Part One: Francisco Solano Lopez: The Worst Military Leader In Human History

This week Robert sits down with James Stout to weave the story of the worst military leader in human history: Francisco Solano Lopez. Also known as 'El supremo', he nearly annihilated his own country through sheer incompetence.

Sources:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26494384?googleloggedin=true&seq=22

https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/11/22/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-1-francisco-solano-lopezs-earlier-life

https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/12/8/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-2-the-start-of-the-war-of-the-triple-alliance#.YcJFwy2cZAY=

https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/12/23/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-3-devastating-battles-for-both-sides#.Yd9N0i2cZAY=

https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2022/1/12/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-4-how-the-war-ended#.Yd9N0i2cZAY=

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/war-of-the-triple-alliance-bloodbath-in-paraguay/

https://www.thecollector.com/francisco-solano-lopez-paraguayan-war/

https://countrystudies.us/paraguay/10.htm

https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780742537552

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast
retell you everything you don't know about the very worst
people in all of history. And we got a real
bastard of a bastard for you this week. But before
we get into that, let's introduce our guest, someone who's
probably not a bastard as far as I am aware,

(00:22):
I legally have to say that James Stout. Hey, James,
how you doing.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
I love it, I'm great. I feel very welcome off to.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
That, doctor James Stout.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Doctor James, Doctor James. I'm using it again. I previously
only used it for credit card companies and people who
are rude to me.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Jamis you get back bringing it back? James? You are
currently the co host of one among several that do
it could happen here daily news show also on cool
Zone that we host, and you have a new podcast
coming out, something sexy and exciting and did I say new, new.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, new, very exciting, Yeah, coming out out on the
seventeenth of August, where we're good podcast and given away
for free. It's called Natural Causes, and we're going to
be talking about going outside, specifically like the politics of
going outside. I guess in twenty twenty six. That's a
big deal.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Just touching grass. It's just going to be me around fire.
Why is you know, it's very calming.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
It's just like an ASMR meditation.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
App naming you for being on the internet. You just
turn on the poast, get turn off your phone. Now
go outside, James.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
What are some early episodes books can look out for.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah, so we're going to start, I think with looking
at a couple of things. I want to look at
cyclist sporer, the cyclist sporer outbreak which we've seen across
the Midwest, now spreading further west, and what that can
tell us about the rights farm workers, about where our
food comes from, and the people who decide if it's safe.
We're going to talk about fire. I am yesterday. I

(02:00):
was in Spokane, Washington when we record this, covering the
fires there, both the wildland fires and the fires that
came into town, and spend a lot of time on
the Covill Tribes Reservation and Spokane Tribe Reservation and a
lot of those folks I think maybe got missed out
of the big fire story when by the time it
got into suburban areas. But we're going to look at
what we can learn from indigenous people about living with fire.

(02:23):
I want to talk about how your raincoat could be
putting little bits of plastic inside fish and have alina.
That would be a fun one. I want to talk
about havelina because they fucking hate golf, and so do I.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I like cavalina, but I mainly like eating them mixed
with other more palatable meats. I'm a redneck meat connoisseur,
you know, Okay, I does the days of eating cavealina.
If you know what you're doing, you can make a
pretty decent sausage with that. As one of the in Greek, Okay,
I can see that. Yeah, it's like it's not a pig,
it's a peckery. But I'm sure it probably has enough

(02:56):
some found it. Yeah, it's close. You usually mix it.
You want him go finished. If you're gonna make sausage
out of them, you know, Yeah, that's that way, or
you mix it with you know some Jimmy Dean, you know, James,
it's appropriate that you've got to show about going outside
because our subject for this week is a man who
should never have gone outside. He kind of broke a

(03:16):
family tradition by going outside. And as a result, destroyed
his country. This is a fascinating dude. Have you ever
heard of former dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano Lopez. Do
you know who this guy is?

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I've heard the name, yeah, but I'm not infinitely familiar
with the law. So this is exciting well for me.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
This is what's interesting about him is we've had a
lot of dictators, and we've had a lot of dictators
who started wars, and we've had a lot of dictators
who started genocides, but we haven't good had a dictator
who accidentally did a genocide against his own people without
meaning to, while trying to carry out a successful war.
And that's that's the story of Francisco Lopez. It's like
one of the most complete, as like a percentage of

(03:56):
the total population genocides we've ever covered. And he does
it entirely without meaning to because he is so bad
at running a war. It's a fascinating story of a
guy who gets very convinced that he's better at running
an army than he is. And yeah, that's what we're
talking about this week. Our story begins not with Francisco

(04:21):
but with Simone Boulevar. The liberator who, as as far
as I'm aware, is the guy who probably holds the
world record for like the most independence days he directly
generated in six countries he helped create basically or bring
to independence in his wars against the Spanish colonial oppressors.
Boulevar is often considered the Napoleon of Latin America, and again,

(04:43):
Francisco is the guy who wanted to be considered the
Napoleon of Latin America kind of afterwards, but is just
much worse at everything than Boulevar was. So South America.
While kind of this is happening in the early eighteen hundreds,
you know, this is part of a process of South
and Central America becoming like decoupled from their former colonial owners.

(05:05):
Right South and Central America had been colonized starting in
the fourteen hundreds and fifteen hundreds and split between Spain
and Portugal during that the early part of the Age
of Exploration, and most of these overseas possessions started gaining
their independence in the early eighteen hundreds. Chile declared its
own independence in the eighteen tens, and little Old Paraguay
does not that long afterwards. Paraguay had been a Spanish

(05:26):
colony previously, and from seventeen seventy six on it had
been governed by the viceroyality in Buenos Aires. Right, So
Paraguay is adjacent to modern day Argentina, but they're all
being in Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina today,
but Paraguay is being governed from Buenos Aires by the
viceroy during like the Spanish period, Right, And this establishes

(05:49):
a precedent in the eyes of Argentinians at least that
Paraguay is basically a client state. Right. Once Argentina becomes
its own thing, there's going to be for a very
long time. And attitude of like, well they shouldn't be
their own country, right, they used to be run from
our capital. Why are there free a different country?

