War of the Triple Alliance

ARTICLE RESERVED FOR PATTY STEFFEN. M. Anglin

War of the Triple Alliance
Tuyutí was the bloodiest battle in the history of South America
Date 1864-1870 Location South America Result Paraguayan defeat
Combatants
Paraguay	Uruguay, Argentina, Empire of Brazil
Commanders
Francisco Solano López José E. Díaz	Pedro II of Brazil Duke of Caxias Bartolomé Mitre Venancio Flores
Strength
at the beginning of the war ca. 50,000	at the beginning of the war ca. 26,000
Casualties
ca. 300,000 soldiers and civilians	90,000 to 100,000 soldiers and civilians

War of the Triple Alliance
Mato Grosso – Rio Grande do Sul – Corrientes – Riachuelo – Jataí – Tuyutí – Curupaity – Piquissiri – Campaign of the Hills – Cerro Corá – Acosta Ñu

The War of the Triple Alliance, also known as the Paraguayan War, or in native Guaraní, Guerra Guazú, meaning “Great War” was fought from 1864 to 1870, and was by some measures the bloodiest war in the history of the Americas. It was fought between Paraguay and the allied countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.

The start of the war has been widely attributed to causes as varied as the aftereffects of colonialism in Latin America, the struggle for physical power over the strategic River Plate region, the Brazilian and Argentinean meddling in internal Uruguayan politics, British economic interests in the region, and the expansionist ambitions of Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López.

The outcome of the war was utter Paraguayan defeat. After the Triple Alliance defeated Paraguay in conventional warfare, the conflict turned into a drawn-out guerrilla-style resistance that would devastate the Paraguayan population, both military and civilian. One estimate places total Paraguayan losses—through both war and disease—as high as 1.2 million people, or 90% of its pre-war population. A perhaps more accurate estimate places Paraguayan deaths at approximately 300,000 people out of its 500,000 to 525,000 prewar inhabitants.

It took decades for Paraguay to recover from the chaos and demographic imbalance in which it had been placed; what had been by name one of the first South American republics only chose its first democratically elected president in 1993. In Brazil, the war helped bring the end of slavery, moved the military into a key role in the public sphere, and caused a ruinous increase of public debt, which took decades to pay, seriously reducing the country's growth. The war would lead to the modernization of Argentina. After the war, that country quickly became Latin America's wealthiest nation by far, a position it only lost several decades later. For Uruguay, no longer would Brazil and Argentina take such an interventionist role in its internal politics.

The setup

Paraguay before the war

Historians have long considered that Paraguay under José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1813–1840) and Carlos Antonio López (1841–1862) developed quite differently from other South American countries. The aim of Rodríguez de Francia and Carlos López was to encourage self-sufficient economic development in Paraguay by imposing isolation from neighboring countries. But historiography is ever-changing: in the 1960s and 1970s, many historians claimed that the War of the Triple Alliance was caused by pseudo-colonial influence of the British who were in need of a new source of cotton due to the United States civil war.

The regime of the López family was characterized by a harsh centralism without any room for the creation of a true civil society. There was no distinction between the public and the private sphere, and the López family ruled the country as it would a large property estate.

The government controlled all exports. The yerba mate and valuable wood exported maintained the balance of commerce. Paraguay was extremely protectionist, never accepting loans from the outside and, through high tariffs, refusing the entrance of foreign products. Francisco Solano López, son of Carlos Antonio López, replaced the father as president-dictator in 1862.

Solano López never married, however at the age of 18 on a trip to Paris to purchase arms, he met and fell in love with an Irish woman named Elisa Alicia Lynch who would become his mistress and give birth to his five sons. She was known as “La Lynch” to the locals and became a highly influential trendsetter in Asunción. During the War of the Triple Alliance Solano López transferred most of the country and portions of Brazil to her name, making her the largest landowner in Paraguay, yet by the war’s end, she retained almost nothing.

Solano López generally continued the political policies of his predecessors, however, he would first silence several hundred of his critics by imprisonment. In the area of the military, he modernized and expanded in ways that eventually would lead to war. More than 200 foreign technicians, hired by the government, installed telegraph lines and railroads to aid the steel, textiles, paper, ink, naval construction, and gunpowder industries. The Ibicuí foundry, installed in 1850, manufactured cannons, mortars, and bullets of all calibers. Warships were built in the Asunción shipyards.

