History Main / PyrrhicVictory

->'''Kevyn:''' So we're losing?
->'''Petey:''' No, we're winning expensively.
-->-- ''SchlockMercenary''

* ''ASongOfIceAndFire'': Defines Jon Snow. Even when he wins he loses. ''The Battle of the Blackwater'' is another excellent example. This is something of a hallmark of the series. A non-Pyrrhic victor tends to be a XanatosSucker, up to and including some of the competing {{Chessmaster}}s.

* In the [[PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians Percy Jackson]] series, Kronos, the Titan Lord, is called 'the Crooked One' for his ability to engineer schemes which leaves the good guys in a tight spot either way. It is possible to foil him, but it almost never happens without cost, often a heavy one.

* The Battle of Parsir in ''MitsumeteKnight''. Sure, Dolphan won the fight in the end... But at the cost of ''two thirds'' of its army, due to enemy General [[TheStrategist Meehilbis]]' master XanatosGambit.

* In Chapter 6 of ''Super PaperMario'', [[spoiler: you [[YouAreTooLate fail to recover the Pure Heart before The Void consumes the Sammer Kingdom]]. Afterwards, you return to where Sammer Kingdom ''used'' to be (now called the "[[WhiteVoidRoom World of Nothing]]," and fight a boss to recover the Pure Heart. But even though you get a nearly full "You Got A Pure Heart" victory animation, the Pure Heart has been turned to stone by the destruction of the world it rested in, rendering it useless. The only thing missing from the animation is all your Pixls lining up to do their dance, most likely because even ''[[Cloudcuckoolander they]]'' know it's only a PyrrhicVictory.]]

* In Chapter 6 of ''Super PaperMario'', [[spoiler: you [[YouAreTooLate fail to recover the Pure Heart before The Void consumes the Sammer Kingdom]]. Afterwards, you return to where Sammer Kingdom ''used'' to be (now called the "[[WhiteVoidRoom World of Nothing]," and fight a boss to recover the Pure Heart. But even though you get a nearly full "You Got A Pure Heart" victory animation, the Pure Heart has been turned to stone by the destruction of the world it rested in, rendering it useless. The only thing missing from the animation is all your Pixls lining up to do their dance, most likely because even ''[[Cloudcuckoolander they]]'' know it's only a PyrrhicVictory.]]

** This was worse in the battle of Asculum, and Pyrrhus eventually [[IdiotBall abandoned the campaign in Rome]] to pursue a THIRD campaign (the first being in Macedonia) against Carthage for Sicily. [[YouShouldKnowThisAlready It failed]], so he came back to Rome and promptly suffered [[DarthWiki/WallBanger another Pyrrhic Victory]] (or even a full-on defeat according to some sources) using the [[DarthWiki/WallBanger exact]] [[IdiotBall same]] [[TooDumbToLive battle plans as before]] against the Romans, and had to abandon Italy entirely.

* In the ''Farsala Trilogy'' by Hilari Bell, the Roman Empire [[{{Expy}} expy]] have many rules about their conquering of other territories and one of those rules is that if they don't have full control of the country within a year then they will withdraw their forces and offer allegiance with it instead or just leave it alone. This rule was put in place because early in their history, they were victors of a PyrrhicVictory and vowed that victory would never cost so high again. According to the books, they're so good at taking over countries that out of the dozens they'd taken over only two were been able to resist.

* The Second Sino-Japanese War, from the perspective of the Republic of China. Hopelessly outclassed by the Imperial Japanese Army, the Republican Government had to fall back on WeHaveReserves and pray that China could hold up against Japan long enough for a foreign power to intervene - presumably the Soviet Union, the British Empire or the United States. By the end of the war, the ROC had prevailed (with foreign assistance) and had even regained control of territories lost by the Qing dynasty and other rebellious territories. However, this came at the cost of over a million casualties, the depletion of the Republican Armed Forces and the mass destruction of eastern China's cities and infrastructure. The war left the ROC so weakened and fragile that the Chinese Soviet Republic - which had [[DirtyCoward avoided most of the fighting]] and [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder even attacked Nationalist forces at points despite being their allies]] - thrashed the Nationalists in the ensuing Chinese Civil War and evicted the ROC from mainland China, leaving them with control over only Taiwan and a few other islands. In short, the ROC would have done better to lose to the Japanese than to prevail.

