Introduction

This book reframes Antonin Mercié's Gloria Victis (1875) not simply as a sculpture, but as a viral commemorative phenomenon that circulated internationally in the decades before the First World War. It argues, first, that Gloria Victis became a shared visual convention for memorializing national defeat across Europe, the Americas, and southern Africa. Second, it introduces the concept of the international cult of the Lost Cause to describe how monuments to defeat functioned as civil religion, transforming loss into moral victory and sacrifice into national unity. Finally, the chapter shows how the transnational spread of Gloria Victis signaled political aspirations and ideological affinities beyond formal diplomacy.