History Main / ShockingDefeatLegacy

* In the later novels of ''[[LightNovel/CrestOfTheStars Banner of the Stars]]'', the fall of Lakfakalle, the Abh capital. Up until that point, the war had been pretty much going exclusively in the Abh's favor, and then their enemies turned the whole war around in a single, utterly disastrous surprise attack.

* English, and by extension, British, history contains quite a few, not surprising given how incredibly bellingerent said history is:

* The Battle of Mohács in 1526. The battle saw the last attempt of the Kingdom of Hungary to keep the Ottoman Empire out of central Europe utterly crushed by Suleiman the Magnificent, with the death of the last Jagellion king of Hungary and an essential end of Hungary as an independent nation: The Kingdom was quickly partitioned between an Ottoman part and an Austrian part (and an Eastern Hungarian PuppetState of the Ottomans) and would go on to become a massive battleground between the House of Osman and the House of Habsburg for the next 300 or so years. The Hungarian saying ''"Több is veszett Mohácsnál"'' ("More was lost at Mohács") essentially means "things can always get worse than this".

** For [[ProudWarriorRace the Clans]], the Battle of Tukayyid became the final nail in the coffin after several decisive setbacks during Operation Revival, and completely shattered the idea of Clan superiority. Having been offered a 'fair fight' [[TrialByCombat by their own rules]], the overconfident Crusader Clans gleefully threw their finest warriors at the entrenched [=ComStar=] forces, only to see all but three Clans humiliatingly defeated and only Clan Wolf succeeding at an outright win (and that still cost them one of their Khans). Forced into a fifteen-year truce, Tukayyid essentially killed all chance of the Clans ever being a credible threat to the Inner Sphere.

* The Fall of Coruscant to the Yuuzhan Vong in the ''Literature/NewJediOrder'' series. Under the incredulous eyes of many of the surviving characters, the lights of The City That Never Sleeps go out for the first time in several thousand years.

* The Battle of Wolf 359 from ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. Taking place relatively close to Earth, a single Borg ship crippled the Federation fleet by destroying every single one of the thirty-nine ships sent to stop it and left completely undamaged. By the time the Enterprise arrived and was able to destroy it, it had reached Earth's orbit. The battle very strongly established the threat of the Borg and had a lasting impact on the franchise, being particularly relevant to many characters and plots in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''.

** Then there was the famous incident where Emperor Valerian lost to them in the Battle of Edessa and ended up becoming [[EpicFail the first Emperor to be captured alive and imprisoned by an enemy power]]. Valerian spent the remainder of his life in captivity and according to Roman legend was either made to serve as a footstool to King Shapur of Persia and/or given the Crassus-esque molten gold treatment. The Persians denied that they killed him however. Another one was the Emperor Julian the Apostate who led another invasion into Persian land, supposedly to imitate UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat. Julian had some successes early on and laid siege on the capital of Ctesiphon before being killed by a Persian spear (of if you believe UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories, fragged by one of his own Christian soldiers because they didn't like his pagan-revival policies). In either case, the death of the Emperor and Head of State with his army in enemy territory was a major embarrassment, and his successor Jovian more or less negotiated a sweetheart deal for the Persians to get himself and the army safe-passage, which made him so widely hated in Rome that his own uncle was lynched the day it was announced.

** The Kentares Massacre and its aftermath during the First Succession War became this to House Kurita and the Draconis Combine. After the assassination of the Combine's Coordinator on Kentares IV, the Combine responded by [[LeaveNoSurvivors wholesale massacring the population of the planet]]. Not only did this sit extremely poorly with many of the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy traditionalist warriors of the Combine]], but it inspired severe Revanchist elements in the owners of the planet, the Federated Suns. Inspired by the massacre the enraged Federated Suns would massively counterattack and drive the Combine from their territory.