* Arguable case in OnePiece in the most recent arc. Following the war with [[spoiler: Whitebeard, Marineford is gone, they've had three Shichibukai defect (Jinbei, Hancock(she may get away with it) and Blackbeard) and severely pushed the loyalties of Garp ''and'' with one of the Yonkou dead and three of the Shichibukai defected, the Three Major Powers are thrown completely into chaos, putting the world into even greater danger than it was before.]] However, [[spoiler: by taking out Whitebeard and the son of Gold Roger on national television, they've sent a powerful message to the world that no one is beyond the reach of their justice, as well as taking out one of their most powerful enemies and considerably thinning their numbers.]]

* ''[[TwentyFour 24]]'' excels at these, but Day 3 is particularly notable for how Jack Bauer, Tony Almeida and Gael Ortega set in motion a XanatosGambit to destroy the Cordella virus. The day ends with Gael having died horribly of the disease, Tony being shot ''and'' watching the scheme nearly kill his wife ''and'' facing 20 years in federal prison, and [[TearJerker Jack breaking down crying in his car]]. But hey... they do accomplish what they set out to do, which is contain the virus.

* TheDresdenFiles has a couple such victories, most notably ''Turn Coat.'' [[spoiler: Morgan is dead, the traitor in the council is dead, Dresden and [=McCoy=] have no further information on the Black Council, the White Council has lost one of what was considered it's most valuable assets, and virtually everyone within the council needs to go in for deprogramming from mind-control magics, and the Senior Council is now living in a permanant state of wondering if their actions were truly their own.]]

*** Actualyy, the 345 were the root caused. Their arrival was not his fault. [[spoiler: Neither was what happened to Ianto. Killing his grandson and sacrificing the children from the sixties arguably were, but the other options involved the destruction of the planet.]]

** Let's elaborate a bit. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was a Greek general who invaded Southern Italy in the days of the Roman Republic. His army contained a solid core of elite Epirote and Macedonian troops, while being heavily supplemented by local Tarentine, Samnite, and other Italiot soldiers. Meeting at the battle of Heraclea, Pyrrhus lost 4,000 soldiers, many of them his elite, solid core Epirotes. These were irreplaceable. The Romans, meanwhile, almost immediately replenished all their losses after the battle.

** The Thirty Years' War as a whole caused such widespread devastation to Germany that it's not even clear whether or not there ''was'' a real winner. Both sides could claim victory on the technicality that each foiled the other's plans (the Hapsburgs lost much of what little grip they had on the HolyRomanEmpire outside their own domain, but they were able to keep the Protestant faction from placing their own candidate on the traditionally-Hapsburg Bohemian throne).

** Invoked with Magellan. The problem isn't that he's some amazing fighter, though he is still pretty decent at hand to hand combat. The problem is that it's impossible to fight him without being horribly, fatally poisoned. After [[spoiler: landing one solid blow he's damn near beaten (but not quite) but Luffy is so crippled from merely hitting him that he would have died without the assistance of Ivankov.]]

* During the evacuation of New Caprica in ''BattlestarGalactica'', [[spoiler: the Galactica and most of the civilian ships manage to escape the planet...at the cost of massive damage to Galactica and the loss of the high-tech, advanced battlestar Pegasus, which was capable of building Vipers. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Nice job breaking it, Lee.]] ]]
* Londo Mollari on ''[[{{Babylon5}} Babylon 5]]'' had a few of these.
** In the third season, [[spoiler: Londo collaborates with G'Kar to assassinate the villainous Lord Refa, only to cause an even ''worse'' leader, the insane Emperor Cartagia, to ascend to the throne.]]
** And then in the fourth season, [[spoiler: Londo and Vir kill off Cartagia and Morden and blow up all the Shadow ships stationed on Centauri Prime, finally freeing the planet from the Shadows' influence... only to cause the Drahk to take over the place in revenge in the final season, leading to Centauri Prime's isolation from the rest of the galaxy, the firebombing of its cities, and just general devastation of the whole planet. And not only does Londo have to watch all this unfold, but he also gets possessed by a [[{{BodySnatcher}} Body Snatcher]] — and he has to live with all this for the rest of his life. Brr.....]]

** And more recently, the Doctor's victory in The Waters of Mars. [[spoiler: He saved the remaining crew but changed history in the process, believing that the rules of Time will bend to his will. Adelaide realizes how wrong the turn of events is and subsequently kills herself in order to correct the timeline.]]

