Francisco Solano Lopez was the son of Paraguayan strongman Carlos Antonio Lopez, whom he succeeded as president in 1862 after a European tour that exposed him to Napoleon III's court and, by most accounts, to grandiose ambitions for his country's regional standing. Convinced that Brazilian intervention in Uruguay in 1864 threatened the regional balance of power on which Paraguay's landlocked security depended, Lopez blocked the Paraguay River, seized a Brazilian steamer, and invaded Brazil's Mato Grosso province, then requested passage through Argentine territory to attack Brazilian forces in Uruguay; Argentina's refusal brought Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay together into the Triple Alliance against him in May 1865. Despite early Paraguayan advances, the allied coalition's overwhelming manpower and naval control of the rivers gradually reversed the war, yet Lopez refused all compromise, retreating with a shrinking army and civilian following deeper into the Paraguayan interior even as forced conscription of boys and old men, disease and starvation devastated the population. He was finally cornered and killed by a Brazilian cavalry patrol at Cerro Cora on 1 March 1870, reportedly declaring "I die with my country" (Muero con mi patria). Paraguay's prewar population of some 450,000-525,000 fell to roughly 221,000 by the 1871 census, an estimated 60-70 percent loss, disproportionately among adult men, making the war one of the most demographically catastrophic in modern history; Lopez himself remains a bitterly contested figure in Paraguayan memory, hailed by nationalists as a martyr of resistance to foreign domination and condemned by critics as a reckless dictator who destroyed his own country.

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