Pyrrhic victory

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A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with devastating cost to the victor. The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War. After the latter battle, Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius:

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.

In both of Pyrrhus's victories, the Romans lost more men than Pyrrhus did. However, the Romans had a much larger supply of men from which to draw soldiers, so their losses did less damage to their war effort than Pyrrhus's losses did to his.

The report is often quoted as "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone." While it is most closely associated with a military battle, the term is used by analogy in fields such as business, politics, law, literature, and sport to describe any similar struggle which is ruinous for the victor, such as the USFL v. NFL lawsuit.

Examples

Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC) - Between Ancient Egyptian forces and the Hittite forces
Battle of the Hydaspes River (326 BC) - Between Macedonian Forces and a Kingdom of India, Paurava's Forces
Pyrrhic War (280-275 BC)
Battle of Malplaquet (1709) - War of the Spanish Succession
Battle of Lake George (1755) - French and Indian War
Battle of Bunker Hill (1775) - American Revolutionary War
Battle of Oriskany (1777) - American Revolutionary War
Battle of Guilford Court House (1781) - American Revolutionary War
Battle of York (1813) - War of 1812
Battle of Olszynka Grochowska (1831) - November uprising, Poland
Battle of Borodino (1812) - Napoleonic Wars
Battle of the Alamo (1836) - Texas Revolution
Battle of Vuelta de Obligado (1845) - Between the Argentine Confederation and the Anglo-French alliance.
Battle of Isandlwana (1879) - Anglo-Zulu war, between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom
Battle of Saragarhi (1897) - Between 36th Sikhs and the Afghans
Battle of Westerplatte - (September Campaign)
Battle of Muar (1942) - World War II, Malayan Campaign
Battle of the Hürtgen Forest (winter 1944-45) - World War II, European Theater
Battle of Chosin Reservoir (1950) - Korean War
Battle of the Marshes (1984) - Iran-Iraq war
Battle of Vukovar (1991) - Croatian War of Independence

Sometimes there is a very fine line between a pyrhhic victory and a defeat. For example, the Soviet-Finnish War or Winter War (1939-1940) can be viewed as a pyrrhic victory for the Soviet Union, insofar as the latter did create a slightly larger buffer zone around Leningrad, but this was definitely not worth the horrible cost in Soviet casualties.

Pyrrhic victory

Examples

See also

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Further reading