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

Robert continues telling James Stout about 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 once again to Behind the Bastard's
a podcast where we tell you everything you don't know
about the worst people in all of history. And this
week we're telling the story of Francisco Solano Lopez, the
dictator of Paraguay, probably the worst military leader in all
of history. The only person I've ever read of who

(00:23):
was so bad at being a general that he got
his entire country genocide. It like it's I shouldn't be laughing.
It's a really terrible story. People suffer horribly, but the
level of incompetence is just like it's honestly, like almost
awe inspiring, Like I've never read about anyone doing this
badly at war, and that includes Hitler anyway. James Stout,

(00:44):
welcome back to the show. Sorry to say thank you
before introducing you. I'm excited to see to hear about
so many people dying. Always what I expects, always a
good time. Human death and misery. That's that's the James Stout.
I don't know, James, so I gave you a podcast.
I do, Yeah, I have, I have, Thanks Robert. I

(01:04):
have covered human death and misery for many years.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
But when I'm not unfortunately covering horrible things. I like
to go outside, touch a bit of grass. And my
new podcast is called Natural Causes and it's about going
outside and politics behind going outside.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, I'm gonna get to the bottom of Mike Lee
and why is he like this?

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Why is Mike Lee like this? What does everyone get
wrong about fire suppression? All the important stories?

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, who's evicting the buffalo from public land? Who's evicting
the buffalo?

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Right? And in their defense, buffalo haven't paid rent in
a long time. It's true that they predate the concept
of rent. Yeah, they don't understand money.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Also, should we be calling them buffalo? So I'm sure somebody,
somebody has strong opinions and they're already logging onto Reddit
to tell me that they're called bison.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
I don't know. All I know is that there's cows
and bigger cows and smaller cows, and all animals are
one of those three things, including sharks. Anyway, let's continue
talking about Francisco Solano Lopez. So I just said Francisco,
but we're still in the in the reign of his father,

(02:16):
Carlos Lopez. And as I said last episode, Carlos Lopez
is for the most part, a relatively peaceful he's certainly peaceful.
He's entirely peaceful. He does not start ship beyond his borders, really,
and he's generally even at home, a pretty retiring and
almost tolerant, semi tolerant Tyrant. Again, Tyrant's still semi tolerant

(02:37):
because he's lazy. He doesn't like to do much. And
while every single I mean, he works hard, but he
doesn't like to he's not like an active suppressor of
the people that takes a lot of work. You know,
he likes to outsource some of that. He doesn't like
to go too hard because yeah, I think he understands. Also,
if you crack down on people too much, it fucks
him over. Because one of the things I've just talked
about how kleptocratic the Lopez regime is, and under Carlos

(03:01):
they are stealing like twenty five percent of every dollar
off the top at least. But everyone's also making shitloads
more money than they ever had before because he just
opens the country up, and that's really good for the economy.
No longer being a hermit kingdum like that helps a lot.
So people don't mind generally, right that both at their
secret police, and that he's routing a lot of the

(03:22):
money through his family because things are so much better
than they were under the last dictator, and people don't
tend to think in terms of absolute like is this
fair or not. They think like, well, the last guy,
we were all poorish shit and now I have some money.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, right now I can buy shit. It's yeah powerful argument.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Now again, these still are not nice people because one
of the chief ways of the Lopez family plundered Paraguay
was through trafficking enslaved people. Benino Lopez, Francisco's younger brother,
had a thing for purchasing children of Afro indigenous extraction,
and he is believed to have been a pediast at
a pretty massive scale. Like he is buying kids from
the government to molest is kind of what Sega insinuates. Right,

(04:02):
that's not as uncommon as you want it to be
in like world history, many of these slaves specifically, this
is always bad. But one of the things that makes
this even a little grosser is that most of the
slaves Benino buys are of a and Francisco's buying slaves too.
I don't think he's raping them as much, but he's
still buying a lot of slaves. And most of the
slaves they both buy because they're cheaper, are called liberto,

(04:23):
like that's a legal category of slave and liberto slaves.
You're supposed to free them when they hit twenty four
or twenty five, depending on whether they're male or female,
and the Lopez family just doesn't do this. They're just
buying these slaves because they're cheaper and kind of breaking
what's supposed to be the law. Now. I should also
note that because no one else is allowed to take
payment from like the Lopez brothers for the slaves they

(04:45):
buy from the government, there pretty much just free slaves.
As far as I can tell, they do it for
the love of the game. They doing it for the
love of the game.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Jesus chrisb So.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Carlos again not a nice man, but his documented moments
of direct violent evil are few, and the worst of
them were committed as acts of nepotism and support of
his fuck head son Francisco Solano. After he Lopez returned
from Europe, he's the clear front runner to his aging
fought to be his aging father's successor. Right there'd been
a little bit of debate still, I think beforehand, because
people wondered, well, if he's incompetent enough, they could still

(05:17):
bring in like Menenio maybe. But after he gets all
these treaties signed, everyone realizes like, oh, it's definitely going
to be Francisco. So the two Lopez has put together
a plan to bring European immigrants into Paraguay. Now there's
some racism in this. They want to people the Chaco,
which is this like desolate region of the country, and
there's indigenous people there, but they think they're an inferior

(05:39):
kind of native. Right, filling the region with Europeans would
improve the prestige of Paraguay and the honor of the Lopezes.
The problem was the Chaco's a terrible place to farm,
Like even the indigenous people who'd lived there for a
long time had kind of mostly given up farming because
it's a really bad place to If you have any
other option, you don't want to farm in the fucking Chaco, right,
So about five hund Europeans do agree to move there

(06:02):
and start farming with Paraguay and governmental support. But these
volunteers are, per historian James Sager, global French citizens without
the necessary skills, so they don't know.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
How to farm.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
They don't know what they're doing at all, and they
settle in like the worst territory to farm in the
entire country. The colony collapses and the settlers who don't
go home wind up strewn across Paraguay and in many
cases are arrested by Carlos for breach of contract because
he's like, you said you were gonna farm.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Okay, that's a pretty douchey thing to do right there.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
And they're like, but you said you were going to
support us as farmers, and he said, well, there's no judiciary,
so no one's going to hold me to that.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Really, yeah, a contract only worked away. It reminds me
of the Scots who tried to establish a colony in
the Daddy End and.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Like, yeah, not a good idea.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yeah, no, othern European people in jungle. Yeah, it's always
not unnatural habitat always worked.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
I was just reading a book that was like a
countervailing narrative to the explorer, Percy Fawcett's life, and one
of the things this guy he reads a quote from
like I think it was in like the fifties or sixties,
like an ad for an Amazon cruise that's like, now
you won't die coming, Like we have exbiotics, now you'll
probably live. Visit the Amazon Perfect.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah that's for your holiday. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
So this contributed the uncertainty and anger as a result
of like how this colony goes, and in general the
fact that a lot of these Europeans who come over
realize the country's not quite as nice.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
As they thought.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
It contributes to an undercurrent of resistance to the Lopez
dictatorship that starts to brew through the eighteen fifties as
Carlos gets older. In eighteen fifty eight, several men are
arrested for conspiring to assassinate the president. They probably weren't.
It's probably more likely to say that these guys were
mostly Europeans who'd pissed off the regime by causing problems
for it right in part as a result of business