Speaker 2 (06:04):
That I if you bought me on here as a
British person to talk about places that Argentina thinks it
should be governing.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yes, the British are experts on places argause something I agree.
I made a comment about like wars that are fought
were fought in like the latter part of the twentieth
century by like ailing powers that wanted to get their
mojo back, and I mentioned like the Falklands and Grenada
and Panama, and people did point out that, like, well,

(06:31):
Argentina was like just really out of pocket, and there
were I'm not saying they weren't. I'm just saying that
there was definitely an attitude of oh, okay, we've still
got some We've still got some peppinar stuff, the British
and pie you know. Yeah, those people were.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
There are a lot of people who were extremely excited, yeah,
for a colonial war.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
And guys, yes, Argentina was not in the right, but
come on, it wasn't that hard a thing. Like neither
was Panama or fucking Grenade, I don't get me wrong,
or desert storm.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Yeah. So the region Paraguay, So we're getting back to Paraguay.
Argentinians see it as basically a client state where once
Argentina becomes a country, that's how they think things ought
to work. And Paraguay, the region had always been a backwater,
even in the days of the Spanish Empire. There are
very few people in what becomes Paraguay, and there's basically
no industry and almost no export's worth speaking of, except

(07:24):
for there's some tobacco. They make a bit of money
from tobacco, but the big export is yerba, right, like
you know, like, yeah, it's that, That's what fucking Paraguay makes, right,
that is like the cash crop down there and the
like it's a tea leaf, right yeah, yeah, basically right,
And the people who are indigenous to the region consider

(07:45):
yerba a tonic and a cure all and everyone else
kind of considers it a pretty good alternative to coffee
and tea. The Spanish make attempts to bring Paraguay into
the modern age right at the end of their period
of control, and these are met with mixed success. So
there's some in Spain does kind of industrialize parts of
the capital, right ascension a little bit in this period
of time, but it's not We're not talking like very

(08:07):
serious efforts and they are not comprehensive. So most people
in Paraguay are mestizos, but Spanish immigrants dominated in the
capital and in the city council. Right, So this is
primarily a country of people who are like mixed race
between the indigenous people of the region and the Spanish colonizers.
There's some Portuguese throat in there too. A lot of
Brazilians wind up coming down into Paraguay. But the people

(08:30):
who run things tend to be Spanish, right like, in
this period of time, and immediately after independence too, it's
still fairly dominated because those are the folks who'd had money, right.
Independence comes partly as a result, because again they get
their dependence in like eighteen eleven. And part of why
is in eighteen oh seven, Napoleon invades Iberia and he
winds up forcing the Bourbon dynasty off the throne and

(08:53):
also forcing the rulers of Portugal to fleet to Brazil,
and actually the Portuguese Empire is governed from Brazil for
a while. They're like, Okay, we gotta deal with this
Napoleon situation. Yeah, And so in eighteen ten, citizens in
Buenos Aires declare an independent viceroyality that includes Argentina and Paraguay.
And when Paraguayans hear this and hear that, like wait, wait, wait,

(09:14):
we're not part of the empire anymore, and you guys
are saying you're in charge of us. Nah, And there's
a little bit of a revolt. And later that year,
the last Spanish governor meets with leaders in the capitol
to discuss the demands that Buenos Aires was making, and
he's like, Okay, we'll all lead an army to like
help fight for Paraguay and independence from these these breakaways.
Right now, he wants Paragua to stay loyal to Spain. Obviously,

(09:37):
now Paraguay and elites initially want to stay loyal to Spain,
and so the early stirrings of what's going to become
Argentina sins an army in to invade Paraguay and they
get their asses handed to them on two separate occasions
in January and March of eighteen eleven. One thing that's
interesting and true about Paraguay is that pretty consistently in
the eighteen hundreds they hit above their weight class as

(09:58):
like a military. They're not a millitary power, because they're not
a power. There's a couple hundred thousand people in the
entire region, but they tend to fight very well, right
Like they're better than you'd expect given like the discrepancies
between sizes and industrial base. Now, the army, the Paraguay
army was meant to be initially led by the Spanish governor,
but as soon as he realizes an actual battle's going

(10:20):
to happen, he runs like fuck He's like, I don't know,
that's not what I signed up for. So Paraguay and
militia commanders wind up taking control, and after they win
the battle, they're like, well, we probably shouldn't be part
of Spain anymore, like what are they doing for us?
So they overthrow and that's that's how Paraguay becomes independent
and all but name now I say all but name
because at this point no other countries have recognized Paraguay

(10:43):
is an independent country. Yet that takes a little while.
Argentina still thinks Paraguay should be theirs, but since they
can't win a fair fight, they decide to lock down
the Rio Parana, which is a river that like, it's
the big if you're Paraguay's landlocked. So if you want
to get stuff to Brazil or to Argentina and thus
to the coasts and to the rest of the world,
you have to travel down this big river, right And

(11:05):
because the river, like, Argentina controls the source of the river,
I guess, and they also have a functional navy, So
if they want to shut down the river, there's not
much that Paraguay can do, you know, they can kind
of keep their the part of the river in their
own country, clear, but they can't force their way out
to the rest of the world. Right, Argentina has that
on too much lock. So now the city fathers of

(11:27):
Asencion have a tough decision to make. Right, what kind
of country should Paraguay be? Now at this point, they
don't have money and they barely have any people, but
they're good enough at fighting that they choked the rio
with Argentine dead, right, so they do get to be
a thing. The junta that's governing the region, and that's
what that's just the term they literally call this temporary

(11:48):
governing body. Yeah, tries to establish them right, right, tries
to establish a republic. And because most Paraguayans can't read
or write and don't live in the capital, anyone with
money and education at that time, which is a small
group of people, has a shot at gaining power. Right,
There's there's not a lot of people kind of competing
for the right to be in charge. Enter doctor Jose

(12:10):
Gaspar Rodriguez de Franzia, who historian James Sager describes as
the ablest man in Paraguay. The way Saga writes it,
this is the guy who's going to become the first
dictator of Paraguay. And he becomes the dictator because he's
just kind of like the smartest dude in the country
and everybody sort of likes him at first. He just
kind of knows what he's doing, has read the most books.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Like this guy seems fine.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
This guy seems like he knows what he's doing.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, that is in the Spanish bit of the Argentine Let's.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, go right now. The Good Doctor was a lawyer
who'd been born in seventeen sixty six to a Brazilian
father who had immigrated to to advise Paraguay and tobacco growers.
His mother was Paraguayan and the couple and so again
he's a mestizo, and the couple sent their son to
Cordoba in now Argentina to study, where he earned a
doctorate in theology. Sagar ads that although he had five siblings,

(12:58):
he felt no emotional time to them, nor to his father,
nor to any of his unknown number of illegitimate children.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Okay, he's making a caste for appearing on this podcast
right now. That's one of the indicators.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Fascinating man. Yeah, and I have to really work to
not say doctor Franzia as if he's like the box wife,
and it is my canon that it's named after this brutal,
blood soaked dictator.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
We can make that happen.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
As dictators go, he's like one of the better ones,
but he's not great. So again, after graduation, this guy
leaves the priesthood and he goes home. It gets into
philosophy and he starts teaching at the seminary and training
in law, because in those days, Spanish law is pretty
much based in the Bible, right, so it's not a
huge pivot from like a theologian to like a lawyer

