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A "Pyrrhic victory" is a victory which is only achieved with heavy losses, often to the point of offsetting potential benefit to such that the overall situation becomes worse for the Pyrrhic victor than it was before battle commenced. Usually the phrase refers to a battle, but it can also mean any struggle by analogy.The phrase alludes to the King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who defeated the Romans at Heraclea and Asculum in 279 BC but with severe casualties of his own. Pyrrhus's famous statement "One more such victory and I am lost" led to the term "Pyrrhic victory" for any victory so costly as to be ruinous.
The French participation in World War I, or the British and Chinese participation in World War II could also be considered Pyrrhic victories. The gruesome French losses in WWI devastated French morale and could be considered to be one of the causes of the easy defeat of France in 1940. Britain was on the winning side in WWII, but was bankrupted and lost its extensive colonial empire.
1 Examples of Pyrrhic victories
2 See also
- Battle of attrition
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3 External links
Military terms
Roman military historyNashville, Tennessee) Rome was a highly militarized state whose history was often closely entwined with its military history over the 1228 years that the Roman state is traditionally said to have existed. The core of Roman military history is the account