Paraguayan president and dictator Francisco Solano López

This growth required contact with the international market, but Paraguay was landlocked. Its ports were river ports and ships had to travel down the Río Paraguay and the Río Paraná to reach the estuary of the Rio de la Plata and the ocean. Solano López conceived a project to obtain a port in the Atlantic Ocean: he perhaps intended to create a "Greater Paraguay" by capturing a slice of Brazilian territory that would link Paraguay to the coastline.

To maintain his expansionist intentions, López began to prepare Paraguay's military. He encouraged the industry of war, mobilized a large quantity of men for the army (mandatory military service already existed in Paraguay), submitted them to intensive military training, and built fortifications at the mouth of the Río Paraguay.

Diplomatically, Solano López wanted to ally himself with Uruguay's ruling Blanco Party. The Colorados were tied to Brazil and Argentina.

River Plate politics

Since Brazil and Argentina had become independent, the fight between the governments of Buenos Aires and of Rio de Janeiro for hegemony in the River Plate basin profoundly marked the diplomatic and political relations between the countries of the region. Brazil almost entered into war with Argentina twice.

The government of Buenos Aires, Argentina, intended to reconstruct the territory of the old Viceroyalty of the River Plate, enclosing Paraguay and Uruguay. It carried out diverse attempts to do so during the first half of the 19th century, without success—many times due to Brazilian intervention. Fearing excessive Argentine control, Brazil favored a balance of power in the region, helping Paraguay and Uruguay retain their sovereignty.

Brazil, under the rule of the Portuguese, was the first country to recognize the independence of Paraguay in 1811. While Argentina was ruled by Juan Manuel Rosas (1829–1852), a common enemy of both Brazil and Paraguay, Brazil contributed to the improvement of the fortifications and development of the Paraguayan army, sending officials and technical help to Asunción. As no roads linked the province of Mato Grosso to Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian ships needed to travel through Paraguayan territory, going up the Río Paraguay to arrive at Cuiabá. Many times, however, Brazil had difficulty obtaining permission to sail from the government in Asunción.

Brazil carried out three political and military interventions in Uruguay—in 1851, against Manuel Oribe to fight Argentine influence in the country; in 1855, at the request of the Uruguayan government and Venancio Flores, leader of the Colorados, who were traditionally supported by the Brazilian empire; and in 1864, against Atanásio Aguirre. This last intervention would be the fuse of the War of the Triple Alliance. These interventions were aligned to the British desire for the fragmentation of the River Plate region to stop any attempt to monopolize the region's minerals.

Intervention against Aguirre

In April 1864, Brazil sent a diplomatic mission to Uruguay led by José Antônio Saraiva to demand payment for the damages caused to gaucho farmers in border conflicts with Uruguayan farmers. The Uruguayan president Atanásio Aguirre, of the National Party, refused the Brazilian demands.

Solano López offered himself as mediator, but was turned down by Brazil. López subsequently broke diplomatic relations with Brazil—in August 1864—and declared that the occupation of Uruguay by Brazilian troops would be an attack to the equilibrium of the River Plate region.

On October 12, Brazilian troops invaded Uruguay. The followers of the Colorado Venancio Flores, who had the support of Argentina, united with the Brazilian troops and deposed Aguirre.

The War

The war begins

When attacked by Brazil, the Uruguayan Blancos asked for help from Solano López, but Paraguay did not directly come to their ally's aid. Instead, on November 12, 1864, the Paraguayan ship Tacuari captured the Brazilian ship Marquês of Olinda which had sailed up the Río Paraguay to the province of Mato Grosso. Paraguay declared war on Brazil on December 13 and on Argentina three months later, on March 18, 1865. Uruguay, already governed by Venancio Flores, aligned itself with Brazil and Argentina.

Soldiers of the Brazilian Volunteers for the Fatherland Corps

At the beginning of the war, the military force of the Triple Alliance was inferior to that of Paraguay, which included more than 60,000 well-trained men—38,000 of whom were immediately under arms—and a naval squadron of 23 vapores and five river-navigating ships, based around the gunboat the Tacuari. Its artillery included about 400 cannons.