(07:48):
disputes and stuff, and the Lopez has wanted to get
rid of them. I think that's more what was going on.
One ARRISTI was James Knstadt, who is a British citizen
with Uruguayan citizenship as well. He's like mixed race, and
I think The issue is that he'd been in some
sort of business relationship with a Lopez that soured, and
the same was true of the Daco brothers, one of
whom worked for Francisco Lopez and then embezzled money and

(08:10):
fled the country. Now, his brother, Carlos Duco, had done
nothing wrong, but he had gotten engaged to a woman
that Francisco had a crush on, and she'd turned the
future dictator and current vice president down, and he'd gotten enraged.
Seger describes what happened next. It was widely believed that
the government persecuted young Daco at the insistence of Francisco,
who liked a flower young women of the best families

(08:32):
of the nation, not a breach of the honor code.
His position made him unaccustomed to rejection. Thus the Lopezes
had the Decos executed, perhaps the only great atrocity committed
during the reign of Lopez. The first is how it's
often described. I know that I'd say only but that
kind of the most visibly bad thing he does.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, that's like a textbook dictay to evil dictator shit
right now.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Right, And the fact that he does his first real
textbook evil dictator thing to support his son wanting to
like rape ladies shows you how the Francisco Lopez regime
is gonna go in.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
A lot of grease.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Right now, James canstat the British guy stays alive because
the British government protests immediately and says, well, if he's
done something illegal, he needs to have a fair trial,
which can't exist in Paraguay because the Lopezes are the
gare and so that conflict Bruise and Carlos as this
is kind of like going on, Carlos sends his son
over well, not quite overseas, but since his son to

(09:26):
Argentina in eighteen fifty nine to secure would prove to
be Francisco's greatest diplomatic achievement. So for most of the
last couple decades, Argentina had been quarreling with Brazil for
regional dominance, often over Uruguay, where both nations had intervened
militarily at least once and through other means constantly. Both
Argentina and Brazil also disputed their borders with Paraguay. Brazil

(09:47):
thought they were entitled to parts of North Paraguay and
kept moving settlers over to try to claim it because
Brazil's attitude towards like borders is well, if we have
people there and then it's ours, right. That's kind of
the argument Brazil's making right, and a no document, it
would never again be made in history, never again be made,
not relevant to today's politics, No settlers doing that anywhere.

(10:11):
So Argentina wanted some of southern Paraguay and refused to
give them unrestricted river access. Is partly this is a
broader fuck you to the Brazilians because like, well, if
you're letting Brazilians into your waters Paraguay, then we can't
give you control of the river because you could let
Brazilians into Argentina, I think.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Is kind of the issue.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
You're not an expert on a lot of politics in
this period. This is I'm trying to give you the
overview here. So in eighteen fifty two, Argentina has a
split because there's also a lot of disagreement and instability
within the Nation of Argentina, and there's like a civil
split between the capital, Buenos Aires, and a bunch of
provinces that are united under a guy named Jose di Orquiza.

(10:50):
In eighteen fifty nine, the dispute between these two sections
of Argentina escalates to civil war, and after some very
bloody battles, both sides decide to bring in a neutral
inter mediary, and, for reasons that never really make a
lot of sense, Francisco Lopez gets the job. He does
surprisingly well. There's a timporary treaty that secures peace, and

(11:11):
everyone seems to say like he did a pretty good
job helping to negotiate it. Actually he's not bad, you know. Lopez, though,
is proud of this achievement way out of proportion to
what it represents, because it's good to help broke your
peace between two sides that don't want to go to
war anymore. But if they've already decided, they're kind of done.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
When they've asked for arbitration, I do feel like the
biggest hurdle has been crossed that they've stopped kissing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, if they've already wanted to, well, they're not going
to keep to that. But Lopez is really proud, and
when Urquiza, the Argentina Argentinian leader, offers him his sword,
Francisco insists, your thanks are the only reward that I need.
And then when he gets home, he has a gold
medal made for himself and he puts it.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
On display in the capital. Perfect. I shouldn't even want
the sword because he didn't think it was sufficiently blinky enough.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
It didn't have enough stord. What do you look at
this thing? It's got scrapes on it. It's been used,
been using that shit. That's not it does for? Is
it gold?

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, it's not all gold.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
In eighteen sixty one, the treaty collapses, so just after
two years and Argentina goes back to war with herself.
So not the best treaty ever. I got a real
peace maker. Shit still for a couple of years. It's
a big success, and it's marred only slightly by the
fact that Ess he's trying to leave Argentina and he's
in he's in Buenos Aires, trying to go back to

(12:33):
the flagship of his entire navy, and the British Navy
sails in and then pounds it like, no, you're not
getting on this book. Sorry, we're taking this fucker. We're
the British Navy. Have you heard of the Royal Navy
in eighteen fifty nine?

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, they had not to be fucked with this. But
he wish you had the sword. Yeah, I could have
gone on there, given it some personal bravery like Napoleon.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
You want to you want to fuck with us? Oh okay, sure,
well we'll just take we'll shake out literally the change
in our wallets and blow you out of the fucking
scene where the Royal Navy in eighteen fifty nine. Now,
obviously the British are pissed because of the arrest of
that British Uruguayan dude, right, and so they're taking his capital,
his flagship hostage to be like, look, we won't give

(13:17):
your fucking boat back unless you let her man go,
which is pretty effective power politics to give the British
Empire credit.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah, back in the day they went hard for that shit.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
They sure did. And they're in the right here, right,
this guy probably did nothing wrong. Francisco's a giant asshole
in what has to be And again this should say
something about the kind of asshole Francisco Lopez is that,
like the British Empire are consistently like the most reasonable
people in this story, the British Empire and the Brazilian

(13:47):
Empire are like consistently rational actors here. So in what
happened to have been a humiliating scene, though Francisco is
forced to order James's release, and you know, this is
this is a massive l for Paraguay and for him,
but he gets his big stupid boat back, even though
it's outdated at the time and not very good anymore.

(14:10):
Now by the time this all goes down, that he's
negotiated this treaty and kind of the eighteen fifties or
in the eighteen sixties are starting, Francisco Lopez has developed
a new theory of South American geopolitics, and because of
all of the conflicts Brazil and Argentina had had over Uruguay,
he comes to see Uruguay, as he calls it, the
great Gordian knot, that's like locked in all of the

(14:31):
political machination of the powers of the Platau region of
South America, which is where Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina
are either in habit or touch. All of them are
kind of wrapped up in Uruguay. It's this Gordian not
and if you can cut it, then you can take
real power, right, you know, That's kind of his idea,
and I think he believes this mainly because Brazili and
Argentina can't stop fucking with Uruguay and politics. And previously,

(14:54):
like his dad doesn't seem to really want to get involved,
Doctor Phroncia certainly didn't. But he's going to be convinced that, like, well,
if Paraguay wants to be a player, we got to
start fucking around with Uruguay.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, it must be something that is I think, yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
This is this gives us another beautiful moment of shade
from Sager's book. Although no executive before a Sensus thought
that Uruguay and affairs were so essential to Paraguay's security,
Francisco saw Brazil's intervention there as an insult to his
nation and himself like the only man who ever considered
this important.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
So while he strategized, Lopez continued to obsess over his army,
and he begins increasing conscription rates to a level that
would have eventually made the state go broke. He starts
conscripting so many people that like it is completely unsustainable,
even as good as the economy's been. So if there
isn't the war that's going to come, Paraguay would have
gone bankrupt because of him building up his army to