** This was worse in the battle of Asculum, and Pyrrhus eventually [[IdiotBall abandoned the campaign in Rome]] to pursue a THIRD campaign (the first being in Macedonia) against Carthage for Sicily. [[YouShouldKnowThisAlready It failed]], so he came back to Rome and promptly suffered [[WallBanger another Pyrrhic Victory]] (or even a full-on defeat according to some sources) using the [[WallBanger exact]] [[IdiotBall same]] [[TooDumbToLive battle plans as before]] against the Romans, and had to abandon Italy entirely.

** One example of trench warfare in World War II was a battle in the Netherlands between the SS and German armies facing off against the US 101st Airborne. The 101st was there for a month. When they relinquished their positions to their relief, they hadn't moved an ''inch''.

** The World War II Battle of the Coral Sea -- a combined US-Australian navy force opposed an Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) force sent to invade New Guinea and then part of the Solomon islands by sea. The outnumbered Allied force ended up losing more ships and withdrew, but had damaged the IJN force enough that it too was withdrawn, delaying the naval invasion and preventing both IJN fleet carriers Shōkaku and Zuikaku from participating at Midway a month later... where all four other IJN fleet carriers were lost in a more decisive battle. Foreshadowing Midway, the Japanese had also lost more aircraft, pilots and aircrew, the personnel's experience being an irreplaceable resource that was further depleted at Midway.

* Arguably, Britain in WorldWarTwo. After the fall of its continental allies, Britain held fast against the Germans almost single-handedly until Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The Allies won the war in Europe, but Britain lost its Empire and had so completely used up its international assets that it went from a net creditor to a net debtor. It ended up depending heavily on the funds given by the Marshall plan and remained on rationing for most of the next decade.

** Operation Barbarossa, the initial [[NaziGermany Nazi German]] invasion of the Soviet Union, can to some extent also be considered this. By the time the Axis armies were ground to a halt just out of reach of Moscow, they had captured enormous swaths of territory that included (among others) '''40%''' of the USSR’s 1941 population, much of the Red Army, and practically its entire agricultural base (but not its industries, which were evacuated further east for the most part). However, not only did the Germans fail in defeating the Soviet Union, they had lost so many troops (which unlike the Soviets, they could not just replenish) in what was otherwise an incredibly successfully campaign that they were never again able to mount an offensive along the entire front. Due to this manpower shortage they were from then on increasingly forced to rely on qualitatively inferior and less trustworthy soldiers from allied countries - an important contributor to their subsequent defeat at the above-mentioned Stalingrad.
* The Confederates in the American Civil War had far fewer troops than the Union, meaning that several of their victories were like this, especially since they won pretty much ''every'' battle during the first two years.
** Far fewer troops wasn't the only disadvantage the Confederacy had -- and Generals Grant and Sherman meant to exploit and exacerbate the Confederacy's shortcomings as much as possible. While Grant got a reputation as a "butcher" for his armies' casualties suffered against Robert E. Lee's famous Army of Northern Virginia/ President Abraham Lincoln refused to replace him, having found a general as aggressive and willing to press his advantage as Lincoln had sought. Eventually he was able to wear down Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to the point that it had to be augmented with men from other armies, limiting the Confederate armies' effectiveness and their commanders' options.

** Another example from the same war was arguably the Battle of Groton Heights (1781). Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, a competent British officer, led a force of about 800 men against Fort Griswold in Groton, Connecticut. They managed to kill, wound or capture almost everyone of the defending American troops. But Arnold lost Major William Montgomery and Colonel Edmund Eyre, two of his most competent officers, along with 1/4 of his own forces. With the British forces already facing crippling manpower shortages at the time, Henry Clinton, the British Commander in chief, criticized Arnold. Pointing that they could "ill afford more such victories".

* Similarly, in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLibel McLibel Case]], [=McDonald's=] actually won a libel case against two protesters in England, and was awarded £40,000. However, not only were their legal costs around ''£10 million'', but their most embarrassing business practices were revealed to the world at large, and the court ruled in the defendant's favor in several points. ''Then'' it was decided that it wasn't a fair trial and the 40,000 pounds were never paid.
* Most historians agree that the Imperial Japanese Navy won at least half (10 out of 21) of the major surface battles in the Pacific War but they were all pyrrhic victories because the U.S. could replace their losses and the Japanese couldn't.
** On that score, any rejoicing the Imperial Japanese navy's "Fleet Faction" did over Japan's repudiation of the much-hated Washington Naval Treaty was promptly cut short when the U.S. announced a huge new battleship construction program. They'd spent so much time fulminating against the 'unfair' 5-3 ratio contained in the treaty that they'd totally forgotten that the U.S. could easily outbuild them four to one (and actually ended up outbuilding them 12 to 2). It simply never occurred to them to view the treaty as a check on ''American'' behavior.
* The Vietnam War, from the North Vietnamese POV.
** Not when they were willing to consider that sacrifice acceptable in order to win.

