Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance)
Paraguay fought Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay simultaneously from 1864 to 1870 and lost most of its adult male population. Francisco Solano López had inherited a country his father and grandfather had built into something unusual in South America — largely self-sufficient, with state-owned industry, a foundry, a railway, no foreign debt, and an army larger than its neighbours'. He also had a landlocked country whose river access ran through Argentina and Brazil. He intervened in a Uruguayan civil war in 1864 on the losing side, seized a Brazilian ship, invaded Mato Grosso, and then asked Argentina for permission to march troops across Corrientes to reach Uruguay. Refused, he invaded anyway. That produced the Triple Alliance against him, and a secret treaty in which the allies agreed to partition Paraguayan territory and to fight until López was removed. The war lasted five and a half years. Paraguay's army was destroyed early and the country fought on with boys and old men — at Acosta Ñu in 1869 a force largely of children aged eight to fifteen, some with false beards, was destroyed by Brazilian troops. Cholera killed as many as the fighting. López was hunted into the north-east and killed at Cerro Corá in March 1870, saying that he died with his country. Paraguay lost around half its total population and something like ninety per cent of its adult men, and about a quarter of its territory. It is proportionally the deadliest war between states in modern history. Brazil occupied the country for six years and Argentina took the territory the treaty had promised it.
- Year: 1864 CE
- Category: Military