(15:47):
such an extent, and part of the reason why Paraguay's
army becomes so abnormally large for its size is that
Francisco hired a really incombatant asshole to do a census,
and so he thinks Paraguay has like a million people
in it, and it has maybe four hundred and fifty thousand,
and he's going.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
To first putting up past to sniff test. At some point,
you know'd be like, I know, this guy's no fun
of shit. Maybe we should get somebody who can count
better and bass Like. One thing I've heard is that
if Paraguay had like a million people, he would be
conscripting too many of them for the state to be
able to afford.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
And he's off by a factor of at least too
so he he's drafting way too many fucking dudes. Now
that said, he winds up with a really good army,
probably the man for man, it's the best army in
the region at this point, right by like a meaningful level,
you know, that said. One of the issues is it's
still small and objective numbers. So even though it is

(16:46):
a really good army for its size, if it starts
suffering casualties, these really good soldiers are just not going
to be there anymore. And there's no depth to the
Paraguay and bench, right yeah, because they've drafted so many
of their men already. That said, when it comes if
you're just objectively viewing, well, how did he do in
terms of taking the Paraguay and military to where it

(17:07):
was before and where it was after, he does a
pretty good job of modernizing the military, you know, just
if you're just looking at it military terms. He gets
a bunch of modern cannon from Europe, and he purchases
both modern rifles as well as modern smooth bore muskets
for his men. Unfortunately, as I said last episode, he's
one of these rich kids who gets really excited by
whatever arms merchant he happens to have talked to last

(17:29):
and so he buys a bunch of different calibers of
rifles and smooth bore muskets, and so there's no effective
standardization among the Paraguayan forces. And that's a really bad idea.
Like in the US military, you have most guys in
like a platoon of like actual fighting infantry are going
to have some version of like an ar you know,
that fire that is chambered in five five six, and

(17:51):
they'll have a squad automatic weapon or two that's also
chambered in five five six. You know, you might have
the odd marksman who's using like an air ten and
three oh eight, But most people's rifles, whether using a
machine gun or assault rifle, it's five five six because
you want everyone as much as possible to have the
same bullets. And anyone who was a handgun, they're nine millimeter.
It doesn't matter that is that the best absolute bullet.
It matters is that the bullet we can get the

(18:13):
most of, And is it interchangeable between everybody, because you
don't have to fuck with a bunch of different calibers,
And so Paraguay and like infantry units are going to
have like so many different guys can't just hand each
other ammo, right, which is a huge problem.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
My book I wrote about the Spanish Civil War and
among the anarchists they literally had no I Meani's in
community whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, it's a huge, huge problem. It was a huge issue.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
They'd have to run out after a five fight and
gather up all their brass so they could reload it,
because which is not what should I be doing?

Speaker 1 (18:49):
As a country not great, and so this is going
to be a problem for Paraguay too. He also starts
constructing new iron foundries and an arsenal that gets named
after his most effective deputy, named Whitehead, who is going
to purge not long after establishing the armory that his
military is entirely reliant upon. Factories for producing modern steamship
parts are also created, but most of these factories, whether

(19:10):
they're making steamship parts or cannons, cannot make full steamships
or full cannons without importing parts from Europe, which means
that even though he's industrialized Paraguay, he has not made
it like capable of autonomously arming and supporting its military
in the field. It cannot even repair a lot of
its guns on its own without taking things in from

(19:32):
international areas. And it's landlocked, so if it were to
be at war with Argentina and Brazil the fountries that
border it, it would have no way to get the
replacement parts it needs. Right, So, obviously, whatever you think,
if you're the leader of paraguayas we'll under no circumstances
could I ever allow myself to be at a war
with both Brazil and Argentina. That's frankly unwinnable. Yeah, right,

(19:56):
where we're.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Going if you're a cool back to that one.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, well, we'll talk about that some more later. Yeah.
So it's also worth noting that even once he gets
these factories going, he'll regularly have them like stop making
weaponry and parts for the military to build fancy like
wrought iron structures for his homes and for like the
mansions of his relatives and his mistress. So it's like
military production and or producing luxury goods for just my

(20:24):
family is like all that seminary.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Factories, see to do it?

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, that's what I've exactly. So in the latter years
of his father's rule, Lopez started employing journalists, both to
write for local papers which he edited, and to write
articles for foreign papers. He would pay journalists to write
puff pieces about him to put them out in like
British mainstream media, right he would. He had mixed success
with this, because, for one thing, the articles are so

(20:49):
bad and so obviously full of shit that a lot
of editors are like, well, I don't want to publish this,
and he's getting this must have been a great gig.
If you're a journalist with no soul because like one
of the reporters who's writing a puff piece for him
quotes as his like pay. He wants one hundred and
fifty ounces of gold for a propaganda article, which is

(21:09):
a crazy rate per word, by the way, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, shit, I need to get up my gamepently.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah. I think I like I've done better than most
writers of my age. But I don't think I've ever
gotten one hundred and fifty ounces of gold for an article.
That's a hell of a rate.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
I didn't think I've ever gotten any gold. I don't
think I could have a buy a single ounce with
what I made from a single article.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
I got paid in liquor once, but never gold. That said,
this guy doesn't actually get paid with gold either. Lopez
counteroffers with like a huge quantity of high quality yerba
that's worth one hundred and fifty ounces of gold, and
the journalist says, yeah, so I guess the journals says
to learn the yer betrayed or something. Yeah, right, how
do you how do you dispose of that much? Yea,
maybe he's just taking it all cheap coffee.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
I've done some working kind where I got like free bikes.
But yeah, yeah, a bunch of a bunch of year. But
it would be hard to get rid of shitload a year.
But I'll take it.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Man. If any year of a companies want to advertise, yeah,
come at us, YERBAMT. I don't have an issue with it.
I think it does cause cancer, but what doesn't anyway,
Email Sophie if you know what doesn't cause cancer?

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Oh, I was going to talk about selling the amte.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Okay, no either that sure, email Sophie for any reason
you want. She loves emails.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
It's I write. Okay, that's right.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
That's her email, A blue Sky address.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
Use email. Everything's blue Sky DMS.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
Everything's blue Sky DMS. If you see my face, you've
hit the right account. In eighteen sixty two, Carlos Lopez died.
It had already been decided for quite some time that
Francisco would follow in his father's footsteps. There was a
brief formal delay so Congress could convene and vote him president,
but Congress only convened when Lopez ordered it, and he

(22:54):
literally people couldn't speak in Congress unless they were reading
like a script that he'd had written for them.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
That that is amazing Congress is a pray like I
would say.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Not at all like our congress, but actually these days
it's a little like at least half of them.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, these about Congress, right, Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
This is pretty much just for show, the whole Congress
convening the stuff. Right. One of his first changes once
he's now the president is to make his Irish mistress,
Eliza the official center of a scion high society. Whether
or not Miss Lynch invited you to her home is
how you knew you were in favor with the president,
who could and increasingly did, order people in prison for

(23:37):
annoying him. A lot of people found out they were
about to be imprisoned and eventually in some cases murdered
because they'd get uninvited from like one of the regular
parties Eliza would throw. And then it's like, okay, get
your fucking will in order, man Francisco's least, Yeah, time
to get the fuck out. Although it's illegal to leave
the country without explicit permission from him, Lopez officially declared