-->'''US Col. Harry Summers:''' You know, you never defeated us in the field.
-->'''NVA officer:''' That may be true, but it is also irrelevant.
* The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 for the Russians, as seen in [[ErastFandorin ''The Turkish Gambit'']] (especially the book version). The war itself was a victory, if a rather costly and delayed one; but the eventual peace treaty that explicitly and obviously undermined many of Russia's war aims made it this.

* From a British and French perspective, World War II was something of a pyrric victory. Although the Anglo-French alliance's old enemy Germany was utterly defeated, both countries were left economically exhausted by the war (and France was doubly damaged by the legacy of German occupation) and in debt to the USA. Especially ironic considering Winston Churchill's main opposition to appeasement was to preserve Britain's status as a leading world power and not under the thumb of foreign powers. Although he saw the United States as a friendly country, he nevertheless lead Britain into exactly the kind of situation he was trying to avoid.
* Robert Pattinson took a starring role in a [[{{Twilight}} certain film series]] in order to be near to his crush, Kristen Stewart. Well, she's his girlfriend now... at the cost of him having to deal with [[FateWorseThanDeath fangirls]].
* Seeking to stop the Soviets at the height of the ColdWar, the US provided weapons, training and support to the insurgency in Afghanistan and encouraged countries like Saudi Arabia to provide financial assistance, as well as providing volunteers for the fight. And indeed the Soviet Union suffered a military and morale defeat when they finally pulled out, the conflict providing one of the triggers for the eventual breakup of the USSR. So a victory for democracy! Incidentally, some of those people being supported and encouraged included a Saudi volunteer by the name of Osama bin Laden...
* [[ThirtyYearsWar The Battle of Lützen, 1632]]. Sure, the protestants won... but at the cost of one of their main leaders, Swedish king [[TheCaptain Gustavus Adolphus]]. This caused mass-{{BSOD}} among the Swedes and eventually led to their withdrawal from the war.
** The Thirty Years' War as a whole caused such widespread devastation to Germany that it's not even clear whether or not there ''was'' a real winner. Both sides could claim victory on the technicality that each foiled the other's plans (the Hapsburgs lost much of what little grip they had on the Holy Roman Empire outside their own domain, but they were able to keep the Protestant faction from placing their own candidate on the traditionally-Hapsburg Bohemian throne).

* Soviet's war/attempted invasion to Finland during WW2, that was called Winter War by the defending side. Though the Soviet Union won the actual war, the Finns defended their country with such ferocity that they killed ten times more soldiers than their own casualties despite being outnumbered 1 to 3. The territorial gains for the war were so small that one of the Soviet generals even commented that "We've won just enough land to bury our dead."

* Soviet's war/attempted invasion to Finland during WW2, that was called Winter War by the defending side. Even if Soviet Union won the actual war, the Finns defended their country with such ferocity that they killed ten times more soldiers than their own casualities even if they were outnumbered 1 to 3. The territorial gains for the war were so small that one of the Soviet generals even commended that "We've won just enough land to bury our dead."

** Not only did they lost their colonies, but they might ''become'' the colonies of their former colonies if current political and demographical trends continue.

*** If the attacker is a crowd of poor-trained people, it sure can. But if it is the army whith experience of succesfully storming dozens of cities before this one, things are not so scary. [[http://www.soldat.ru/doc/casualties/book/chapter5_10_1.html#5_10_49 80 000 died Soviet and Polish soldiers]] and about a MILLION dead and captured nazis - who on earth calls it a Pyrrhic Victory?

*The Protoss ending in the first game. The Overmind was destroyed but Aiur is now infested by Zerg. Crazy, disorganised and rampant Zerg.

* In TheAmericanRevolution, the Battle of Bunker Hill was this for the British. They recaptured the hills, but lost most of their attacking force, encouraged the Continental Congress, and turned more of the colonists against them. On top of that, the hills had no real strategic advantage.