** The Great Scouring after the Siege of Terra ruined the traitor legions and the portions of the civilian administration that supported them, forcing almost all of them to retreat into the Eye of Terror and kicking off the Legion Wars that destroyed any lingering sense of unity between the separate traitor legions save a shared hatred of the loyalists, but that only goes so far when they serve rival gods or just hate the others on principle.
** The Battle of Skalathrax that took place in the closing years of the Great Scouring in the Legion Wars is a strange case for the World Eaters. A siege on a battlegroup of Emperor's Children, fellow traitors serving a rival god, was stalling, on a planet with a night notorious for nigh-unsurvivable nights that require shelter, one of which was on its way. This caused Khârn, the strongest berserker in the army, to grab a flamethrower and set all available shelters on fire, slaughtering anyone who tried to stop him. The battle descended into anarchic bloodbath as warriors from both sides fled, fought each other over the little shelter remaining, or just attacked whatever was closest to them. Neither side could rightly claim victory, but the World Eaters definitely lost--they'd never been a particularly unified bunch between the legions undisciplined outlook from the beginning and their Primarch Angron being a half lobotomized maniac turned Daemon Prince who was recovering from his physical body's destruction in the Siege of Terra at the time of the battle, but their massive losses, combined with the anarchy and resentment that came with a good chunk of those losses being self-inflicted, destroyed the Legion's cohesion. Since then, they've consisted solely of a bunch of divided warbands that mostly work for other armies as shock troops, only uniting when Angron himself leads a bloody slaughter and only until Angron is banished again. The only person who did win the battle? [[BloodKnight Khârn himself]], who happily added a massive tally onto his personal kill counter and remains adamant that everyone who died that day deserved it for being a coward, with Khorne, the World Eaters' new patron and a psychotic WarGod, evidently agreeing on the issue. Khârn became Khorne's mortal champion, while the World Eaters and the Emperors Children (whose own Primarch Fuglrim is a narcissist who spends most of his daemonic existence in hedonistic debauchery on his planet and only occasionally comes out to have some fun) both split into competing warbands more than any other traitor legion save the Night Lords and the Alpha Legion, the former of whom themselves had already shattered when their own Primarch Konrad Curze allowed himself to be assassinated and the latter are in a state of RightHandVersusLeftHand by default.

* The Battle of Bouvines was another major defeat. The French King Philip II Augustus defeated a coalition of England, HRE and Flanders and UsefulNotes/KingJohnOfEngland's defeat was used by the Barons as a motivation for forcing him to sign the Magna Carta.

* For most of TheEighties and the first half of TheNineties the New York Yankees were in a DorkAge (relatively speaking for a franchise now with 27 World Series championships), having not made the postseason between 1982 and 1993[[note]]they most likely would have made it in 1994 with a 6 1/2 game lead in the AL East had the players' strike not cancelled the last few weeks of the season[[/note]]. In the '95 season they made it as the AL Wild Card and seized a 2-0 lead in the best-of-5 series against the Seattle Mariners before dropping Games 3, 4, and 5 at the Kingdome, the latter on a 2-run double in the bottom of the 11th inning. With a tempermental owner in George Steinbrenner, the Yankees brought about large changes to the starting roster both from within (promoting Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera up to the starting lineup) and without (trading for, among others, Tino Martinez, who was a member of those '95 Mariners), as well as firing manager Buck Showalter and replacing him with Joe Torre. With a new core in place, the Yankees would win four of the next five World Series.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' brings this to us early on, as a way of showing just how utterly '''fucked''' humanity is against the Titans. After the outer ring falls, the government drafts a whopping 250,000 citizens into a massive army to take the outer ring back. Granted, most if not all of these soldiers were barely-trained refugees, consisting of both the old and the young whose biggest strength was their numbers, but still, that's a quarter of a million people there, charging into the fray....and barely a hundred make it back alive, with news that the operation failed utterly, and not even a ''single city'' was liberated from the Titans. [[spoiler: It becomes apparent later that this was ''[[UriahGambit intended]]'' by the government, as a means of both relieving the inner walls of a refugee crisis and also breaking any notion that going outside the walls was even ''remotely'' survivable.]]

* The Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD was this for the late Roman Empire. Emperor Valens led an army of 20,000 Goths to put an end to the uprising that had plagued the region for two years, and decided to attack them immediately instead of waiting for the Western Roman Emperor Gratian, as he was jealous of Gratian's successes in the Western Roman Empire. The battle was a disaster, with Emperor Valens killed, two thirds of the Roman army destroyed, and the Goths free to pillage as they went. While Rome had suffered bad defeats before, the aftermath showed that Rome could no longer impose treaties on barbarians as they used to, as the Goths were given a de facto kingdom in Thrace and were never assimilated. As a result, many historians now believe Adrianople marked the start of the problems that would ultimaetly destroy the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leuctra Battle of Leuctra]] for Greece. Sparta was considered effectively invincible after centuries of reputation and their recent defeat of Athens. However, once Epaminondas applied this little thing called "proper tactics"... the conservative Laconians lost a thousand of their elite, irreplaceable Spartiates (peers of the realm and citizens, trained for war from birth, allotted a landed estate from the public treasury upon achieving the age of majority, and of which there were never more than 8,000 even at the zenith of Sparta's power) in that single battle, their reputation and hegemony over Greece both shattered forever.

