Pyrrhic Victories: Asculum, the Siege of Ostend and Japan's Lost Pilots

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

King Pyrrhus of Epirus beat Rome at Heraclea and at Asculum in 279 BC, but the price was his elite troops and veteran commanders, who could not be replaced far from home. Rome, drawing on citizen levies and allies like a continually flowing fountain, simply raised new legions. Told he had won, Pyrrhus reportedly answered that one more such victory would destroy his army, and he withdrew to Sicily. His name became the term for a win that ruins the winner.

Empires fell into the same trap. In 1566 the Ottomans took Szigetvár after 33 days at such cost that the advance on Vienna was abandoned, and Sultan Suleiman died in his tent before the fall. Spain spent three years, 1601 to 1604, besieging the port of Ostend while the Dutch, resupplied by sea, founded the Dutch East India Company and took Sluis; Spain declared bankruptcy by 1607. Weaker sides have also inflicted Pyrrhic victories on purpose, and the deepest losses are often of quality rather than numbers, from Stonewall Jackson shot by his own sentries at Chancellorsville to the veteran Japanese aviators lost at Santa Cruz in 1942 though no Japanese ship was sunk.

• At Gangwana in 1741 about 1,000 Rathore horsemen of Marwar charged some 100,000 men, inflicted around 12,000 casualties, and won a favorable peace.
• At Bunker Hill in 1775 colonial fire targeted British officers, leaving the British cautious in later campaigns.
• At Vukovar in 1991 the Yugoslav army took the city after 87 days at a cost that drained its armor and morale.
• The 2021 Carolina Panthers beat Washington late in a lost season and hurt their own draft position.
• Dissenting in Beauharnais v. Illinois in 1952, Justice Hugo Black invoked Pyrrhus to warn minority groups against celebrating a group libel law.