The armies of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay were a fraction of the total size of the Paraguayan army. Argentina had approximately 8,500 regular troops and a squadron of four vapores and one goleta. Uruguay entered the war with fewer than 2,000 men and no navy. Many of Brazil's 16,000 troops were initially located in its southern garrisons. The Brazilian advantage, though, was in its navy: 42 ships with 239 cannons and about 4,000 well-trained crew. A great part of the squadron already met in the River Plate basin, where it had acted, under the Marquis of Tamandaré, in the intervention against Aguirre.

In truth, Brazil was unprepared to fight a war. Its army was unorganized. The troops used in the interventions in Uruguay were composed merely of the armed contingents of gaucho politicians and some of the staff of the National Guard. The Brazilian infantry who fought in the War of the Triple Alliance were not professional soldiers but volunteers, the so-called Voluntários da Pátria. Many were slaves sent by farmers. The cavalry was formed from the National Guard of Rio Grande Do Sul.

Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay would sign the Treaty of the Triple Alliance in Buenos Aires on May 1, 1865, allying the three River Plate countries against Paraguay, vowing to destroy the government of Solano López. They named Bartolomé Mitre, president of Argentina, as supreme commander of the allied troops.

Paraguayan offensive

During the first phase of the war Paraguay took the initiative. The armies of López dictated the location of initial battles—invading Brazil’s Mato Grosso in the north in December 1864, Rio Grande do Sulin the southernmost part of Brazil in the first months of 1865, and the Argentine province of Corrientes.

Two bodies of Paraguayan troops invaded Mato Grosso simultaneously. Due to the numerical superiority of the invaders the province was captured quickly.

Five thousand men, transported in ten ships and commanded by the colonel Vicente Barrios, went up the Río Paraguay and attacked the fort of Nova Coimbra. The garrison of 155 men resisted for three days under the command of the lieutenant-colonel Hermenegildo de Albuquerque Port Carrero, later baron of Fort Coimbra. When the munitions were exhausted the defenders abandoned the fort and withdrew up the river on board the gunship Anhambaí in direction of Corumbá. After they occupied the empty fort the Paraguayans advanced north taking the cities of Albuquerque and Corumbá in January 1865.

Argentine boy soldier

The second Paraguayan column, which was led by Colonel Francisco Isidoro Resquín and included four thousand men, penetrated a region south of Mato Grosso, and sent a detachment to attack the military frontier of Dourados. The detachment, led by Major Martín Urbieta, encountered tough resistance on December 29, 1864, from Lieutenant Antonio João Ribeiro and his 16 men, who died without yielding. The Paraguayans continued to Nioaque and Miranda, defeating the troops of the colonel José Dias da Silva. Coxim was taken in April 1865.

The Paraguayan forces, despite their victories, did not continue to Cuiabá, the capital of the province. Augusto Leverger had fortified the camp of Melgaço to protect Cuiabá. The main objective was to distract the attention of the Brazilian government to the north as the war would lead to the south, closer to the River Plate estuary. The invasion of Mato Grosso was a diversionary maneuver.

The invasion of Corrientes and of Rio Grande do Sul was the second phase of the Paraguayan offensive. To raise the support of the Uruguayan Blancos, the Paraguayan forces had to travel through Argentine territory. In March of 1865, López asked the Argentine government's permission for an army of 25,000 men (led by General Wenceslao Robles) to travel through the province of Corrientes. The president—Bartolomé Mitre, an ally of Brazil in the intervention in Uruguay—refused.

On March 18, 1865, Paraguay declared war on Argentina. A Paraguayan squadron, coming down the Río Paraná, imprisoned Argentine ships in the port of Corrientes. Immediately, General Robles's troops took the city.

In invading Corrientes, López tried to obtain the support of the powerful Argentine caudillo Justo José de Urquiza, governor of the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Ríos, and the chief federalist hostile to Mitre and to the government of Buenos Aires. But Urquiza assumed an ambiguous attitude towards the Paraguayan troops—which would advance around 200 kilometers (124 miles) south before ultimately ending the offensive in failure.

Along with Robles's troops, a force of 10,000 men under the orders of the lieutenant-colonel Antonio de la Cruz Estigarriba crossed the Argentine border south of Encarnación, in May 1865, driving for Rio Grande do Sul. They traveled down Río Uruguay and took the town of São Borja on June 12. Uruguaiana, to the south, was taken on August 5 without any significant resistance. The Brazilian reaction was yet to come.