(23:58):
that attending parties end of Vince that his family members
and mistress through was a patriotic duty. If this lady,
I'm shupping and throws a party. In order to be
a proper Paraguay and patriot, you have to show.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Up, amaze if she's invited to you.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah. Now, part of his goal, one of the things
he's doing here is he's consciously building a ruling class
for Paraguay because it hadn't had one, you know, it
starts to get one under Carlos, but again, doctor Francia
like wipes out what had been there, so it's kind
of a blank slate and he's able to Francisco is
able to make because he's also doing this during his
dad's reign. He builds the new ruling class of Paraguay

(24:35):
in his image and to be fundamentally subservient of him.
The whole Paraguay and ruling class exists to recognize and
proclaim the honor of Francisco Lopez. That's that's what it's for.
It might be better to be poor, it's not going
to be better to be poor, because he just drafts
them into his military. So since the first dictator had

(24:56):
left basically no ruling class behind. Again, it's what exists
in Paraguay is an entirely a creation of Francisco. Now
he becomes mildly annoyed in eighteen sixty two when Argentina
concludes its civil war and makes a fellow named Bartolome
Meter Miterer the president m I tr miter had congratulated
Lopez during the negotiations in eighteen fifty nine that he'd

(25:17):
conducted they'd have like a decent relationship back then. But
Francisco cannot forgive this guy for the fact that, like,
they go back to war after he makes a peace
treaty for them, and that the guy he had liked
most isn't the leader after this new war finally ends.
It's this guy Miter right, he never really he considers
the sustain on his honor, like and it's offensive that

(25:39):
they went back to war and then made a different
guy the president. But the considers that a direct insult. Yeah, yeah,
an incredible way of conducting yourself in the world. Like
this is the tragedy here is that you guys snubbed
my peace deal. Sager will note. He's also really pissed
that Argentina doesn't stop Great Britain or try to stop
Great Britain from impounding his flagship back in eighteen fifty nine,

(26:02):
and Sagre thinks that probably was an insult by the
Argentinian state. I don't. He knows more than I do, certainly,
But like, could Argentina have really done anything?

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, anyone?

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, yeah, like in the America's maybe the US Navy,
but I honestly, in eighteen sixty, I don't. Yeah, probably
in the Americas. In the Americas maybe, but not during
the Civil War, right which this is.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Say they're about to start shoot each other.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
So yeah, no one really wants to fuck with the
Royal Navy. Yeah it is Royal Navy. Yeah, they're kind
of doing as well as they've ever done here.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah. Pretty good at boats, Yeah, very good at boats.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
As Saga notes in his biography of the Man, Francisco Solano,
Lopez was myopically obsessed with himself and his own honor,
to a degree unusual even among potentates. Quote historians who
spend their time reading correspondence between leaders of the Hispanic world,
including monarchs, are struck by Francisco's excessive use of me.
I and my critical readers of his correspondence without any

(27:04):
other knowledge of his character, would judge him at least
an outlandish egotist. Francisco proclaimed his honor feeling correctly that
he needed to remind others of it. Honor was a
zero sum game. It was a value system to which
he clung in the absence of other personal qualities such
as pragmatism and common sense and empathy. Really hates this guy, yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's motivated by a Bernie hatred.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
My favorite of biographer for sure.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
To see what it must have been like in grad
school for this guy just burning the midnight row with duty.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Fucking hates yeah, Seger. If you happen to listen to this,
First off, I hope I haven't fucked this story up
too bad. And second, I hope you find another man
to hate and write about because I want to read it.
If you're still alive. He might be dead. I don't know.
I think the book was published in two thousand and seven.
Every negative aspect of Lopez's personality, including his obsessive reading
of military theory and micromanaging the army, which convinced him

(27:59):
he was a budding mill terry genius right Like, he
is just absolutely sure that he's like a fucking like
Napoleon in waiting, and he just needs a chance to
like establish himself and he's going to finally, in the
early eighteen sixties get that chance. And I'm want to
quote now from an article in The Collector by Ilias
bin abdel Jalil quote. He established an alliance with Uruguay

(28:21):
and President Bernardo Barrow of the Blanco Party. Lopez aimed
to unite the smaller regional nations as a third force
on the continental level and directly influenced the Rio de
la Plata Basin. This displeased Brazil, who then openly supported
a rebellion of the Colorado Party in Uruguay in eighteen
sixty three. Despite Paraguay's threats of intervention, Brazil invaded Uruguay
in eighteen sixty four. Francisco Solano Lopez declared war in

(28:45):
December of eighteen sixty four, invading the province of Matto Grosso.
So that's how the war that we've been building up
two starts, right. Lopez is pissed that Brazil and Argentina
are bossing him and everyone else around. That's how he'd
frame it. And so he wants to unite these smaller names,
starting with Uruguay, in like a third force, and like
then we can we can compete and by we, he
means he because he wants to lead it with these

(29:06):
great powers. Right, he wants to turn Paraguay into a
great power by uniting these smaller nations under its banner.
And he does this by getting involved in Uruguay and politics.
And then Brazil basically supports, you know, a rebellion in
Uruguay and sends their army in and he declares war
on them, and he's going to invade Modogrossa, which is

(29:26):
a province that's got a lot of minerals. This is
if you're Paraguay and you want to be a more
powerful nation, this is like the first place you'd want
to invade because it gives you the ability to actually
start producing industrial products of your own in a way
you currently can't. Now that said, starting a war with
Brazil as Paraguay not necessarily a great idea.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, it's a bold move.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
It's a bold move. Brazil in eighteen sixty four had
between probably ten and twelve million people, right, Paraguay's population
is again at most maybe half million, probably like four
hundred and fifty something one thousand.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Peace giving paper covers.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Raw. Now that said, well, this isn't a great idea.
On its face, there is some justification here, right, Brazil
did intervene and basically push this rebellion in Uruguay, like
they're kind of the dicks at the start, right, And
so's there's an argument to be made, right for why
Paraguay would need to get involved here. And there's also
the potential when it's just Paraguay invading Madagros. So there's

(30:27):
the potential that this could end with some sort of
negotiated thing that works out for Paraguay. Right, if Paraguay
can hand the initial Brazilian forces in the area a
substantial defeat and then force them to make peace or
at least lock them into a war where Paraguay's kind
of defending the territory they've taken, and they can make
it too expensive, Brazil might sue for peace. Right, it's

(30:48):
a chance, but that actually could have happened, right. So
in November of eighteen sixty four, Lopez orders his men
to seize a Brazilian merchant vessel anchored off of Assncion.
That's how he starts this war against Brazil, which is
a really good move because first this thing is loaded
with military equipment. There's a lot of shit that Paraguay
needs desperately, so this is going to fuel their war effort.

(31:09):
The fact that they've captured this boat and some other
stuff they're going to capture in the early days of
the war is what gives them the arms and armaments
to be able to fight. They also capture the governor
of Mato Grosso, who happens to be on board at
the time, which is a great way to start your
invasion by capturing the guy in charge of the province.
Kind of found money, right, you're doing. Lopez is doing
pretty good at the start of this, and they when

(31:31):
they invade that Brazilians there's two armies I think in
Mato Grosso, and the Paraguayans just absolutely smash both of
these Brazilian armies because these are like Brazilian frontier forces.
They're meant for more police actions and Brazil isn't really
expecting to come into a pure conflict and Paraguay's built
a pretty good military and so he just beats the

(31:52):
fuck out of these early Brazilian forces and sacks the
provincial capital of Kuiba, and Lopez announces that Mato Grosso
is now part of part He annexes it all. So again,
if I'm like wargaming this, the smart thing to do
would be fortify what you've taken and hold down and
try to your best decayed really good relations with Argentinas

(32:13):
that you can still get more supplies through trade. You
know you would, you would hope maybe the fact that
Argentina and Brazil have been at each other's throat so long,
it is something you can take advantage of, right, this situation, right,
and maybe probably honestly, in the best case scenario, Brazil
would sue for peace and then in another twenty years
there would have been another war and they might have
probably would have taken it back. Right, it's just a

(32:35):
much bigger country. I don't I don't know that I
see this ever have would have worked out for them
in the long term. But it could have worked out
for Francisco Lopez during his lifetime. That wasn't impossible, right,
But as soon as the fact that he beats that
and he's like, he's not like leading leading, but he's
at the head, he's leading his army. He's there. Right,

(32:55):
the fact that he starts this war and it immediately
goes so well and his forces win two big battles
it goes to his head. Immediately, he loses his mind
the second this happens, and you know who else loses
their mind?

