Moral victory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article (or section) may need to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article, especially its section layout, and relevant internal links. (help)
This article has been tagged since January 2007.

A moral victory occurs when a person, team, or army loses a battle, yet achieves some other moral gain. The gain in question is often totally unrelated to the battle in question; however, the one rule is that the gain must be considerably less than what would have been gained if the main battle had been won; otherwise, it would be characterized as either a "wash" or a proper victory.

[edit] Example

Battle of Thermopylae - Although heavily outnumbered by the Persians led by Xerxes I of Persia, the Greek defenders, most notably the 300 Spartans, managed to frustrate their enemies for days. This both gave the Greeks valuable time to rally their main defences and it harmed the morale of the Persians with the thought of what resistance a much larger Greek army could offer.