battle seemed lost, Napoleon would go to the front where the danger was greatest; and by the mere sight of him the hard-pressed soldiers under his command were inspired to super-human ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... attacks came on, but the gray-clad waves broke down before the gallant defense. And then, above the roar of battle, came a rousing American cheer, and into the woods came plunging rank after rank of fresh troops to relieve their hard-pressed comrades. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... lay the sea, and towards the sea his footsteps seemed persistently turning; why he was struggling wearily forward to that goal he could scarcely have explained, unless he was possessed by the same instinct that turns a hard-pressed stag cliffward in its last extremity. In his case the hounds of Fate were certainly pressing him with unrelenting insistence; hunger, fatigue, and despairing hopelessness had numbed his brain, and he could ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... fight and redeem itself into a purer age; noble, as it is now, and victorious, as it one day will be, it will always preserve in its mind a certain pitiful toleration of the State, if the latter, hard-pressed in the hour of extremity, secures such a pseudo-culture as its associate. For what, after all, do we know about the difficult task of governing men, i.e. to keep law, order, quietness, and peace among millions of boundlessly egoistical, unjust, unreasonable, dishonourable, ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... said Adam Colfax firmly. "We can't afford to delay here any longer, nor can we permit this fort to fall. Our need to hold Kentucky is scarcely less great than our need to help our hard-pressed brethren in ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... make known the author publicly. You cannot appreciate these fears [in England]. You have no idea what it is to be surrounded by a community of Mormons, guided by a leader the most unprincipled." We have seen how hard-pressed Smith was for money with which to meet his obligations for the payment of land purchased. It was not necessary that a newcomer should be a Mormon in order to buy a lot, special emphasis being laid on the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... travelled on the Continent, and who have noticed on tobacconists' counters a small machine, somewhat like a coffee-mill, which a man works with one hand, while he holds a hard-pressed plug of tobacco about a pound weight against the revolving grater, and produces snuff while the snuff-taker waits for it, may imagine that snuff in England is produced on a somewhat similar small scale. But this, like many kindred ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the Good and reverently await our leadings. In every stormy trial, in every doubtful moment, in every hard-pressed circumstance we stand aside and let the divine will work through us. There can be no mistaking this standing aside. It is not to sit down idly with no thought of responsibility or effort, but it is to do the best we can so far as we know, constantly awaiting more knowledge of God's will ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... enabled Benedek's defeated troops to get back in safety. At Rezonville (August 16, 1870) von Bredow's Cavalry Brigade was ordered to charge the French batteries and their infantry escort, in order to give some breathing time for the hard-pressed Prussian infantry. The charge was successful and the time was gained, but as at Balaclava (October 26, 1854) there were few survivors from "Von Bredow's Todtenritt" (death ride). After the battle of Le Cateau (August 26, 1918) and during the ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... conflagration. Those dwellers of heaven fell with their heads, separated from their bodies, and having none to lead them in that fearful battle, they were slaughtered by the enemy. And then the god Purandara (Indra), the slayer of Vala, observing that they were unsteady and hard-pressed by the Asuras, tried to rally them with this speech, 'Do not be afraid, ye heroes, may success attend your efforts! Do ye all take up your arms, and resolve upon manly conduct, and ye will meet with no more ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... of their leaders, who both happened to be priests: one was even a bishop. He had been taught in a school that always found an axe ready to hand. Let those who lament the savagery of modern warfare consider what happened then to a Danish fleet that tried to bring relief to hard-pressed Stockholm. It was beaten in a fight in which six hundred men were taken prisoners. They were all, say the accounts, "tied hand and foot and flung overboard amid the beating of drums and blowing of trumpets to drown their cries." The clergy ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... Turks' numbers were greatly superior and threatened to crush the heroes, when Don Miguel Cervantes, Ulrich's friend, appeared with twelve fresh soldiers on the scene of battle, and cut their way to the hard-pressed champions. Other Spanish and Genoese warriors followed and the fray became still ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... hard-pressed advocate of the doctrine of uncaused volition is usually, that, argue as you like, he has a profound and ineradicable consciousness of what he calls the freedom of his will. But Hume follows him even here, though only in a note, as if he thought the extinction of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... Saxons, and Jutes began to harry the southern and eastern shores of Britain, where the Romans were obliged to maintain a special military establishment against them. But early in the fifth century the Romans, hard-pressed even in Italy by other barbarian invaders, withdrew all their troops and completely abandoned Britain. Not long thereafter, and probably before the traditional date of 449, the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons began to come in large bands with ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... understand the crucial importance of restraint and wisdom in arriving at new labor-management contracts. Work stoppages would result in a loss of production—a loss which could bring higher prices for our citizens and could also deny the necessities of life to the hard-pressed peoples of other lands. It is my sincere hope that the representatives of labor and of industry will bear in mind that the Nation as a whole has a vital stake in the success ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... ring, too. No woman in Indiana had the like of that. An ugly thing, but very ancient and of pure gold. Once Tom had wanted to sell it when he was hard-pressed back at Nolin Creek, but she had fought for it like a tigress and scared the life out of Tom. Her grandfather had left it her because she was his favourite and it had been her grandmothers, and long ago had come from Europe. It was lucky, and could ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... of some of the suitors had been hard-pressed by Mrs. Valentine. "You will go through the woods to find a crooked stick at last, Dorothea," she would say. "You don't know a desirable parti when you see one. You must have an extraordinary opinion of your own charms to think that you ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... was a sequel. During the following year there dropped to the man in his hard-pressed literary life, one of those errant plums from the political tree that now and then find their way to the right basket. He was named for an excellent diplomatic post. His friends congratulated him and talked a good deal about "material" and opportunities ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... brick," said his friend, slapping him on the back; a proceeding which ensured the success of his neat manoeuvre, by which a note or two was transferred from Wyck's pocket-book to that of his friend, who was "rather hard-pressed, you know," and Wyck was "a devilish good chap for helping a fellow out of ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... be in good health, being hard-pressed on a little truckle-bed, than to roll, and to be ill in some broad couch; so too it is better in a small competence to enjoy the calm of moderate desires, than in the midst of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... charges of immorality brought against the reformer by those calumniators, ancient and modern, may be dismissed at once as nothing more than the stock-in-trade of hard-pressed controversialists in the sixteenth century. Had there been the slightest foundation for them, some of Knox's many opponents in Scotland—Ninian Winzet, or the Abbot of Crossraguel, or Tyrie the Jesuit, or Hamilton himself before he left the country—would ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... to effect an orderly withdrawal without being molested by the enemy, thus affording to its commander an opportunity of restoring the lost cohesion and tactical order. It will only be the rifle of the Cavalry which will gain for our hard-pressed comrades ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi

... after leaving Forest Rest, put spurs to his horse and galloped all the way to Greenbushes, only pausing when it became necessary to open a gate that crossed the road, by which chance the hard-pressed steed got a moment in ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... overwhelming odds, Guiscard utterly routed the Byzantine army. With his heir Bohemond and his wife Sigilgaita beside him, the Duke watched the progress of the battle, and at its most critical juncture, at a moment when it appeared inevitable that the hard-pressed Italian army must yield to the sheer numbers of the foe, the deep voice of the leader could be heard booming like a deep-toned bell over the battlefield, as he addressed his wavering troops. "Whither do ye fly? Your enemy is ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... Palmerston Secretary at War, and Mr. Peel Secretary for Ireland. The political outlook on all sides was gloomy and menacing. The absorbing subject in Parliament was war and the sinews of war; whilst outside its walls hard-pressed taxpayers were moodily speculating on the probable figures in the nation's 'glory bill.' The two years' war with America was in progress. The battle between the Shannon and the Chesapeake was still the talk of the hour; but ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... did the bidding of traitorous masters in their Treason to the Union, and thus, while posturing as "Patriots," "fired upon the rear" of our hard-pressed Armies—were super-sensitive on this point. And, when they could get hold of a quiet sort of a man, inclined to peaceful methods of discussion, how they would, terrier-like, pounce upon him, and extract from him, if they could, some sort ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... the fortunes of the young Napoleon Buonaparte with those of France. After the downfall of Genoese rule in Corsica, France had taken over, for empty promises, the claims of the hard-pressed Italian republic to its troublesome island possession. It was a cheap and practical way of restoring, at least in the Mediterranean the shattered prestige of the French Bourbons. They had previously intervened in Corsican affairs on the side ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... worse. In the meantime the French and English had landed at Salonika in order to rush to the aid of the hard-pressed Serbs. You have already been told how Venizelos arranged this. Their aid, however, had come too late. Before they could reach the gallant little Serbian army it had been crushed between the Austrians and Germans on one ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... each time he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare. Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at him ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... say that I look upon this objection to the bill as a mere quibble on the part of the President, and as being hard-pressed for some excuse in withholding his approval of the measure; and his allusion to foreigners in this connection looks to me more like the ad captandum of the mere politician or demagogue, than a grave and sound reason ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... there what swords had left, the weary and wounded; woes he threatened the whole night through to that hard-pressed throng: some with the morrow his sword should kill, some should go to the gallows-tree for rapture of ravens. But rescue came with dawn of day for those desperate men when they heard the horn of Hygelac sound, tones of his trumpet; ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... I have had made by the Church jeweller Peccard, two large dolls, exactly resembling this lady and myself. Now when hard-pressed by the drugs which I have put in their goblets, they desire to mount the throne to which we are now about to pretend to go, they will always find the place taken; by this means you will ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... middle of the second day's fighting, and dismounting his men, Vincent had aided the hard-pressed Confederates in holding their lines till Longstreet's division arrived to their assistance. A short time before the terrible disaster that befell the Federals in the mine they exploded under the Confederate works, he was with General Wade ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... after it was made. Without Morris, indeed, it is hard to see how the Revolution could have succeeded. He was the great financier of his time, and his efforts in raising money for the support of our hard-pressed ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... still a heathen people, when they began their career of conquest. Clovis, however, had married a Burgundian princess, Clotilda, who was a devout Catholic and an ardent advocate of Christianity. The story is told how, when Clovis was hard-pressed by the Alamanni at the battle of Strassburg, he vowed that if Clotilda's God gave him victory he would become a Christian. The Franks won, and Clovis, faithful to his vow, had himself baptized by St. Remi, bishop of Reims. "Bow down thy head," spoke the bishop, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... Russians who were there doing Serbia the service they had done in East Prussia to the Allies on the Marne. In that interval Greek and other munitions were conveyed in spite of Bulgar and Turkish intervention to the hard-pressed Serbians; King Peter, old, blind, and deaf, came from Nish to make a stirring appeal to his troops; and when on 1-3 December Potiorek once more advanced to the ridges of Rudnik and Maljen, he encountered a re-munitioned army, skilfully posted in strong positions ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... was kept, sallies were undertaken, and cold, hunger, and wretchedness of all kinds were endured with an indomitable steadfastness and heroism. The courage of the besieged Parisians was also animated by the hope that the military forces in the provinces would hasten to the aid of the hard-pressed capital, and that therefore an energetic resistance would afford the rest of France sufficient time for rallying all its forces, and at the same time exhibit an elevating example. In the carrying out of this plan, neither Trochu nor Gambetta was wanting in the requisite ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall



Words linked to "Hard-pressed" :   troubled, hard put



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