(13:45):
in these days. Affrontio would later claim that his firm
was dedicated to aiding the poor, but modern scholarship is
proven that was a lie. He was a general practitioner
who just kind of made that claim later. Yeah. As
a masture adult doctor Francia became a prominent member of
the elite in assension, and he was elected to several
positions in the city council. He developed a virulent hate

(14:07):
for Spanish born elites who occupied his home and dominated
economic and cultural life. As we'll discuss more at length later,
Spain was an honor based society, at this point. In honor,
it's not supposed to be just a vague term for
doing what you should right. It's supposed to be like
a resource, almost literally, like wealth that you build up
over time and pass on to your family, and you

(14:27):
can lose it if you fuck up for your family.
As a man, you can kind of lose or gain honor.
As a woman, you can only lose it. You can
that's the way. But now there have been some more
modern studies that have kind of argued that like this
whole honor culture thing was mainly a way for the
elites to kind of message to the poor, and in reality,

(14:48):
like people broke these laws constantly and obeying them was
not in any way, shape or form the norm right,
Like it was largely like posturing right, But that's debated.
In the Spanish conception of honor, though, the poor and
those of inferior race like Indians and blacked and slave
people have no honor, or at least no honor that
a Spaniard is bound to recognize, whereas people who are
like wealthy and powerful members of the upper class have

(15:10):
a duty to kind of you have to display your
honor and you have to see it recognized by others, right,
Like otherwise they're kind of like talking shit to you
if they're not going out of their way to like
acknowledge your how much honor you deserve. Paraguay, this is
the way that like leaders, but particularly this is the
way that like some of the leaders in Paraguay are
going to come to view honor. Right, and Paraguayans wind up,

(15:32):
like the natives, the mestizos are considered during like the
Spanish Empire, one of the honorless classes, right, And doctor
Froncia hates that because again he's he is very angry
at like the white supremacist strain that had run through
the Spanish Empire, and that's something he's going to dedicate
his time as dictator to destroying. In eighteen ten, he
helped argue against accepting Argentina's claims on Paraguay, and after

(15:55):
Paraguay's victory over Argentina, he became a paraguay a nationalist.
Over the court of the first couple of years the
country existed, he allies himself to the military, and he
orchestrates his rise to total power during his short lived
republic that's barely worth the name, right, So here's how
an article on history is now. His website describes his reign,
called El Saprimo. He was considered a revolutionary fanatic by

(16:16):
most international observers. He ruled Paraguay with an iron fist
for over twenty five years as part of a grand
experiment in the implementation of revolutionary and Enlightenment ideals. Francia
had enforced isolation and attempted to create economic self sufficiency.
Absolute social equality was decreed between those of Spanish descent
and the native Guarani people. The nation had repelled repeated
attempts to come under the influence and economic dominance of

(16:38):
or be taken over by Brazil, Argentina and Great Britain.
Foreigners were regularly arrested and expelled. And this is first off,
he's one of the first people, really, the first person
I've ever heard of whose obsession with social equality is
so that there are like restrictions on same race marriages
during his reign. Right, Yeah, have you ever heard of that? Actually, Like,

(17:03):
I guess that's that's like bad, but it is unique,
so congratulating it's different before. Yeah, no, this just must.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Never get out on x dot com. Yeah, I'm sure
they want to get to they say about the DSA.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, so during doctor Froncie's ring, because again this guy
is like an arch isolationist, it's basically impossible for Paraguayans
to leave the country, which was still closed to the
art outside world by Argentina and in some ways Brazil.
And this is kind of how he liked it, right,
He's he does not want He thinks the country needs
to kind of keep to itself, and it gains a

(17:37):
reputation of being like a hermit state. It's kind of
talked about in this period the way North Korea is
a lot in the modern era. Right Frontcia annihilated the
old Spanish colonial elite, although this was mostly nonviolent. He's
said to have executed less than one hundred of them.
But in eighteen twenty, when a conspiracy tried to overthrow
his regime, his secret police captured and executed sixty eight conspirators.

(18:00):
This wiped out his political opposition, and according to Seger,
Paraguay lacked a ruling class other than the doctor. Now
this doesn't mean there weren't rich people. There are. It
just means that there aren't a lot of people who
are both rich and powerful other than doctor Phrancius, right,
because he would murder anyone who threatened his power. So
the successful and wealthy who are smart go into isolation

(18:20):
and they give up any pretense of political activity in
order to stay comfortable. Right. And one of these rich
people who was like, ah, you know what, I don't
need to be anywhere near politics is a brilliant young
farmer named Carlos Antonio Lopez. And he is the father
of our subject for this week and going to be
the second dictator of Paraguay. But at this point he's
a guy who's like really good at farming and builds

(18:40):
a very successful business and is like, I don't I'm
staying the fuck out of politics. I got no opinions
at all, doctor.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
I don't want to die.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah yeah, col midway, and I said, like, Brazil also
is kind of keeping part of Paraguay, you know, lockedown. Effectively,
Brazil doesn't declare it's independence until part way through Doctor
Francia's reign in eighteen twenty two. And independence is maybe
too strong a word for like what initially happens, right,
because the first leader of Brazil is Prince Regent Pedro,

(19:12):
who is a member of Portugal's ruling dynasty, the House
of Braganza, and he becomes Emperor Pedro the First of Brazil.
So yeah, independence, you know.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, yeah, like baby's first independence, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah. A lot of Americans don't know that Brazil was
an empire for a while, but they sure were, and
they deserve to be called that. Brazil's like the same
size as the US, pretty much a continental ua, pretty
much huge, like like eighty percent of other empires in
human history, or smaller than the Brazilian one. Probably it's
a big fucking you know thing, although it's sparsely populated,

(19:45):
I should say. In this pertect time, from the beginning
of Brazil and Argentina as independent nations, they are at
each other's throats. They're like the France and England or
France and Germany of South America for a while.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Yeah yeah, sorry, yeah, that makes sense. That said, that
helps me, I understand, thank you.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah. From eighteen twenty five to eighteen twenty eight, they
fight a brutal war over the territory that's going to
become Uruguay, which immediately collapses into a series of civil
wars after its independence that are also proxy wars between
Brazilia and Argentina. That's like there, it's almost like they're
Afghanistan to their Vietnam for a while. Like Brazili and
Argentina cannot stop fucking around in Uruguay. Doctor yeah, yeah,

(20:28):
in any such cases, this is really bad for Uruguay's population.
A lot of guys die in there. Doctor Phronsius keeps
Paraguay the fuck out of all of this, and under
him the country gains again. It's it's this very isolated place,
but peaceful. Now, That's what I said earlier. Carlos Lopez
is one of the few people smart enough to keep
their head down, stay alive, and get rich during the