** Braavos actually sufffers ''two''. First they badly lose the Battles on the Shivering Sea, proving they are no longer the ultimate naval power. Then there's the Battle of the Titan, [[spoiler:which is arguably closer to a draw. The Others are unable to take Braavos, but many defenders die and the Titan itself falls into the strait. Aside from the psychological impact, this means the Bravavosi can't leave their own harbor, effectively removing them from the war]].

* Sticking with Cricket, the West Indies Team [[note]]Actually a composite team comprised of players from various British Dominions in the Caribbean Islands [[/note]] were an unstoppable juggernaut in both the Test and One Day versions of the game, throughout the seventies and early eighties. The team boasted a perennial cascade of fearsome pace bowlers, from Wes Hall and Charles Griffith in the late sixties, to Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall in the early eighties and extending into Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose in the nineties. And they topped that off with particularly aggressive batting greats such as Sobers in the late sixties, Clive Lloyd throughout the seventies and early eighties, Vivian Richards in the eighties and Brian Lara in the nineties. They were particularly dominant in the [[UsefulNotes/ICCCricketWorldCup world cups]], winning the inaugural tournament in 1975 and the follow up tournament in 1979. In the tournament in 1983, they reached the finals again and were expected to trounce India. But then India upset them to win their first ever World Cup. And since then, the team entered a slow decline that accelerated through the nineties and are nowadays seen as an average middle of the road team.

* * The entire First Anglo-Afghan War, after establishing dominion over India, the British Empire launched an invasion of the Emirate of Kabul with a modern army along with a sizable Indian auxiliary force. Much to the surprise of absolutely everyone, said army was bogged down by logistical difficulties and Afghan guerrilla fighters, it was eventually [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_retreat_from_Kabul#Aftermath forced to retreat a few years later]], resulting in the loss of practically all their troops and accompanying civilians, with only a single [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brydon British soldier]] and a handful of Indian sepoys making it back to safety in Jalalabad. The psychological scar this defeat left in the British Empire was such that, despite a British Force ultimately demolishing Kabul in a punitive expedition, they promptly retreated back to India.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1842_retreat_from_Kabul#Aftermath British retreat from Kabul]] during the First Anglo-Afghan War resulted in the loss of practically all their troops and accompanying civilians, with only a single [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brydon British soldier]] and a handful of Indian sepoys making it back to safety in Jalalabad.

* The entire First Anglo-Afghan War, after establishing dominion over India, the British Empire launched an invasion of the Emirate of Kabul with a modern army along with a sizable Indian auxiliary force. Much to the surprise of absolutely everyone, said army was bogged down by logistical difficulties and Afghan guerrilla fighters, it was eventually forced to retreat a few years later, only to be ambushed and killed almost to a man. The psychological scar this defeat left in the British Empire was such that, despite a British Force ultimately demolishing Kabul in a punitive expedition, they promptly retreated back to India.

** The Battle of Bannockburn, when a small Scottish army handily defeated a far larger English Army, the resulting humiliation officially broke the centuries long English hegemony over Scotland, something that was only somewhat reestablished when both kingdoms were diplomatically unified by King James IV of Scotland some 300 years later.

* English history contains two right after the other:

* In {{VideoGame/Freespace}}, the fall of Tombaugh Station to the Shivan Lucifer was treated this way, even though we never got to see it ingame or in a cutscene.

* [[UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton Hillary Clinton]]'s failed presidential bids was this for her. Despite serving as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, a United States Senator from 2001 to 2008, Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, and the first female candidate to ever win the presidential nomination of a major political party, Clinton will most likely be remembered for losing two presidential elections that she was heavily favored to win. Widely viewed as the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2008, she lost a bitterly contested primary to then-Senator [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Barack Obama]] of Illinois, who went on to win the general election. She did win the nomination in 2016 despite an unexpected challenge from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and went on to face businessman [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Donald Trump]] in that year's general election. While polls were somewhat volatile throughout the fall, a Clinton victory was almost universally expected. On election night, however, Trump won several swing states and defeated Clinton in the Electoral College to win the presidency. As a result of these shocking losses, Clinton's public reputation was virtually destroyed with most pundits and even her strongest supporters abandoning the prospect of her running again. Likewise, Hillary's loss also indirectly harmed Bill Clinton, her husband and former US President, who saw his role as a Democratic kingmaker greatly diminished. Furthermore, her defeat as a moderate Democrat in the general election only further galvanized support for progressives Democrats especially among younger voters.[[note]]That said, Clinton's loss didn't destroy moderate and establishment Democrats, many of whom survived by pivoting leftwards on key issues involving criminal justice and climate change. Most notably, former Vice President UsefulNotes/JoeBiden won both the Democratic nomination and general election by campaigning a more progressive platform than Clinton while maintaining his life-long image as a moderate politician.[[/note]]

