Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance

[WF_Tomba]

I was reading Wikipedia’s article on the War of the Triple Alliance and came across these stats:

One estimate places total Paraguayan losses — through both war and disease — as high as 1.2 million people, or 90% of its pre-war population. A different estimate places Paraguayan deaths at approximately 300,000 people out of its 500,000 to 525,000 prewar inhabitants.

My reactions:

1. Holy shit!
2. Has any nation ever suffered a worse defeat?
3. Why do these estimates disagree so greatly, even in estimating the size of the prewar population? Which is closer to being correct?

[Alessan]

@WF Tomba

2. Has any nation ever suffered a worse defeat?

I’d say that the Bar Kochva Rebellion came close:

According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed.[3] [4] The Talmud, however, claims a death toll in the millions. The latter figure is unlikely, because there were simply not that many Jews in the region at that time. Cassius Dio claimed that “Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore, Hadrian, in writing to the Senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors: ‘If you and your children are in health, it is well; I and the army are in health.’”

…

Modern historians have come to view the Bar-Kokhba Revolt as being of decisive historic importance. The massive destruction and loss of life occasioned by the revolt has led some scholars to date the beginning of the Jewish diaspora from this date. They note that, unlike the aftermath of the First Jewish-Roman War chronicled by Josephus, the majority of the Jewish population of Judea was either killed, exiled, or sold into slavery after the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, and Jewish religious and political authority was suppressed far more brutally. After the revolt the Jewish religious center shifted to the Babylonian Jewish community and its scholars. Judea would not be a center of Jewish religious, cultural, or political life again until the modern era, though Jews continued to live there and important religious developments still occurred there.

[RealityChuck]

It was difficult to get hard numbers for Paraguayan deaths in the war. Paraguay had no accurate census, so any population numbers are an estimate. And they probably didn’t have an accurate number of war deaths.

But the population was badly hit by the war, especially for young men. The crisis after the war was so acute, however, that the country legalized polygamy for a few years after the war because there were so few men alive.

Paraguay also lost a lot of people people in the Chaco War of 1932-35, and they won that one (35-50K out of about 800K – though some estimates go up to 100K when civilians are included).

[Ranchoth]

@WF Tomba

Has any nation ever suffered a worse defeat?

Are we just figuring this as in number (or percentage) of troops/population killed, and still lost the war, or are we taking other stuff into account, too? (Like: defeated; a few cities razed; your country occupied and/or split up by victors; most of leadership dead, executed, or imprisoned, and your new constitution says that you renounce war forever?)

Or…what if your homeland survives unscathed, and unassaulted, but your army drowns en route to the target?

[WF_Tomba]

@Ranchoth

Are we just figuring this as in number (or percentage) of troops/population killed, and still lost the war, or are we taking other stuff into account, too? (Like: defeated; a few cities razed; your country occupied and/or split up by victors; most of leadership dead, executed, or imprisoned, and your new constitution says that you renounce war forever?)

I was just thinking in terms of percentage of national population killed.