(20:49):
Phronsius regime. He had been born in the latter days
of the Spanish Empire, and he'd grown up learning how
to survive and an empire run by people who considered
themselves superior to him. This cunning stood him in fine
stead when it came time to jockey for power FRONTI
had died in eighteen forty and Lopez, because he's one
of the richest guys left alive, is becomes a prominent
man kind of overnight, and as soon as it's safe,

(21:11):
he starts getting involved in politics. Now again you have
this junta of military officers who form a council to
vote on like what to do next. Lopez returns to
Suncion as soon as the dictator's dead, and in February
of eighteen twenty one, there's a kind of coup and
an officer named Mariano Alonso is made dictator. Now, Alonzo
does not know how to run a country. I don't
think he really wants to run a country, but his

(21:33):
men had put him in charge, and so he decides
to hire the smartest guy still living to do the
actual governing. And that's how Carlos Lopez gets his foot
in the door. Alonzo and Lopez are appointed consuls for
three years, and because Alonzo doesn't really have any talent
for governing, Lopez sort of falls naturally into the rule
of leader, and he eventually edges Lopez out and makes

(21:54):
himself from consul into the president now notably, and this
really says a lot about the kind of dictator Carlos
Lopez is. He never has Alonzo killed or purged, right,
He just kind of takes over and everyone's fine with
it more or less. I mean, everyone's not fine with that.
He has a lot of secret police, but he's not
one of these guys who feels the need to like
murder everybody who might have been a center of power necessarily, right,

(22:17):
he's not insecure as a dictator, which is interesting, Like
he's like a healthy ego, not like the toxic way. Necessarily.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, he's he's convinced he earned it. I guess like
he doesn't doesn't feel threatened by the others.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Well, the way Seger puts it is he understands that
he's the most powerful man in Paraguay, and he understands
that he has absolutely no power and influence outside of Paraguay,
and that's not a problem for him. He does not
have an issue with that, right, And so if you're
gonna have a dictator, you could do worse than this
kind of guy. Carlos Lopez is sort of heavy set

(22:52):
by the time he becomes the leader. You know, he's
overweight and he's not in great shape. And between that
and the fact that foreign pat travel is very hard
to do for Paraguayans, he just never leaves the capital
and he has zero interest in war or military. But
he's kind of too lazy to be like to go
to war with anybody, which is really good.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Again, that's what's yeah, yeah, it could be wise.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah, And he does reform the military for defensive purposes,
but he mostly works on fixing the damage Froncias said done.
As is always the case with Paraguayan leaders in this period,
there are immediately rumors that Carlos Lopez is like part
African or descended from like a slave or the wrong
kind of Gharani, right, because there's the there's the good
kind of indigenous people basically as Paraguayan's in the capital

(23:35):
see it. And then there's the bad kind who live
out near the Chaco, which is like they're kind of deserted,
very difficult to grow things region, and they're like, oh,
I think he's descended from one of those, right, Like
there's rumors with that with his son too. It's a
constant thing in this period of time. And he doesn't
as far as I know, he doesn't seem to like
go murder crazy over rumors like this. Now there's not

(23:55):
really much of a press, so he doesn't have there's
now a lot it's kind of spreading word of mass. Yeah,
he does. Inherit, Doctor Phronsie has well developed secret police force,
and Phranci has had formed his had had based a
secret police force on the Inquisition and so perfectly talking
about most dictators of Paraguay having secret cut police. They're
all descendants of the Spanish Inquisition. Right, that's great.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Picked up a lot when he was in Theological college.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Lessons and he he he does use again, he has
secret police. He's not never brutal, but he does kind
of have a little He seems mildly allergic to brutality.
And he's a fairly intelligent, careful leader. I would say
his main flaw, pretty much everyone agrees, is that he
fucking loves nepotism. He is so dedicated to nepotism, that

(24:45):
is that is this motherfucker's favorite thing is giving his
kids in relatives power. He loves doing that. You know
who else loves nepotism, James, Oh.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
I couldn't imagine.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
It's the products and services that support this, that's right, course, Yeah,
that's why they support creating a new feudal monarchy that's
based entirely on blood inheritance.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
You know, we are run by your cousins.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
That always works in the past, and we're back. God,
I love a government where it just matters who your
dad was, and then you're in charge forever. That then
never goes bad, It never leads to like most of
the country dying.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
It's a great principle for human organizing, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yeah? Yeah, who is your dad? You're in charge? Now? Perfect?

Speaker 2 (25:37):
That seems like the best way to choose. I didn't
think we've ever done a bed at way.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
So the Dictator, Carlos Lopez's son, Francisco Solano Lopez Carrio,
was born on July twenty fourth, eighteen twenty six, in
the Capitol. He grows up under the dictatorship until his
adolescent under Doctor Froncias dictatorship until he's like an adolescent,
and then his dad winds up in charge. But he's
ice during like the days of doctor see his dictatorship.

(26:00):
He's completely isolated, not just from any danger, but from
like society. He lives in opulence on his father's farm
with slaves, literal slaves waiting on him hand and foot.
That's his entire early life and he just never leaves
this big farm where his dad is basically God. Now, Carlos,
you know, part of his child rearing tactic is that

(26:21):
he wants his kids to compete for his affection. But
what's interesting is there doesn't ever seem to be competition
to have been like the kid who's going to follow
in his footsteps. He only ever raises Francisco to be
the new dictator right, And so Francisco grows up attended
to by a series of tutors, and until age fourteen,
he never leaves his father's lands. For his biography, Francisco

(26:43):
Solano Lopez and the Ruination of Paraguay Sager Rights, he
expected that all persons except his father treat him with deference,
preferably with civility. Employees were reverent to all the Lopez boys.
Young men led scandalous and dissolute lives without adverse consequences,
except for Venancio, who acquired a waste to disease. Confronted
with no higher authority than his indulgent father, Francisco was

(27:04):
never in a position to learn the interpersonal skills that
most other boys needed just to survive. And so this
is where we get to one of the downsides of
a hereditary monarchy.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Basically, it's a setup for being not a great person.
It's it's surrounded by people who are deferent to you
and never going out.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah except for your dick dad, everyone else could never
argue with you. You can't have a single honest relationship, right, Yes,
And his dad has the op He grows up surviving
in like first the Spanish Empire and then a dictatorship
and learning how to and learning that like you have
to be able to work with other people and rely
on them, and you have to be careful, and you're

(27:41):
not all powerful, and you need to have caution. And
his son is never going to learn any of these things.
His son grows up being turned like you're going to
inherit the country and you literally can't do anything wrong. Right.
This is a really bad way to raise it.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Get this is not great. This is full on like
European monarchy.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
Shit. Yeah. And so despite being groomed for power by
his father, and I was actually as a result of
being groomed for power by his father, Francisco never learns
how to read people or how to convince others of
his opinions. He never has to. He just gives orders
and people obey, And that's a bad way to teach leadership.
The only trait Francisco inherits from his father is an
excellent work ethic He is not lazy. Neither of these