Speaker 2 (33:10):
The product is.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Yeah, yeah, because I gave everyone her email. But yes,
also the products and services to support this podcast. All
of them have been fifty one fifty. They're not allowed
to make any decisions for themselves, so you can get
some pretty good deals on their websites right now, and
we're back. So, as I left off, Francisco Lopez has

(33:37):
had like his first little hit of military victory and
then completely lost his fucking mind and decided I am
the god of war and cannot be defeated. Oh this
is kind of go really badly for everybody.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, take into two massive powers.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, so what's actually happened here is that because of
unsustainable conscription and military spending, he had a simple an
army way more powerful than Brazil was Brazil's like forces
in the area were prepared to put down but Brazil
has reserves get a population like twenty times is right,
And like all authoritarian leaders who confuse themselves for military masterminds,

(34:16):
Napoleon included Francisco immediately oversteps before I talk about the
next stage of this war. I want to show you
all a map of the Plateau region of South America
where all of the shit is going down. So if
you're listening and you can't see this. On the you know,
the east side, you've got Brazil, big country, and on
the west side you've got Argentina, pretty big country. And

(34:40):
then in the middle it's almost like Brazil and Argentina
are doing a yin yang thing. And then the dot,
one of the dots in between the yin yang is
Paraguay and one of them is Uruguay. One thing you'll
notice is that Paraguay doesn't touch Uruguay, right, Like, they're
kind of close, but they're not bordering each other, whereas
Paraguay is comple letely surrounded by Brazil and Argentina. Yeah, yeah,

(35:04):
are pretty much completely surrounded by Brazil and Argentina. So
keep the keep in mind the fact that Paraguay doesn't
touch Uruguay. And the start of this war is because
he's getting involved in Uruguay and politics and considers that
to be the Gordian knot that he has to solve,
you know, in order to become a regional power. Right now,
what this means the fact that like Paraguay isn't touching Uruguay,

(35:24):
is that if he wants to, if Lopez wants to
reinforce his allies that have just been overthrown in Uruguay,
He's gonna have to go through Argentina to do so.
And so after he beats these Brazilian armies and takes Matagrosso,
he reaches out and he says, hey, Argentina, can I
like send an army into Uruguay through your territory so
I can like handle this whole situation. And Argentina says no,

(35:47):
and Francisco, showing his true brilliance as a military leader,
says fine, I'll declare war on you fuckers too, and
he declares war on and invades Argentina.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Oh God, keeping.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Track, he has now declared war on an invaded the
two countries that surround him, both of which are vastly
larger than his own country. So Argentine's population at the
time is roughly one and a half million, which is
three times or so the population of Paraguay, in addition
to the population of Brazil, to say nothing of the
population of Uruguay, which is also going to get involved

(36:18):
against fucking Paraguay, Lopez starts calling himself by the old
dictator's nickname, El Supremo. He convenes congress and he tells
them to declare him Marshal of Paraguay. So Napoleon was
a marshal. Marshall is like a really fancy military rank.
It's even better than general. So he's got to be
a marshal since he's such a great military leader now
and there's the directest continental war. Yeah, he's huge up.

(36:41):
So he's declared Marshal of Paraguay next. Per an article
in the Warfare History Network, Lopez followed the declaration by
capturing two Argentine naval vessels in the Bay of Corientes,
then occupied the sleepy little town of the same name.
Not content with anointing himself the new master of the
Corintees Province on the basis of this petty triumph, Lopez
declared himself the new new ruler of the adjoining province
of Ontre Rios as well. It was then that the

(37:03):
would be warlord's luck began to run out. By this time,
the Flores faction had managed to come out on top
and Uruguay those are his opponents. Whereupon the new regime
promptly announced its intention to stand shoulder to shoulder with
Argentina in its hour of need. On April eighteen, Argentina
and Uruguay declared war on Paraguay. Two weeks later with
its own acts to grind, Brazil secretly threw in with

(37:24):
Argentina and Uruguay, pledging to help bring all their forces
to bar until the existing government of Paragua should be
overthrown and no arms or elements of war should be
left to it. The stage was now set for a
wide ranging South American war. So Lopez's enemies now call
themselves the Triple Alliance. And he has now started a
three against one fight where the population is more like thirty,

(37:45):
like twenty five or so against one, something like that.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
He ready bought people together. He's a great unifier of people.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
I think his enemies can call on between two and
three dozen men for every single man he has in
the country, not in the military, in the country. Christ Yeah,
really bad idea. Yeah, damnity, that's not advise. Yeah, for
like a reference in military strategy. And this has been
going on for hundreds of years. The attitude up to

(38:13):
the present day really is that if you want to
be certain of victory in an offensive action, you want
to have about three times the numbers of the defenders
and wherever you're attacking. So again he's out numbered thirty
six to one. Yeah right, not a great start. Yeah.
So in April of eighteen sixty six, the Triple Alliance
launches an invasion across the Piranha, shattering a major paraguay

(38:37):
and fortress and battering Lopez's navy, which was now horribly
outdated in a war of ironclads and modern cannon. The
Army Argentina Sins, led by President miter Meter or whatever,
is sixty thousand men on its own, more than ten
percent of the entire Paraguay and Populace. So he has
invaded with an army that's ten percent of all of Paraguay.
More really than that, like fifteen genius that he is

(39:01):
el suprimo counterattacks to the north and leads his men
to the Battle of Tayuti, which is an immediate and
terrific military disaster. Disaster now it shouldn't have been. He
still has going into this battle the best army in
the region. It is a better army pound for pound
than the Brazilian army and it's like a huge, dense
swamp thicket. And because of the situation, the smart thing

(39:23):
military stories agree, well, if he just have, like once
he had the Brazilians kind of in the area and
they knew a battle was coming, he should have entrenched
his forces and tried to get them to attack him.
The smart thing to do, and the smart thing to do,
based on like the military tacticians that Lopez claim to admire,
was to kind of dig in and try to goad

(39:44):
the enemy into a defensive battle. Lopez, though, is convinced
that he can't be beaten, and so he orders a
charge and he sends this precious veteran army that he
is painstakingly built and blooded and in two countries, and
he sends them sprinting directly through a thick swamp into
a line of guns. This does not go well. Yeah,

(40:09):
but at least John Snow wasn't against guys with fucking cannons.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Swamp running is famously a really easy thing to do.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
And you like, I've read a lot of you know,
I've seen a tiny amount of battle, and I've read
a lot about battles. I can't imagine a worse situation
than spinting through a swamp into.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
A gun line. I've moved through a few jungles and
uh yeah, it's a lot of shooting people.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
And again this is by any objected to a good army.
They could have at least won or at least pulled
out a pretty close loss if someone competent had been
in charge. But here's what happens. To continue with that
article from the Warfare History Network, Blundering forward in a
series of waves, the heat of the noonday sun beating
down upon them, Lopez's troops doggedly slogged through the reed,