Brazil reacts

The Brazilian army in their camp at Curuzú, September 20, 1866, by Cándido López

Brazil sent an expedition to fight the invaders in Mato Grosso. A column of 2,780 men led by Colonel Manuel Pedro Drago left Uberaba in Minas Gerais in April 1865, and arrived at Coxim in December after a difficult march of more than two thousand kilometers through four provinces. But Paraguay had abandoned Coxim by December. Drago arrived at Miranda in September 1866—and Paraguay had left once again. In January 1867, Colonel Carlos de Morais Camisão assumed command of the column, now only 1,680 men, and decided to invade Paraguayan territory, where he penetrated into Laguna. The expedition was forced to retreat by the Paraguayan cavalry.

Despite the efforts of Colonel Camisão's troops and the resistance in the region, which succeeded in liberating Corumbá in June 1867, Mato Grosso remained under the control of the Paraguayans. They finally withdrew in April 1868, moving their troops to the main theater of operations, in the south of Paraguay.

Communications in the River Plate basin was solely by river; few roads existed. Whoever controlled the rivers would win the war, so the Paraguayan fortifications had been built on the edges of the lower end of Río Paraguay.

Artist's conception of the battle of Riachuelo, by Victor Meirelles

The naval battle of Riachuelo occurred on June 11, 1865. The Brazilian fleet commanded by Francisco Manoel Barroso da Silva won, destroying the powerful Paraguayan navy and preventing the Paraguayans from permanently occupying Argentine territory. The battle practically decided the outcome of the war in favor of the Triple Alliance, which controlled, from that point on, the rivers of the River Plate basin up to the entrance to Paraguay.

While López ordered the retreat of the forces that occupied Corrientes, the Paraguayan troops that invaded São Borja advanced, taking Itaqui and Uruguaiana. A separate division of 3,200 men continued toward Uruguay under the command of the major Pedro Duarte but was defeated by Flores in the bloody battle of Jataí on the banks of the Río Uruguay.

The allied troops united under the command of Mitre in the camp of Concórdia, in the Argentine province of Entre Ríos, with the field-marshall Manuel Luís Osório at the front of the Brazilian troops. Part of the troops, commanded by the lieutenant-general Manuel Marques de Sousa, baron of Porto Alegre, left to reinforce Uruguaiana. The Paraguayans yielded on September 18, 1865.

In the subsequent months the Paraguayans were driven out of the cities of Corrientes and San Cosme, the only Argentine territory still in Paraguayan possession. By the end of 1865, the Triple Alliance was on the offensive. Their armies numbered more than 50,000 men and were prepared to invade Paraguay.

Invasion of Paraguay

The invasion of Paraguay followed the course of the Río Paraguay, from the Paso de la Patria. From April 1866 to July 1868, military operations concentrated in the confluence of the rivers Paraguay and Paraná, where the Paraguayans located their main fortifications. For more than two years, the advance of the invaders was blocked, despite initial Triple Alliance victories.

Artist's conception of the battle of Tuyutí (painted 1876–1885 by Cándido López)

The first stronghold taken was Itapiru. After the battles of the Paso de la Patria and of the Estero Bellaco, the allied forces camped on swamps of Tuyutí, where they were attacked. The first battle of Tuyutí, won by the allies on May 24, 1866, was the biggest pitched battle in the history of South America.

Due to health reasons, in July 1866, Osório passed the command of the First Corps of the Brazilian army to General Polidoro da Fonseca Quintanilha Jordão. At the same time, the Second Corps—10,000 men—arrived at the theater of operations, brought from Rio Grande Do Sul by the baron of Porto Alegre.

To open the way to Humaitá, the biggest Paraguayan stronghold, Mitre attacked the batteries of Curuzu and Curupaity. Curuzu was taken by surprise by the baron of Porto Alegre, but on the morning of September 22, 1866, when the joint forces of the Brazilian and Argentine armies attacked Paraguay’s fortified trenches on Curupaity led by General José E. Díaz, their position was held by 5,000 men and 49 cannons, some of them in hidden places out of the attackers view. The Brazilian Navy gave support to the 20,000 assailants, but the ships had to keep some distance from the guns at the fortress of Humaitá, which led to the lack of accuracy and impact of the ship's fire. Around 20 percent of the almost 20,000 allied (Brazilian and Argentine) troops involved in the attack were lost; Paraguay lost less than a hundred men. The utter failure resulted in the change of the allied command. Paraguay's biggest success in the ultimately disastrous War of the Triple Alliance was limited because its military leader Francisco Solano López didn't counterattack the defeated allies. Not even a general as celebrated as Díaz would attack without López's orders. Ultimately, the battle of Curupayty was merely a sidenote and temporary success in what would eventually become a near-extermination of the Paraguayan people.