(28:21):
dictators are lazy men. They both work very hard. But,
as Seger writes, he never learns empathy. Quote. Whether he
was born without empathy or just never needed to develop
it is unknowable. The fact remains, though, that of all
the things in life that he lacked, and those were
few in the material sense, the inability to empathize eventually
contributed most to his destiny. You s hear, like a
dune dun dumb there. Yeah, he's gonna get a lot

(28:44):
of people killed. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Also, that is like, you know, when you're writing a
relatively academic tone history, that is that is a burn
that's about as unkind as you can be to someone.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
That's that's about as mean as an academic is allowed
to go.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah. So Francis is surrounded by slaves and employees from
the day of his birth, and he never has a
friend his entire life. He also grows up certain of
his own brilliance and destiny, and this is for sure
his dad's fault. Carlos sends his son off to Buenos
Aires to study the capital of their greatest geopolitical foe,
and when he returns home, Francisco is appointed to several

(29:18):
cabinet positions in succession. His father calls this hands on
training for the future, and Francisco takes the work seriously
if he doesn't show any particular aptitude for it. Carlos
does some similar stuff with his other kids. He hands
each of his kids and he's closer relatives profitable farms
and like real estate packages as well as large numbers
of Afro Paraguay and enslaved people to see what he

(29:40):
can make with them. And it becomes by kind of
the midpoint in Carlos's regime, there's no major industry or
business in Paraguay that one of his direct relatives is
not in charge of, you know, and directly taking a
cut from, which is the primary reason why they're put
in there to take a cut. So the Lopez family
is like skimming like twenty five percent off the top

(30:02):
of the whole cover every dollar you spend, half of
it goes to them straight away in various rates. Americans
are increasingly familiar with this kind of government.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
I'm going to say, yeah, some people in the country could.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
While Francisco learns the ropes, his father expands the surveillance
system that doctor Froncius had built, allowing him to monitor
all foreign entry to the country and watch such visitors
as a hawk. Now that foreigners were allowed to enter
the country despite conclusions, yeah, Carlos opens Paraguay to the
rest of the world during his second decade in power. Right,
he starts letting foreigners in. He starts inviting foreign investment

(30:40):
and industry. Part of what inspires this is there's a
change of regime in Argentina, and so the leadership in
Argentina is no longer saying eternal war against Paraguay. Right,
which makes it a lot easier to open things up.
Carlos Lopez knows that Paraguay is not a powerful country
and that outside its borders, he is not an important man.
His son will utterly lack any sense of this humility,

(31:02):
But Francisco benefits from his father's foresightedness. See. One thing
Carlos becomes big on is sending those promising young men
in Paraguay overseas on scholarships so they can learn how
other countries do things and bring that knowledge back. It's
a pretty good idea if you're in the kind of
situation Paraguay's in in this point in time. So by
the eighteen fifties, Paraguay is trading with the rest of

(31:25):
the world, and Carlos and his son Francisco are basically
co rulers. The Lopez family gets to have a hand
in every major business in the country, and Francisco and
his brother buy and sell land and enslaved people from
the state without paying because other people, like for one thing,
one of the laws basically is that for certain kinds
of transactions, only a member of the Lopez family can

(31:45):
be there to approve it. And so if you're like
selling to Francisco or his brother Benino, a bunch of
slaves that the government owns, like, there's no one to
take the money from the right even if they agree
to like a payment. And also other when there's like
auctions for goods, if one of them shows up, if
a Lopez family members shows up, everyone else knows that

(32:05):
you can't bid anymore. A great situation to be And
if you're a Lopez we got one dollar, Everyone's just
like yep, yeah, fantastic, that sounds like a fair price. Boss, Yeah,
please don't.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
Have any.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Yeah. So the looting of the economy was married to
a vigorous expansion of the military and police, which Francisco
personally oversaw. His father appointed him a brigadier general of
the army when he turned eighteen, and in a couple
of years he's running the army basically for his part. Yeah, yeah,
I'm sure the army loved that. Francisco does read obsessively

(32:44):
about modern European military strategy, theory, and weaponry, and he
becomes deeply interested in Napoleon and equally interested in making
Paraguay a great nation when the European powers would have
to look at with respect. And the only way he
sees to do that is like, well, you have to
have a big, fancy army that's like a European style army.
Otherwise you can't be respected as a nation. You won't
have any kind of like honor that other people are

(33:06):
forced to, you know, acknowledge. And his dad is not
interested in any of this shit. But his dad also
can't say no to his son, and so in eighteen
fifty three, when diplomats from the United States and several
other nations come to the capital to recognize Paraguay and independence,
he gives his son twenty seven year old Francisco Lopez
the job of handling the negotiations. Now Carlos still has

(33:27):
to sign everything, but it was agreed that, like you know,
his kid would be the face of this whole thing.
And after this, foreigners are now able to enter and
leave the former Hermit kingdom at will, so long as
they bring money with them. There were so many treaties
to be signed in this period of time that Francisco
has an excuse to be it has to be sent
overseas where he would conclude both diplomatic work and purchase

(33:49):
a bunch of modern weaponry from Europe. So he's basically like, hey,
this thing with the Americans worked so well. We have
all these other countries now that we're opening up that
we need to make friendship trees with and trade agreements with.
Why don't you let me go to Europe. I can
pick up I can also hang out around some armies,
maybe watch some armies, do army stuff, buy some guns.
So this is gonna be like the big thrill of

(34:10):
Francisco Lopez's life is getting to like go overseas in
his late twenties and hang out in Europe. He's not
bubbing around it because he's basically the Prince of Paraguay.
But you know, here's what, Yeah, he's taking his gap Pea.
He's taken his gap couple of years in Europe to
also like buy a bunch of guns.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
God, who wouldn't want to do that? Yeah? What a dream?
What a dream? To quote from another I'm going to
read from another quote from that article on history is
now dot com. He traveled to several nations in Europe
as minister, the most important of which for him was France.
While there he became fascinated with the French Second Empire
and everything Napoleonic. He would purchase French military equipment, especially
uniforms that were copied from the Napoleonic style. So he's

(34:50):
he's really doing like Napoleon cosplay. And because this is
the period of Napoleon the Third, the French are also
doing Napoleon cosplay now.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah right, yeah, yeah, every one's kind of fat and
there's like a cargo cult version of Napoleon.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
That's great gosplay and I love that.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Like he's like, I've studied military technology, I've traveled abroad,
I've worked it all out. What we need is different
uniforms fits, already selling shows. Everyone's got one of these
Napoleon hats.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
It's also really funny if you go back to episodes
on Napoleon the Third, He's was not great. He had
some success for a while, but it's it's really funny.
Almost a lot of other people like realized, oh this
this is a fucking idiot at the time, but all
of his shtick Napoleon the Third's bullshit works perfectly on
Francisco Lopez. He is the falls for this dude. He