(40:58):
choked thickets as their adversary opened fire. For every yard
they gained, The Paraguayan ranks were decimated by shot and shell.
The closer they got to the Allied positions, the more
terrible the carnage became. Those few hardy souls who managed
to get within reach of the Allied positions downd themselves
blasted to pieces by withering volleys of rifle fire. Entire
battalions were lost. So I don't you're not ready for

(41:21):
how bad this fucking battle goes. Lopez burns the pride
of his army in a single day, more than six
thousand Paraguayan soldiers are killed. For an idea of how
bad that is, the Battle of Antietam, which occurs close
to the same time, is still the deadliest day in
US military history. Fewer than four thousand men die on

(41:42):
both sides. When you can just one, two thousand Paraguayan
soldiers died in this battle and you consider how small.
Sorry you're so Yeah, I was gonna say, a country
that is like a fraction of the size of the US,
exactly three percent of the entire nation dies in a day.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
On I was about to ask for how much of
the population.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
That three percent of the Paraguayan nation dies on the
field in one day.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
That's mad shit.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Dude is a terrible leader.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Yeah that is Did you call me chef? Like, yeah,
that must have been horrific. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
From this point on, the war is unwinnable for Lopez.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Like, hell, yeah, he got no dudes left, no very few.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Well, he has a lot quite a few dudes left.
He has no more dudes who are like of responsible age.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
To fight left.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Oh god, yeah, yeah, that's where we're headed. So the
allies and circle his chief fortress, the Humaita and in
September of eighteen sixty eight, they finally managed to breach it,
under the command of a Brazilian general, the Marquis de Caussius.
This write up from history is now describes how Lopez
prepared for and lost this battle. For the Marquis, a
pitched battle was what he wanted, he was simply unable

(43:00):
to achieve it. At this stage, Lopez knew his numbers
were low and he had limited prospects of getting more men.
Preteen boys and old men were being conscripted into the
Paraguayan army. These young men would prove some of the
Marshal's most devoted followers. The use of child soldiers would
be one of the biggest stains on the Marshal's record
and as one of the great controversies of the war.
For the Paraguayans, they felt they had no alternative. According

(43:20):
to the Marshall's propaganda, the Allies were going to partition
the country and the Brazilians were going to enslave them.
As has been seen, Marshal Lopez was not one to
sit and wait for anything to happen to him. He
would make attacks during the siege and at times put
the Allies back on their heels. Active defense seemed to
be the tactic Marshal Lopez excelled at, but his army
was also starving. A larger proportion of his soldiers every

(43:41):
day was made up of children and old men. Weapons
were outdated, ammunition and powder were short. It was amazing
that the Paraguayans held on as long as they did,
but the Marshal could feel the squeeze he was being
put under. Slowly, steadily, month after month, the Allies strangled
the Paraguayans. The Brazilians showed early in the siege and
that their ironclads were able to run the guns of
the fortress and make it up river, virtually defeating the

(44:02):
purpose of the fortress at that location. With the fleet
now able to go up river and shell Paraguayan positions,
who might have slowly became untenable, small scale counterattacks would
not be enough, the Allies inexorably closed in. So you know,
it's a at this point, it's not like obvious massive mistakes.
It's just he's made the war unwinnable for himself. From

(44:22):
the stage right, Lopez abandons his positions and he takes
the best of his men with him, leaving a starving
rearguard to hold the fortress made up entirely of children
and starving men who were dying when they surrender. And
the guys who surrender are known by the Resilians having
like yellow skin that's just hanging off them because they're
just nearly dead. They look like they just got on
America camp. Right when they surrender. He has his spies

(44:46):
hunt down the family of the officer responsible and torture
them because he's like, how dare you surrender when you
were all about to starve to death to try to
save the literal children that I left in your command.
Cheers to that dude for trying to save the kids.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
I guess, yeah, not anymore. That guy's no longer Yeah true,
and yeah, tortured and murdered, all that good stuff. Lopez
demands were asked for a brief parlay at this point,
and there's like a peace negotiations between the Triple Alliance
and Lopez. But their stance is like you're done, right,
You're done, and there need to be consequences, and Lopez's

(45:24):
stances nuh uh, So this doesn't really work out. The
Allies eventually carry on in another attack and they assault
his forces at a place called Krupiti. And again Lopez
is as idiotic as he is in his grand decisions
when it comes to like tactical moves, He's not always awful, right,
And the Paraguayans have good defensive positions like they should

(45:45):
have had at the other battle we talked about, and
they managed to throw back the Allies and inflict horrific casualties,
so many that like the Argentinian president quits the war entirely.
He doesn't pull Argentina out, but he no longer has
stomach for direct command. And there's like a year long
lull where basically the Allies have to like recover and

(46:06):
redress their militaries and whatnot, and you know, get them
out of the count. Also, everyone's sick and dying in
the ally army constantly because it's a war in the
eighteen sixties, and that's just how.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Shit ever, shitting themselves.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
And yeah, the Paraguay's a bit less because it's their territory.
You know. For the next year, a small army of
Brazilians augmented by an even smaller Uruguayan force, keep the
paraguay and military bottled up. It only takes four or
five thousand men to do that at this point in time,
but they're not able to take any more territory. And
while this is all going on, our boyfriend Cisco Lopez

(46:40):
is stuck in his capital ascension, which he knows he's
not going to be able to hold onto that much longer,
getting angrier and angrier and crazier and crazier, and taking
his problems out on everyone else. In the yearly years
of his reign, Lopez had publicly disdained torture. He didn't
keep doing that for much longer. So I want to
quote now from an article published in the Journal of

(47:00):
the Americas titled Court of Blood by Thomas Wigham. Court
of Blood is what they called Lopez's like pallace and whatnot,
like his his his basically his like close friends, because
he kills and torches his friends and family during this period.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
Is that nearly also that he thinks you're invited to
the court.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
The nickname that people do because he kills all of
his former buddies. Basically, here's Wigan. In eighteen sixty eight,
he issued a decree invoking the old laws of the
Indies and establishing a series of two man tribunals to
investigate and prosecute those accused of treason. In fact, the
government had already suppressed the colonial legal codes during the
early eighteen forties, but the regulations concerning trees and as

(47:40):
first defined for Spain and medieval times under the Siete Partidas,
were still in force. Underval this medieval code, the monarch's
subjects were required to acknowledge love, fear, honor, and protect
the king by the command of God, whose place he
occupies on earth. Any individual failing in such duties would
necessarily be guilty of treason and would be put to
death on this account. And if he could not be found,

(48:02):
he must lose all his property and be forever banished.
So that's the attitude that he establishes, Like if you
are not loving and respecting and fearing and protecting me,
then you die, And if you escape, I'll fucking kill
your family. Is kind of how things go.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Right the pot. I think he's probably got locked down
at that point.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
The other one's got so much, not so much the
other ones. Now, the story goes that as Francisco is
fleeing the Humit to that fortress, with some of his
men before it falls. He learns that there's a coup
brewing in the capital, centered around his younger brother Beninho
and the American Ambassador Charles Washburn, and there had been
from the time he got to power, there had been.

