After a few days, a junta emerged, freed some political prisoners, and soon proved itself ineffectual at governing. During retreats Lopez ordered every town and village razed to the ground, every animal slaughtered, every growing thing destroyed, that the invaders might find neither shelter nor sustenance.Ĭonfusion overtook Paraguay in the aftermath of the dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia death on September 20, 1840, because El Supremo, now El Difunto (the Dead One), had left no successor. The women were used as beasts of burden to carry ammunition and stores, and when worn out were left by the roadside to die. Whole regiments of twelve year old boys fought in the Paraguayan armies. For five years Paraguay defended itself against attacks from every side. The Paraguayans stood by their tyrant with fanatical constancy.
So intolerable a nuisance did he become that the vastly more powerful states of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay combined to get rid of him. In the middle of the 19th century that small South American country was cursed with a mad dictator - Lopez - who fancied himself a second Napoleon and who embarked on constant aggressions against his neighbors. Fought between Paraguay and the allied countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, the war resulted in Paraguay losing 150,000 sq km of territory and a large part of its pre-war population. The War of the Triple Alliance is little known outside of South America, despite being the bloodiest war in South American history, and one of the bloodiest of the 19th Century.
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