(35:40):
could not be more in love. And it's even funnier.
Napoleon Third does not care for him at all, not
interested in this little two bit fucking dictator.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
That's even better. Yeah, he's just like a Napoleon super
fan at this point, yes, following him around asking for
his sort to graph.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
We just did our episodes on like Alex Karp and
talked about his his like wanna be tor yurgen Haber.
Moss was just not that interested in working with Alex
Karp when he was a young man and Lopez. Francisco
Lopez has kind of the same relationship with Napoleon the
Third where he comes back with like a treaty and
he's like, look, this proves that we're best friends. Like,
read this letter that Napoleon sent along with a treaty
and it's like a form letter where he's like, was

(36:17):
great to have you at the capitol. Yeah, it's like
it's just like a swish right back to her brother. Yeah,
it's really sad.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, it's got like a little uh fill in the
blankoid but his name in there.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Yeah, yeah, the name of Potentate here.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
He's also going his letters from Santa right next to him.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, he's got an identical letter from Santa. Napoleon's the
same shop as the Santa people.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, they both came from the North Pole. Weirdly, you're right.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
So Lopez also hires a bunch of technical experts while
he's over in Europe to help with everything, and he's
gonna move to Paraguay because that's kind of out that
shit works at the time, and in part he wants
to build railways, which is a good idea, and he does,
like build railways across Paraguay, great idea. Trains really work
and it's good to bring in Europeans to help you
with your trains in this period of time. He also
has guys bring in and build a telegraph network, again

(37:12):
a good idea, and he brings in. He brings in British.
I think it's mostly British soldiers to train as artillery
and Austrians to train as infantry, which is also pretty
much who you want to do in those ships. In
this period of time. It's about as good as you
could get. He orders to steam warship, this like big,
kind of modern at the times. By the time it
gets to Paraguay, it's going to be horribly outdated because

(37:33):
it's not like an ironclad But he orders like this
modern steam warship, and he grows obsessed with the idea
of like Paraguay is a modern industrial country with its
own rail system and a modern navy and a big
army with modern steel cannons and some brass cannons. Because
he doesn't have that much money, and yeah, this is
you know, kind of his his dream, right, is this

(37:55):
sort of modern militarized Paraguay and state. Right, And from
an early stage, Lopez is planning out not just how
to like update the military for defense. He wants to
reform the military into a force that can offensively prove
Paraguay and greatness and thus his own greatness.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
I don't think he has like plans for the war
he's going to start yet, but he clearly wants the
option to start a war, right, He's waiting for the
war to present itself.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, yeah, okay. It's always a good way to be.
I feel like it's a good way to go about
your life.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah. Oh, great idea. So if you wanted a great
army in the mid eighteen hundreds, again, you're gonna need
to go, like, get some Prussians, get some Brits, maybe
get some Frenchmen. And Francisco tries to, like when he's
talking to the Prussians, to like get some of theirs, dudes.
He tries to win favor with Prussia by creating a
trade in ballot so that like Prussia feels like they

(38:45):
kind of owe him. And to do this, he brings
five thousand pounds of yerba to Prussia to try to
get German soldiers addicted to this stuff. It's like their caffeine.
So I want their hooks. I need to keep coming
back to Paraguay.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
The British soldiers really showed him the road, didn't they.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
It's really funny. You should have you should have just
tried to fucking import some cocaine. Man, that would have
gone off rights.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Go hard if you're gonna, if you're gonna go for it,
your first yebo's on him.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
I don't think the Yerba's gonna really do it. I
mean nothing against Yerba.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
But it's just not It's got some friends who really
hit the yeba, but pretty hot.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
I like the cannyba every once in a while.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
It's yeah, it's I like it when you get it
in the in the traditional fashion from the gourd.

Speaker 1 (39:32):
I just like his. His His brilliant scheme is to
like get the Prussian Army addicted to your tea. It's
really yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yeah, of all the things that you can grow in
that in South America, right, he's gone with tea, made.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Done with tea. It's also really funny he tries to
bribe like a British industrial leader by giving him a
tiger cup. It's just really cool. I mean, it's probably
pretty bad for the tiger, but it's funny.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, I was gonna say. Also, Hike is just going
to grow up and fuck up that guy's house. Yeah,
I mean late it's kind of taken time bomb so bad.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, congratulations, I've given you a problem for the future.
It would be very.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Funny if that was his goal, Like look at this
cute cat.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah. Now, his prized moment is in his career was
meeting former subject of the show in bru Napoleon the Third,
as I said, who he saw as a brilliant man
and military leader. For reasons that are cannot be explained.
The two have a very formal meeting, but again he's
got to claim they're like best friends. In general, Francisco
Lopez leaves a really bad impression wherever he goes. If

(40:35):
he hadn't been the dictator's son, he'd have been laughed
out of every fine home on the continent for his
rudeness and poor personal hygiene. As his biographer notes and
Ruination of Paraguay quote non Paraguayan's note in his Atrocious Breath,
the residue of his habitual cigar smoking increased his halatosis.
He learned to dress like a military dandy. The generous
funds from his father and Francisco's willingness to spend the

(40:55):
money on himself made him attractive to certain women, so
he's kind of.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Guys the master of like the passive aggression, isn't it
like his little burns? Every every sentence we.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Get absolutely absolutely And you know who else uses money
to appear attractive to certain women? The sponsors of our podcast.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
So you're going to say, the guys that include their
credit score on their dating app profiles.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Is something people do? Honey, Yes, I don't even know much. No,
that's really weird.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
That's wild out there.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
That's incredibly gross. If you're doing that, If you're doing that,
you're listening to the show.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
Stop that, because because my credit store is just fine,
I don't need your.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Whole honestly, go back to the fish, you know what,
Go back to.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah, I think it would be great.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
Outside times there's the fish credit score combo, and that's
like an instant. It really helps, It really helps we
out the without the weirdness.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
That would be an emotional roller coaster, because the fish
person seems happy, secure hopefully.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Really, what we're hearing is that the fish pictures would
work on you the first if you're coming after me,
you show me a fish, fish fish doing all kinds
of things, and not like a mooning fish or something, hidious,
you know, but like a nice looking fish, it'd be
all about it. Yeah, I don't care about credit scories.
Don't know what good credit scori is. I know what

