During the Prussian invasion of France in 1870, Mercié was a student at the French Academy in Rome. Shortly after the war began Mercié sculpted a model of the winged figure of Fame supporting a victorious soldier, thinking this would be a suitable image to symbolize the victorious French troops. Upon hearing of the defeat of the French, Mercié replaced the victorious soldier with the figure of a wounded one holding a broken sword.
The sculpture was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1874 and won the Medal of Honor. It was immensely popular and regarded as a patriotic salve for the bitter loss. As the contemporary critic Jules Castagnary wrote, “while monarchists quarrel over the debris of our battered fortunes…there exists a young sculptor who has undertaken to speak directly to our nation and to console our people who have suffered so much.” In many French towns replicas of the sculpture were used on monuments to the dead of the Franco-Prussian War.
Gloria Victis is Latin for Glory to the Vanquished.