(48:41):
This is another thing that contributes to him like getting
increasingly angry at his brother Beninho. A lot of people
thought Beninho should have been the president, not because he
was smart or better, but because he was like dumber
and less of an asshole. And people will, I mean,
he's a pedophile monster. So like that shows you how
bad Lopez is. Is that like the Betterest It's like, well,

(49:01):
comparatively not nearly his people. Yeah great, yeah boy. So
he hears about this coup that may or may not
have actually been brewing, and Lopez Wines gets really pissed,
and so he arrests all these guys, including the American
ambassador and his own brother, and he hosts a bunch
of show trials and mass executions. He executes his brother Beninho,

(49:24):
he executes Washburn after torturing all of these guys are
tortured horrifically. He executes dozens and dozens of highly placed
and powerful Paraguayans and foreigners. I don't even know that
we have like a good number for what becomes known
as the San Fernando massacre because they had this big
open air concentration slash death camp. There's a contemporary semi
contemporary lithography like an illustration illustrating uh, San Fernando. So

(49:47):
and you just see this picture. It's just like hundreds
of people in this open air fenceless camp being like
whipped and stabbed, yeah, tortured.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, it's like one of those paintings of hell.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah, it's like it looks almost like a Bosh painting. Yeah,
like you can see the fucking what must be vultures
overhead for all the corpses. Yeah, it's just an awful situation.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah. Now he's pissed off the Americans now and in
addition to the to Argentina and Brazil.

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, and he pissed off the Americans a bit before
with some of his fockery. This really gets the Americans.
He's kissed off.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
There is a big one.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Yeah, the whole country gets pretty pissed off, or at
least in imprisoning the ambassador at this point. So the
article I quoted from earlier by Wigham includes a haunting
description of how this open air death camp worked. Prisoners
of both sex has arrived at the latter camp daily.
The detained women, nearly all upper class in origin, and
enjoined the privilege of remaining unshackled, with each receiving a

(50:46):
cured hide for a bed. Otherwise they had to suffer
in the open air like the men, and consume the
same poor fare of unsalted beef and portions even smaller
than those doled out to the troops. Once a day,
the prisoners received a cow horn of water from the
nearby lagoon, but they were permitted to visited only to
answer the call of nature. Given the prevalence of dysentery
in the camp and the reluctance of guards to escort
the prisoners from their place of confinement, it was inevitable

(51:08):
that many of the accused had to squat in their
own filth. At night, all of the prisoners were chained,
though the men's circumstances were more difficult than the women's.
Lassos were stretched between heavy poles driven into the earth,
and to these ropes. The men were tied with leather thongs,
and groups of twenty to thirty placed in rows stretched
on the damp, slimy ground, where they rested, suffered, and slept.
Thus assembled, these accused conspirators already thin, rapidly sunk, many died.

(51:33):
Jesus nice man, Yeah yeah, yeah, did he lend that
one in his European trip.

Speaker 2 (51:39):
Sounds like he came up with some of that himself.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
This is also maybe the first time I've heard of
like a lot of death camps, and you know, sometimes
people who used to be close to the leader went up.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
In the death camp.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
This is the first death camp that's like entirely populated
by like his former East buddies and family.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
It's the upper class death camp.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
He kills two of his brothers here. Yeah. He has
his own mom arrested and tortured for like allegedly having
suggested that he might have been born out of wedlock
to I think like a black woman. There's like rumors
about that too, that he's not really or his dad,
or that his dad's not the real father. I think,
actually was it. I forget exactly because there's a bunch

(52:16):
of different rumors about his parentage, but like he has
his mom. The fuck with his mom over this stuff? Yeah,
that is psychoshit, that is, yeah, it's funny something else.
Lopez by this point has been massacrering, is massacring his
own people at home, including members of the clergy and
his own family. But the slaughter he reeks on those
closest to him pales in comparison to his continued insistence

(52:40):
on waging a lost war now without a functional, professional
adult army, right, because that's still going on.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
So that's the other thing, Right, he's got the meat
grind that he could put these people into, that he's
taken the time to torture them at home instead. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
And I should also note that, as I said, every
time the Allied army show up in like force, there
camps are these filthy, disease riddled hell holes, right, and
that keeps spreading disease to the locals, right, local Paraguayans
also get cholera in mass and start dying in huge numbers.
You know, obviously a lot of his soldiers die from

(53:16):
that too, But like his people are dying as a
result of the war, not just because he's conscripting them
and throwing them into a meat grinder, but because he
started this war. And now a bunch of the country
is occupied, diseases become endemic, and people are dying in
fucking mass perfect.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
He's dying, Minister genius.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
He's fucking brilliant. So the capital eventually falls after a
renewed Allied assault in eighteen sixty nine. The rest of
the war after this point is from on, like the
Paraguayan side at least, is a series of a bloody
series of suicidal charges and attempted ambushes by armies of
untrained child soldiers flung in the way of the Brazilian

(53:55):
army by Francisco Lopez, just to protect him. Right, He's
just repeatedly having kids act as his like ableative armor essentially.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Yeah, he's just slowing them down with the bodies of children.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yeah, wave after wave of his own mint now not
man children, yeah, yeah, is Zach bran Agan, but with
like thirteen year olds. So the summary of one such
slaughter in the article that article by the Warfare History
Network is chilling, and I'm going to read that now. Caballero,
who is Lopez's general at this point, and about four
thousand of his troops withdrew, leaving the remainder, including a

(54:26):
handful of middle aged campasinos and a host of underage
boys to face the enemy. As the Marquis de Cahias
and his soldiers reached the far end of the span,
the desperate Paraguayans, down to mostly machetes and rusty bayonets,
left their positions and rushed forward to meet the enemy
head on in a suicidal charge. From there, the action
quickly degenerated into a vicious, murderous brawl. The Brazilian superior

(54:47):
numbers and the simple fact that they still had bullets
carried the day in a matter of minutes. The fight
at Yatroro was over afterward, when the weary Brazilians began
inspecting the enemy dead and realized that a sickening number
of them, boys no older than fifteen, many of the
soldiers wept. One thing that you tell you how horrible
this is is a major problem for the Allies is
that their soldiers and officers keep breaking down because they're

(55:11):
murdering so many children.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah, they just can't take it. They Yeah, it's that's uh.
I was talking to a soldier in Meanma, Fighter and
Memma last week. It was telling me how how emotionally
difficult it has been for them fighting yet conscript your children,
same thing. Not good for the human soul.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Actually, it's just really bad to mow down tons of
like thirteen year old boys who don't want to be
who don't want to be there, and like you know
that they're like, there's no there's one of the things
interesting when you read quotes about this, there's no like
bravado or like, you know, very little pride, even marshally,
and what's happening at this stage, it's just a lot
of traumatized Brazilian Arguably there are more casualties at this

(55:51):
point as a result of guys just getting their heads
fucked up from killing kids actual.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Enemy action, right, Yeah, you're fighting the fucking child.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Yeah, And that's that's kind of the defining image of
the war against the Triple Alliance, Brazilian soldiers getting traumatized
to the point of shattering their own psyches because Francisco
Lopez keeps hurling legions of kids into their guns. A
few days after the Battle of Guaturoro that I just related,
the Brazilians attack Lopez at a place called de Letta
under punishing rain. Caballero's army at this point is just

(56:23):
old men and young children. There are multiple battalions of
riflemen where no one is older than thirteen or fourteen,
And I called them riflemen number one. They're not men
and a lot of them don't even have rifles. Most
of them don't have shoes. But they're brainwashed kids. So
they're pretty motivated in the way that like kids can

(56:44):
be when you brainwashed them properly.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Yeah, the brain isn't done making itself and joining up
on the dogs. To that point, right, kids.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Can be done shocking loyalty. You know that is it
speaks very bleakly to the amount of brainwashing that's done
to these kids. You know what else speaks to the
amount of brainwashing done to children who are soon going
to be sacrificed in a series of pointless wars. That's
probably not a good way to throw.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Yeah, I'm not sure if they if they want us
to say that about them, well, we'll see. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Maybe Lockheed Martin will be doing the ad.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Who knows.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Let's see if Raytheon wants wants to give us some money.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Fuck it.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
And we're back. So if he says Ratheon is now
advertising on the pod, Wraitheon aren't there too many kids anyway.
Uh So, speaking of too many kids, Francisco Lopez still
has a lot of children in his army. Pretty much
nothing but children at his army. I'm going to continue
with a quote from that article from the Warfare History Network.