(42:30):
a good fish is. I know what a good fish. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
When I see a good fish and I know what
you're talking about, I said, Sophie, a good video like
I don't.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
I don't need your fish picks or your fish videos.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
I have.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Jim starts right, we're going this is I'm like a
fucking sea lion. You know. This is the only thing
I want in life is fish. I didn't care about
your credits care.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
And we're back. So uh. One of the women that
he meets during his time in Europe is a beautiful
Irish lady, probably Irish lady. We don't know a lot
about her because she's a con woman named Eliza lanch.
Eliza told him that she was eighteen when they met.
This is definitely a lie. Her son would later say
she was more likely twenty two. Other evidence says she

(43:18):
was probably like twenty eight or twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Okay, I got it.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Direction I'm glad it's older than she She said, yes, yes, yeah,
I was worried.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
The main point of this is that we don't really
know where she came from or what she did. Like,
this is a lady who has a shady ass background.
She was at one point married to a French surgeon
and the army and the two. When she meets Francisco Lopez,
she divorces this guy, although it's possible she divorced him
right before. It's kind of unclear to me, but at
least one version of the story is as soon as
she realized she has a chance to like get with

(43:48):
a world leader, she just dumps her husband. She's like, fuck,
this shews credit score and she was all over it. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
the rat credit score. Appreciated it. Dictators have a great
credit score because they owned the credit bureau.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Come on, or we had a fish, or we didn't
know about the coded by historians.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
So Eliza said that she was born in County Cork.
We know the year she says was a lie. Maybe
she was born in County Cork. She would initially claim
that her family were like very tied to British occupation
forces and had made a bunch of money through that.
One of her uncles, she said, was an admiral who
fought under Nelson at Trafalgar. But no one can really
pick figure out who this guy could have been, right,

(44:26):
so he's probably a lie. Tons of admirals who fought
under Nelson at Trafalgars. My take is that she was
kind of a con woman, although an understandable one, fleeing
probably a series of bad marriages and seeking her fortune
in power the only way a woman could in like
the eighteen fifties in Europe. Right, I'm an understandable figure. Yeah, yeah,

(44:50):
I think that's heroic, to be honest. She's scrifting of
bad people, like he's scrifting a guy who needs to
be grifted, right, Yeah, it would be a sin if
this man hadn't been grifted to something extent. Yeah right
that yeah, open goal for someone exactly. You gotta try.
By the time she met Lopez, she was said to
have been working in Paris as a prostitute or cordison,
which I think is a much more likely than some

(45:11):
of the stories she told. The two get together in
eighteen fifty four. Segre describes her as quote beautiful, blonde,
blue eyed young woman with a gorgeous complexion, as well
as a skilled linguist who spoke perfect French and English
and soon learned Spanish and Guarani with equal faculty. So
when she moves to Paraguay, she learns both the indigenous
language and Spanish to like, eat like fluent. So this

(45:32):
is a smart right. She's also a press seach language situation. Well,
like Spanish is the language of government, not not by
the I mean somewhat. I think it's kind of hard
because there are also times where it's like no like
for because for patriots, patriotic reasons, you need to speak
some Grani too, right, I don't have a great sense
of all that. I'm not going to try to delve

(45:53):
too deep into Paraguay and racial politics. That's way outside
of my level of education. Here. She knows European manners.
She knows good wine, though, and because he has terrible manners,
she's able to really help him out at a lot of
these like functions he's going to, and she gets him
addicted to wine. He becomes quite a heavy drinker as
a result of their relationship, and she helps him. You know,

(46:14):
I want to show you, so He's going to show
you a picture of her from eighteen sixty four, So
you're you're seeing this and she's very like classically attractive shoman, right,
she's got bangles on her arms, her hair's done up
in all crazy form. And now fish, I'm not seeing
any fish. But next show, somebody's going to show you
a picture of Francisco Lopez. And the kindest thing I
can say about him is his neck beard is very full.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
Yeah, be a full face.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
It's a full neck beard, to be specific, because that
beard is right on the neck and sidepise rough ya,
he's gone below the bum chin, Like does a bun
chin have a fascinating looking hair? Doom? Yeah? What? It's
a kind of a choice of yeah. And then the
triangles and.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
She looks cool as ship.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
And she looks cool as ship.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
What she got?

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Cool as ship? And like uh j Like what's his name?
Galifron Akus's character from The Hangover that.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Playing Napoleon.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
If you're listening, that'll get you there, That'll get you
right there. And by the way, he has a bunch
of big metals. He invented all those metals for himself.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
And she kind of looks like a step nicks Berry.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
She looks a little like Stevie nicks Yeah, and he
looks like if Lindsay Buckingham did Napoleon cosplay and was
worse looking. Yeah, and it's like she's doing there the
rough sign, does it does a little bit? Yeah, she's
pretty cool. Yeah, got one of those choking necklaces. Yeah,
pretty cool, projenitor of that.

Speaker 3 (47:52):
And you said she's a con woman? Does she conned
this man?

Speaker 1 (47:56):
She cons kind of the country of Paraque.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
And it's a harmless conning.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Okay, Yeah, she.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Probably was Irish. I don't think we really know for sure.
So the two are never married. They do conceive a child,
at least one child together, and based on the math,
this probably occurs during the latter stages of his eighteen
month tour of Europe. During their time traveling together, he
also starts drinking heavily. After France, they visit Italy, where

(48:23):
he's supposed to visit the Pope, but the Pope's like, oh,
you know, a man, so much going on, why don't
you hang out with this other guy?

Speaker 2 (48:33):
He gets snubbed.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
He gets snubbed a lot, and then he goes to Spain,
where he gets snubbed again because his former colonial masters
refuse to sign a Treaty of recognition unless Paraguay allows
children of Spanish citizens in the country to choose which
citizenship they want. Per his biographer quote, Lopez opposed granting
anyone such a right since he was not a supporter
of legal rights. Anyway. This is a great biography. It's

(49:02):
a really fun guy. It's a really good biography writer.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Yeah, logically consistent that it's not that I don't just
want to give you guys rights. I just don't believe
in him full stop, Segar.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
It has my favorite kind of biography where it's incredibly
he read every word this man ever wrote to anyone
that we still have access to, basically, and he hates him,
hates so much. The fuel biography is fascinating. It's one
of my favorite kinds of writing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Yeah, it's the most powerful kind of hatred to dominate
the historical scholarship of someone's life because you hate them
so fucking much.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
As as a hater, I gotta take my hat off
if I was wearing one to Seger, because you're you.
You get our hater of the Week award, if we
were to have such an award during his time in Europe.
Lopez's time in Europe, the Crimean War, you know, is happening,
and Lopez takes the opportunity to observe parts of this
modern conflict. He sees some early modern trench warfare, and

(49:55):
he considers this a crucial part of his military education
for the website History is Now. The experience would prove
invaluable to him, and it gave him knowledge of the
handling on the handling of large armies, especially siege craft.
The Crimean War was defined by the Siege of Sebastopol,
which saw the alleys of Britain, France, the Ottomans, and
Sardinia besiege a Russian army that held out far longer
than anyone thought possible. And so at least that's something

