Life's Vanquished (pt|Vencidos da Vida) was an informal group of intellectuals who influenced the culture of Portugal in the last three decades of the 19th century. Among the Vanquished were some of the writers, politicians, and aristocrats that had strived to modernise the country in their youth during the Regeneration — and whose perceived failure had led them to channel their disenchantment into an elegant and ironic decadent dilettantism.[1]
Notable member José Maria de Eça de Queirós explained the perverse name of the group in 1889: