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Paraguayan War: A Visual History

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Paraguay fought Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay for six years and lost perhaps 60 percent of its people, the deadliest war in South American history.

Fought
1864 to 1870
Duration
6 years
Dates
12 November 1864 to 1 March 1870
Deaths
Paraguay lost about 60 percent of its population, including up to 90 percent of adult men; about 100,000 Allied dead
Paraguay
Francisco Solano Lopez
Triple Alliance
Brazil (Caxias, Osorio), Argentina (Mitre), Uruguay (Flores)
Result
Allied victory; Paraguay devastated and occupied; territory ceded to Brazil and Argentina

The Paraguayan War (1864-1870) began when Francisco Solano Lopez, dictator of Paraguay, intervened in Uruguay's civil war against Brazil, seized a Brazilian ship, invaded Mato Grosso and then marched through Argentine territory, provoking the Triple Alliance of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay in May 1865. After the loss of his fleet at Riachuelo and his army at Tuyuti (1866), Lopez fought a defensive war from the fortress of Humaita, which fell in 1868; the Allies took Asuncion in January 1869, and Lopez retreated into the hills with dwindling forces of old men and boys, executing suspected traitors including his brothers, until Brazilian cavalry killed him at Cerro Cora on 1 March 1870. Paraguay lost about 300,000 of its 450,000 people and a quarter of its territory.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance). The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

145015001550160016501700175018001850190019502000Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance) (1864 to 1870)Open: Spanish EmpireSpanish Empire (1492 to 1976)Open: Dutch EmpireDutch Empire (1602 to 1975)Open: Second Portuguese EmpireSecond Portuguese Empire (1663 to 1822)Open: Colombian War of IndependenceColombian War of Independence (1810 to 1825)Open: Empire of BrazilEmpire of Brazil (1822 to 1889)Open: Federal War (Venezuela)Federal War (Venezuela) (1859 to 1863)Open: Thousand Days' WarThousand Days' War (1899 to 1902)Open: Chaco WarChaco War (1932 to 1935)

Paraguay's population

0112.5225337.54501864: 45045018641871: 15015018711871 adult men: 30301871 adult menthousands (approximate; estimates vary widely)

Timeline of the Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance)

  1. 1864
    Lopez seizes the Marques de Olinda; invades Mato Grosso
  2. 1865
    Triple Alliance; Riachuelo; Uruguaiana
  3. 1866
    Tuyuti; Curupayty
  4. 1868
    Humaita falls; Lomas Valentinas
  5. 1869
    Asuncion falls; Acosta Nu
  6. 1870
    Cerro Cora; Lopez killed1 March.

Lopez's gamble

Paraguay under the Lopez dynasty was an isolated, state-run country with a large army for its size. When Brazil intervened in Uruguay in 1864, Lopez, seeing a threat to the balance of the Plate, seized the steamer Marques de Olinda, invaded Brazil's Mato Grosso, and in April 1865 sent an army through Argentine Corrientes towards Uruguay. Argentina, Brazil and the new Uruguayan government signed the Triple Alliance treaty on 1 May 1865, secretly agreeing to Paraguay's dismemberment.

Riachuelo, Tuyuti and Humaita

The Brazilian navy destroyed the Paraguayan fleet at Riachuelo in June 1865 and Lopez's invasion force surrendered at Uruguaiana. The Allies invaded Paraguay in April 1866; at Tuyuti on 24 May, the largest battle in South American history, Lopez lost 6,000 to 13,000 men in frontal assaults; but at Curupayty in September Allied assaults were slaughtered and the war stalled in the swamps for two years while cholera raged. Brazil's Marquis of Caxias took command, ironclads forced the passage of Humaita in 1868, and the fortress fell in August.

The end

Caxias's December 1868 campaign destroyed the Paraguayan army at Lomas Valentinas; Asuncion fell in January 1869. Lopez, increasingly paranoid, had hundreds of officers, officials, foreigners and his own brothers and brothers-in-law tortured and shot in the San Fernando purges. He fought on with an army of children at Acosta Nu (August 1869), where boys in false beards died by the thousand, and was speared and shot at Cerro Cora, reportedly crying 'I die with my country'. Brazil occupied Paraguay until 1876; the peace ceded Mato Grosso do Sul and Misiones lands, and Paraguay's population had fallen from about 450,000 to about 150,000, most of them women.

The war's causes and casualties remain disputed; some historians see British commercial pressure behind the Alliance, though most reject it.

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8 surprising things about the Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance)

  1. Paraguay's population loss, around 60 percent, is proportionally the greatest of any modern war.
  2. So few men survived that the Church reportedly tolerated polygamy for a generation; some accounts are exaggerated but the sex ratio was around 4 to 1.
  3. Lopez's Irish mistress Eliza Lynch buried him with her own hands at Cerro Cora and was later expelled; Paraguay now honours her.
  4. The battle of Acosta Nu, fought largely by boys aged 9 to 15, is commemorated as Paraguay's Children's Day.
  5. Brazil's war debt to Britain and its army's growth contributed to the fall of slavery and the empire two decades later.
  6. Lopez had his own mother flogged and his brothers shot for alleged conspiracy.
  7. The war was the first in the Americas with ironclad river fleets and one of the first with mass telegraph use.
  8. Paraguay's territorial dispute with Bolivia over the Chaco, left after the war, produced the Chaco War of 1932.

Sources

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