During this phase of the war, many Brazilian servicemen distinguished themselves, amongst them, the heroes of Tuyutí: General José Luís Mena Barreto; Brigadier General Antônio de Sampaio, protector of the infantry weapons of the Brazilian Army; Lieutenant Colonel Emílio Luís Mallet, head of the artillery; and even Osório, head of the cavalry. In addition, Lieutenant Colonel João Carlos of Vilagrã Cabrita, head of weapons of engineering, died in Itapiru.

Caxias in command

Assigned on October 10, 1866, to command the Brazilian forces, Marshall Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Marquis and, later, Duke of Caxias, arrived in Paraguay in November, finding the Brazilian army practically paralyzed. The contingent of Argentines and Uruguayans, devastated by disease, were cut off from the rest of the allied army. Mitre and Flores returned to their respective countries due to questions of internal politics. Tamandaré was replaced in command by the admiral Joaquim José Inácio, future Viscount of Inhaúma. Osório organized a 5,000-strong third Corps of the Brazilian army in Rio Grande do Sul. In Mitre's absence, Caxias assumed the general command and restructured the army.

Between November 1866 and July 1867, Caxias organized a health corps (to give aid to the endless number of injured soldiers and to fight the epidemic of cholera) and a system of supplying the troops. In that period military operations were limited to skirmishes with the Paraguayans and to bombarding Curupaity. López took advantage of the disorganization of the enemy to reinforce his stronghold in Humaitá.

The march to flank the left wing of the Paraguayan fortifications constituted the basis of Caxias's tactics. Caxias wanted to bypass the Paraguayan strongholds, cut the connections between Asunción and Humaitá, and finally circle the Paraguayans. To this end, Caxias marched to Tuiu-Cuê.

Brazilian officer and soldier

But Mitre, who had returned to the command in August 1867, insisted on attacking by the right wing, a strategy that had previously been disastrous in Curupaity. By his order, the Brazilian squadron forced its way past Curupaity but was forced to stop at Humaitá. New splits in the high command arose: Mitre wanted to continue, but the Brazilians instead captured São Solano, Pike, and Tayi, isolating Humaitá from Asunción. In reaction, López attacked the rearguard of the allies in Tuiuti, but suffered new defeats.

With the removal of Mitre in January 1868, Caxias reassumed the supreme command and decided to bypass Curupaity and Humaitá, carried out with success by the squadron commanded by Captain Delfim Carlos de Carvalho, later Baron of Passagem. Humaitá fell on July 25 after a long siege.

En route to Asunción, Caxias's army went 200 kilometers (124 miles) to Palmas, stopping at the Piquissiri river. There, López had concentrated 18,000 Paraguayans in a fortified line that exploited the terrain and supported the forts of Angostura and Itá-Ibaté. Resigned to frontal combat, Caxias ordered the so-called Piquissiri maneuver. While a squadron attacked Angostura, Caxias made the army cross on the right side of the river. He ordered the construction of a road in the swamps of the Chaco, upon which the troops advanced to the northeast. At Villeta, the army crossed the river again, between Asunción and Piquissiri, behind the fortified Paraguayan line. Instead of advancing to the capital, already evacuated and bombarded, Caxias went south and attacked the Paraguayans from behind.

Caxias had obtained a series of victories in December 1868, when he went back south to take Piquissiri from the rear, capturing Itororó, Avaí, Lomas Valentinas, and Angostura. On December 24 the three new commanders of the Triple Alliance (Caxias, the Argentines Gelly and Obes, and the Uruguayan Enrique Castro) sent a note to Solano López asking for surrender. But López turned it down and fled for Cerro Leon.

Asunción was occupied on January 1, 1869 by commands of Colonel Hermes Ernesto da Fonseca, father of the future Marshall Hermes da Fonseca. On the fifth day, Caxias entered in the city with the rest of the army and 13 days later left his command.

The end of the war

Command of Count d'Eu

The son-in-law of the emperor Dom Pedro II, Luís Filipe Gastão de Orléans, Count d'Eu, was nominated to direct the final phase of the military operations in Paraguay. He sought not just a total rout of Paraguay, but also the strengthening of the Brazilian Empire. In August 1869, the Triple Alliance installed a provisional government in Asunción headed by Paraguayan Cirilo Antonio Rivarola.

Solano López organized the resistance in the mountain range northeast of Asunción. At the head of 21,000 men, Count d'Eu led the campaign against the Paraguayan resistance, the Campaign of the Mountain Range, which lasted over a year. The most important battles were the battles of Piribebuy and of Acosta Ñu, in which more than 5,000 Paraguayans died.

Two detachments were sent in pursuit of Solano López, who was accompanied by 200 men in the forests in the north. On March 1, 1870, the troops of General José Antônio Correia da Câmara surprised the last Paraguayan camp in Cerro Corá, where Solano López was fatally injured by a spear as he tried to swim away down the Aquidabanigui stream. His last words were: "Muero por mi patria" (I die for my homeland). This marks the end of the War of the Triple Alliance.

Mortality

The Paraguayan people had been fanatically committed to López and the war effort, and as a result they fought to the point of dissolution. Paraguay suffered massive casualties, losing perhaps the majority of its population. The war left it utterly prostrate.

Paraguayan prisoners of war

The specific numbers of casualties are hotly disputed, but it has been estimated that 300,000 Paraguayans, mostly civilians, died; up to 90% of the male population may have been killed. According to one numerical estimation, the prewar population of approximately 525,000 Paraguayans was reduced to about 221,000 in 1871, of which only about 28,000 were men. Definitively accurate casualty numbers will probably never be determined.

Of the around 123,000 Brazilians that fought in the War of the Triple Alliance, the best estimates say that around 30,000 died on the battlefield, while another 30,000 from disease. In the province of Mato Grosso, civilian casualties were especially high, with an estimate of 5,000 out of a population of 75,000. Uruguayan forces counted barely 5,600 men (some of whom were foreigners), of whom about 3,100 died. Argentina’s death toll range from 27,000 to 30,000 (18,000 from combat and another 12,000 from sicknesses).

Thus, the high rates of mortality were not the result of the armed conflict in itself. Bad food and very bad hygiene caused a high percentage of the deaths. Among the Brazilians, many of the casualties died in hospitals and during the march, before ever facing the enemy. In the beginning of the conflict, most of the Brazilian soldiers came from the north and northeast regions of the country; the changes from a hot to cold climate and the amount of food available to them were abrupt. Drinking the river water was sometimes fatal to entire battalions of Brazilians. Cholera was, perhaps, the main cause of death during the war.

Consequences of the war

Following Paraguay's final defeat in 1870, Argentina sought to enforce one of the secret clauses of the Triple Alliance Treaty, according to which Argentina would receive a large part of the Gran Chaco, a Paraguayan region rich in quebracho (a product used in the tanning of leather). The Argentinean negotiators proposed to Brazil that Paraguay should be divided in two, with each of the victors incorporating a half into its territory. The Brazilian government, however, was not interested in the end of the Paraguayan state, since it served as a cushion between the Brazilian Empire and Argentina.

A standstill began, and the Brazilian army, which was in complete control of the Paraguayan territory, remained in the country for six years after the final defeat of Paraguay in 1870, only leaving in 1876 in order to ensure the continued existence of Paraguay. During this time, the possibility of an armed conflict with Argentina for control over Paraguay became increasingly real, as Argentina wanted to seize the Chaco region, but was barred by the Brazilian Army.

No single overall peace treaty was signed. The post-war border between Paraguay and Argentina was resolved through long negotiations, finalized in a treaty that defined the frontier between the two countries signed on February 3, 1876, and which granted Argentina roughly a third of the area it had intended to incorporate originally. The only region about which no consensus was reached—the area between the Río Verde and the main branch of Río Pilcomayo—was arbitrated by U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who declared it Paraguayan. (The Paraguayan department Presidente Hayes was named after Hayes due to his arbitration decision.) Brazil signed a separate peace treaty with Paraguay on January 9, 1872, obtaining freedom of navigation on the Río Paraguay. Brazil received the borders it had claimed before the war. The treaty also stipulated a war debt to the imperial government of Brazil that was eventually pardoned in 1943 by Getúlio Vargas in reply to a similar Argentine initiative.

File:Cadaveresparaguaios.GIF

The Paraguayan dead await burial (1866).