(50:16):
a lot of people will say, is that like this,
this gives him this understanding he's going to rely heavily
on fortifications during the war that he starts that ends badly,
and people kind of suspect part of why is that
he learns how powerful they can be. I think that
people also tend to give him too much credit for
how much he learns from his very limited experience with
the Crimean War, because I don't think he ever is
very good at war. I think he gets lucky a

(50:40):
couple of times, and this I'm getting ahead of myself. Yeah,
that said he does, this is the Crimean war influences
his thinkings on how war should be carried out, certainly,
and that is really important. Again, Eliza and he never marry,
but he does knock her up and decides to take
her back to Paraguay with him when he leaves. Now,
his brother Benino, who's with him on his tour of Europe,

(51:00):
fights him over this and warns him back home that
like no one will accept her. She's been married before,
and this is probably the start, because there's gonna be
He's gonna have his brothers sent to a camp, right,
and some people will say this is where like their
disagreements started. But as a partial stop to his brother
in public feeling, Lopez makes his mistress travel to Paraguay
on a separate ship. Francisco returns home. Yeah, it's poor Eliza.

(51:24):
I think it's pretty nice both though, And maybe she
wanted to break from the dude.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
To me, yeah, maybe that's more of a win for
her than I met.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Wouldn't be shocked if she wanted a break from the dude.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
She's like, oh no, what is me?

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, I'm gonna just put like thirty hot dudes on
this boat with me. That aren't you? Thank you? Okay,
I'll see you soon bye, and gets lost to coum
navigated globe. Yeah. Francisco returns home triumphant with an armful
of treaties and hundreds of foreign workers and advisors who
start flooding into Paraguay, laying down train tracks and reforming
the military. An article I found on the Warfare History

(51:59):
Network by Robert Hege notes that Francisco also returned with
quote several steamships to fell off the embryonic Paraguayan fleet,
along with all the guns, ammunition, and gold braid that
his deep pockets could purchase.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Now against practical critic, can't fight a war that's old
braid as much blain as possible. That's what he learned
from the French.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
We all remember after the expanded Russian invasion of the Ukraine,
when when Zelinski was asked, hey, do you do you
need evak by like Nato and said, I don't need
a ride. I need more gold braid, as much gold braid.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
As you can get in here. I've invented chevern new medals,
and I need to stop them. Yeah, famously rubber. When
you and I were in bean My, they were three
D printing little little little braids.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Yet and that's as Napoleon said, an army marches on
gold braid.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
They do call it scrambled egg. I guess maybe that's yeah,
what's that?

Speaker 1 (52:55):
What's that? Famous line? Amateurs discussed strategy, professionals discussed gold braid.
So all of this gear is part of a plan
Francisco has made to expand and modernize the Paraguayan Army,
and he is this is whenever I read this, I
can't think he's just playing Warhammer forty thousand with real
life dudes, right and the Arms Merchants of Europe or
his games workshop, and he's buying all these cool new models,

(53:17):
right like, oh this is this Gun's cool? I want
one of these. We gotta take these. Yeah wow, yeah
he's Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Many such cases actually in history, this is what happens
when you have hereditary power and awful lot.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Oh it had because this is the Kaiser Wilhelm story.
But Kaiser Wilhelm has a lot bigger budget and way
smarter guys building his military humans to poor He's got
Germany right, Francisco does not just want an army that
looks like Napoleon's, though he wants conquest. Some sources will
claim that from the moment they met, Eliza helped encourage

(53:49):
her lover's delusions of grandeur. Perhiesia's article, Eliza Lynch, like
many a gold digger before her, catered to her meal tickets,
outsized ego, recklessly encouraging his delusions of grandeur in Dreams
of Imperial Glor. I think this is probably a little
too harsh on Eliza. I think it may just be that,
like she understood that with the kind of guy like this,
you only ever tell him his ideas are good, because
otherwise he's done with you. And that's just like how

(54:10):
she survives, you know, trying to start like maybe yeah,
that he isn't really holding it back. Is he's not
quite so subtle. I'm not going to really willing to
blame her about this guy.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
Yeah you go, okay, a little uninvestigated beso to me
on Heat's partner.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Maybe maybe it's not he's not inventing that. People at
the time accused of this. People at the time accused
her of this. Probably not for totally great reasons. So
as soon as he's back in a sancon Francisco takes
on new powers. His father is old and ailing and
happy to delegate to a son who seems to have
proved himself fit for the job. For his part, Lopez
tells everyone who will listen back home about his experiences

(54:49):
befriending Napoleon. He was also known to say bravery and
nothing more than bravery made Bonaparte great, which sow is
a massive understanding of the man that, like Napoleon, was great,
surely for his physical courage, and it's like, no, I mean,
like Napoleon, among other things. Napoleon's approach to warfare was
only really possible because he came to govern a massive
nation that had pioneered conscripting its entire people, right, And

(55:13):
Lopez is going to try to follow in his footsteps
while governing a country that, at its most when he
was in charge, its top population would have been like
around four hundred and fifty thousand people. Okay, yeah, well
he's really behind like burns that many dudes just in France. Yeah,

(55:33):
So the results of trying to apply Napoleonic tactics to
a country that is smaller than Portland, Oregon are going
to be catastrophically. This is not fucking anybody.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Yeah, yeah, geez yeah, that is uh. Yeah, he doesn't
realize he's not playing with the same tack here.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
He sure is not. H And we'll talk about what
happens next in part two. But first, James, you want
to go out given your pluggubles.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Yeah, absolutely so. I have a new cars that you
can listen to from the seventeenth of August on the
Ihelp Media app or whatever else you get your podcasts.
It's called Natural Causes. It's about going outside. We're going
to talk about the politics of going outside. It comes
out once a week and yeah, I'd love to see
you over there.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Has a great theme song and.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Has a great theme song. My friends made the theme
song in my living room, yes, and another friend of
mine made the art. We're doing this very We're doing
this very diy, which is I've never looked at a
thing and thought could I not take longer and spend
more money doing that myself, So it's very beautiful for
me to have all my friends doing this excellent.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Well, please listen to Natural Causes and please keep listening
to Behind the Bastards because the next episode we're going
to tell you how Francisco Lopez does when he finally
gets to take his cool new army out on the tabletop.
Certainly in real life Warhammer with takes of thousands of
human beings, hundreds of thousands, Eventually it's going to be great.
It'll go It would go about as well as it

(56:58):
would have I got to do that, honestly, hundreds of thousand.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Let's say it's impressive percentage he's walking with James.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Wait until you hear how many people he gets fucking killed.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
It is crazy, very excited if it is.

Speaker 4 (57:14):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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(57:35):
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