(57:45):
At av Ahi, the adolescent volunteers struggled vainly for nearly
four hours to hold back the enemy in a contest
they only partially understood. With all the obstinacy of youth,
they would not yield. Refusing all quarter, they received no mercy.
Only a few hundred of Avahi's defenders live to see
another day. The rest, numbering well over three thousand, were
cut down. When the Brazilians entered Biletta, they found that

(58:06):
Lopez had once again used his human shields to cover
his escape. Kahies army was joined by four thousand troops
from Brazil's reluctant ally Argentina and another six hundred Uruguayans, everybody,
it seemed, wanted to be in on the kill. After
he flees from Avahi, Lopez creates a new capital for
himself in this tiny little town named Piraboy, and he
and his Irish lover Eliza, in an army that's now

(58:28):
just women and children, because like he's run out of
the pretty much, he's gone war kind of necessity really inclusive. Yes,
the wolfe Paraguay and army. So the marquee holds for
like another ten months while he reorganizes his army. And
he's also now that they've taken the urban areas of
Paragua where most people live. He's also trying to deal

(58:49):
with a humanitarian crisis, like they're just trying to stop
everyone from dying. Yes, results of Lopez's actions, so he
can't finish the war for like another year, but he
attacks the next summer and he finally slaughters the last
of Lopez's forces. Now, do you want to guess what
Lopez does while the last of his army is being
wiped out?

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Is he doing more with the gold braid? Is he
decorating his outface again?

Speaker 3 (59:13):
No?

Speaker 1 (59:13):
No, he just uses them as human shields again and
runs away.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Okay, yeah, but that is one of his tactical favors,
isn't it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
He heads towards Bolivia, which is basically the only place
that's not currently.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
At warwick right, Yeah, he doesn't have many other choices.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Yeah, he's got this like rearguard that's trying to like
hold back his retreat, and they just get massacred trying
to protect him. So again he sacrifices yet another army
to secure his flight. On March first of eighteen seventy though,
the Allies finally drag him down. They catch him at
a place called the Akitaban River, which is close to

(59:49):
the Bolivian border. All of his soldiers basically die kind
of trying to protect him. Lopez, You'll find some people
say that and he finally died nobly charging the the enemy,
you know, with a weapon in his hand. That's not true.
He gets wounded by a lance and he jumps into
the river to try to swim away, and then he
gets shot in the back.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Appropriate like, yeah, yeah, I'm not going to be sad
for that. No.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
So, after five years of war, the total death kund
of the war could be as high as one point
two million in total. It kind of depends on how
big Paraguay was. Some estimates say that ninety percent of
the pre war population of Paraguay dies in this war.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Crap.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
The lower estimates are just three hundred thousand, which again
is out of like four hundred and fifty thousand, that's
still like, yeah, seventy percent of the fucking hundry or
something dying.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
It's like two thirds, is it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Yeah, at the end of the war there are twenty
eight thousand adult male Paraguayans. Likes that's pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
That's pretty Yeah, that's pretty fucking poor.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Yeah, it's it's it's one of the most like extend
some genocides I've heard of, entirely done kind of by accident,
by your own.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Dude, Yeah, like auto genocide. Yeah. The level made it happen. Yeah, yeah,
like it was yeah, just by like sheer incompetence.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Yeah, by sheer fucking idiocy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
And you were saying those kids who volunteers, they they
they went in Okay you know yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Right, Yeah, that's putting it a little strong. Before we
I do want to read one last quote, uh, for
the book Francisco Solana Lopez and the Ruination of Paraguay,
by saying.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
I can see now how we got to the title.
It's a good title. Is putting it lightly, to be honest.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yeah. Lopez was buried at Sarah Kora by Lynch's mistress
and Brazilian major and later president, Floriano Pixoto Panchito, was
buried there too. Lopez's mother, Dona Juanna, had been unable
to protect her younger sons from the murderous Francisco, who
had executed Benino, her favorite child, and torture to death
another Anancio. When Francisco died, she alleged that he was

(01:02:03):
not the child of Carlos Antonio. His sisters thought him
a monster. Their husbands had been persecuted and executed by
their brother. They responded by joining his enemies.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
So perfect son.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
She winds up back in Europe, poor broke, but she lives.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I think I'm less sympathetic to her
than I was at a start after the whole genocide thing.
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
It's he really fucked up pretty bad. Now he has
his reputation, has enjoyed what some will call a renaissance
after he's become in the last like I think fifty
years sort of a there's been an attempt to like
rehabilitate him as like a nationalist figure in Paraway. I
guess people who aren't very.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Well informed about his The fucking child catch you from
CUTI bang bang, Like who hates children that much?

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
I think that they're really focused on the trains, like
really focused on the trains.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Yeah, many people who love to rehabilitate dictators do love
to go to trains to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Yeah. Yeah, he made the trains, not even a run
on time, he just made up.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
He made the trains. Yeah, that's where to stop.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Yeah. Anyway, James, you got any pluggables to plug?

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
I do. Yeah. I mentioned my book earlist we'll plug.
That's called Against the State. Now you can find it
anywhere the good books are sold and in your library.
If you don't want to buy it, you can go
to your library and ask for it. Publishing AK Press
and I have a new podcast which is starting on
the seventeenth of August. It's called Natural Causes. You can

(01:03:36):
find it wherever you found this podcast, and it is
about going outside. We've got to talk about the Endangered
Species Act and why people hate it. We're going to
talk about drilling on the Arctic plane, and we're going
to talk about oil drilling. Actually, there'll be many oil
drilling episodes, unfortunately, which will also be comically evil, just

(01:03:56):
like this.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Yeah. Well, check out James's new show and check out Paraguay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
I mean, i'd like to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
It seems like a great place when it's not starting
having its dictator star warf choice with everyone else. Yeah,
really to be nice to go. It's it's almost like
to try to do that what I'm a little guy strategy,
but instead, like you never say what I'm a little guy.
You just keep starting fights with like men five times your.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Size, yeah, and then getting batted and then somehow or
getting someone else basket on your behalf. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Like the best case scenario is that he got like
sixty to seventy percent of the country killed, and it
may have been over ninety percent. Pretty bad, It's pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
That is wild. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Anyway, be careful who you let run your country, folks.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
You know some good advice there, Robert.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Maybe don't let anyone do that arguably bad idea. All right, Well,
enough of my radical anarchist propaganda go away.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Behind the Bastard is a production of cool Zone Media.
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(01:05:15):
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