In December 1975, when the presidents Ernesto Geisel and Alfredo Stroessner signed in Asunción a Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the Brazilian government returned its spoils of war to Paraguay.

The war still remains a controversial topic—especially in Paraguay, where it is considered either a fearless struggle for the rights of a smaller nation against the aggressions of more powerful neighbors, or a foolish attempt to fight an unwinnable war that almost destroyed a whole nation.

The Paraguayan villages destroyed by the war were abandoned and the survivors migrated to the outskirts of Asunción, dedicating themselves to subsistence agriculture and continued artisan production by many of the women in the central region of the country in unimaginable conditions. Paraguayan industry fell apart. Any modernization of the preceding three decades was undone and this once self-sufficient nation, whose quality of life and advances in agriculture were envied by its neighbors, became the most backward nation in the Southern Cone. Immigrants from Europe, greatly encouraged by the government, and former Brazilian soldiers were slowly repopulating the country. Lands were sold to foreigners, mainly Argentines, and turned into estates. The Paraguayan market opened itself to British products and the country was forced for the first time to get outside loans—totaling a million British pounds. In fact, Britain can be seen as the power that most benefited from the war: whilst the war ended the Paraguayan threat to their interests, Brazil and Argentina fell into massive debt, establishing a pattern that continues to this day (Brazil repaid all British loans by Getúlio Vargas era).

Argentina annexed part of Paraguayan territory and became the strongest of the River Plate countries. During the campaign, the provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes had supplied Brazilian troops with cattle, food, and other products.

Brazil paid a high price for victory. The war was financed by the Bank of London, and by Baring Brothers and N M Rothschild & Sons. During the five years of war, Brazilian expenditure reached twice its receipts, causing a financial crisis.

In total, Argentina and Brazil annexed about 140,000 km² (55,000 square miles) of Paraguayan territory: Argentina took much of the Misiones region and part of the Chaco between the Bermejo and Pilcomayo rivers; Brazil enlarged its Mato Grosso province by claiming territories that had been disputed with Paraguay before the war. Both demanded a large indemnity (which was never paid) and occupied Paraguay until 1876. Meanwhile, the Colorados had gained political control of Uruguay, which they retained until 1958.

Slavery was undermined in Brazil as slaves were freed to serve in the war. The Brazilian army became a new and expressive force in national life. It transformed itself into a strong institution that, with the war, gained tradition and internal cohesion and would take a significant role in the later development of the history of the country.

The war took its biggest toll on the Brazilian emperor. The economical depression and the fortification of the army would later play a big role in the deposition of the emperor Dom Pedro II and the republic proclamation in 1889. General Deodoro da Fonseca would become the first Brazilian president.

Sources and Further Reading

• Scheina, Robert L. 2003. Latin America's wars: The age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, Inc. ISBN 1574884492 and ISBN 9781574884494
• Leuchars, Chris. 2002. To the bitter end: Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance. Contributions in military studies, no. 223. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313323658 and ISBN 9780313323652
• Whigham, Thomas. 2002. The Paraguayan War. Studies in war, society, and the military. Lincoln, Neb: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803247869 and ISBN 9780803247864
• Gomes, Carlos de Oliveira. 1980. A solidão segundo Solano López: romance(In Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira.
• Pernidji, Joseph Eskenazi, and Maurício Eskenazi Pernidji. 2003. Homens e mulheres na Guerra do Paraguai(In Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro: Imago. ISBN 8531208998 and ISBN 9788531208997

External links

• The War of the Triple Alliance. Country Studies. Retrieved May 24, 2007.
• Guerra do Paraguai. (Portuguese Language). Meu Artigo. Retrieved May 24, 2007.
• Conhecendo o Portal Sua Pesquisa. (Portuguese Language). Sua Pesquisa. Retrieved May 24, 2007.
• Marcelo, Antonio. Batalha Naval do Riachuelo. (Portuguese Language). Riachuelo Games. Retrieved May 24, 2007.
• Cerro Cora Paraguay. Google. Retrieved May 24, 2007.

Movies

• Netto perde sua alma, by Beto Souza e Tabajara Ruas, Brazil (2001).

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• War_of_the_Triple_Alliance  ^history

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• History of "War of the Triple Alliance"

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RE: References: Although I researched numerous web sites, I believe in the end I used only the following site: www.countrystudies.us/paraguay and the Wikipedia article: Battle of Curupaity