-->''The last straw that overwhelmed my patience was the events around Bilohorivka, where due to stupidity —- I emphasize, because of the stupidity of the Russian command -— at least one battalion tactical group was burned, possibly two'' -Yuri Podolyaka, pro-Russian milblogger

* [[UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton Hillary Clinton]]'s failed presidential bids was this for her. Despite serving as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, a United States Senator from 2001 to 2008, Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, and the first female candidate to ever win the presidential nomination of a major political party, Clinton will most likely be remembered for losing two presidential elections that she was heavily favored to win. Widely viewed as the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2008, she lost a bitterly contested primary to then-Senator [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Barack Obama]] of Illinois, who went on to win the general election. She did win the nomination in 2016 despite an unexpected challenge from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and went on to face businessman [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Donald Trump]] in that year's general election. While polls were somewhat volatile throughout the fall, a Clinton victory was almost universally expected. On election night, however, Trump won several swing states and defeated Clinton in the Electoral College to win the presidency. As a result of these shocking losses, Clinton's public reputation was virtually destroyed with most pundits and even her strongest supporters abandoning the prospect of her running again. Likewise, Hillary's loss also indirectly harmed Bill Clinton, her husband and former US President, who saw his role as a Democratic kingmaker greatly diminished. Furthermore, her defeat as a moderate Democrat in the general election only further galvanized support for progressives Democrats especially among younger voters.[[note]]That said, Clinton's loss didn't destroy moderate and establishment Democrats, many of whom survived by by pivoting leftwards on key issues involving criminal justice and climate change. Most notably, the moderate former Vice President UsefulNotes/JoeBiden won both the Democratic nomination and general election by campaigning a more progressive platform than Clinton.[[/note]]

* While the entirety of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has been laden with shocking displays of incompetence on the part of Russian Armed Forces, the battle that marked a proper turning point of opinions was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Siverskyi_Donets the Battle of the Siverskyi Donets]]. Multiple Russian attempts to ford the Siverskyi Donets with pontoon bridges were repeatedly scouted out and utterly stomped on with Ukrainian heavy artillery barrages at the worst possible moment, leading to the loss of an entire Russian batallion with ''nothing'' to show for it, not even a crossed river. While naturally laughed at in the pro-Ukraine spheres (like everything else), Russian military bloggers found this to be such a disaster they stopped caring about saving face and started openly criticizing Russia's performance to their audiences.

* [[UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton Hillary Clinton]]'s failed presidential bids was this for her. Despite serving as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, a United States Senator from 2001 to 2008, Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, and the first female candidate to ever win the presidential nomination of a major political party, Clinton will most likely be remembered for losing two presidential elections that she was heavily favored to win. Widely viewed as the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination in 2008, she lost a bitterly contested primary to then-Senator [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Barack Obama]] of Illinois, who went on to win the general election. She did win the nomination in 2016 despite an unexpected challenge from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and went on to face businessman [[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump Donald Trump]] in that year's general election. While polls were somewhat volatile throughout the fall, a Clinton victory was almost universally expected. On election night, however, Trump won several swing states and defeated Clinton in the Electoral College to win the presidency. As a result of these shocking losses, Clinton's public reputation was virtually destroyed with most pundits and even her strongest supporters abandoning the prospect of her running again. Likewise, Hillary's loss also indirectly harmed Bill Clinton, her husband and former US President, who saw his role as a Democratic kingmaker greatly diminished. Furthermore, her defeat as a moderate Democrat in the general election only further galvanized support for progressives Democrats especially among younger voters.[[note]]That said, Clinton's loss didn't destroy moderate and establishment Democrats, many of whom survived by by pivoting leftwards on key issues involving criminal justice and climate change. Most notably, the moderate former Vice President [[UsefulNotes/JoeBiden]] won both the Democratic nomination and general election by campaigning a more progressive platform than Clinton.[[/note]]