THE PARAGUAYAN WAR
Brazilian statesmen might well have been pardoned if, in 1865, they had
claimed for their country the hegemony of South America. The result of
the war against Rosas had been brilliant; the Argentine had only just
emerged from half a century of civil war; Uruguay was almost a Brazilian
protectorate; Brazil's internal condition was settled; in concentration
of power, as well as in wealth, population, and extent, she was at the
head of the continent. With the republics on the west she maintained
good relations, while all the time she was firmly pressing her
territorial claims on toward the foot of the Andes. She even attempted
to control the navigation of the great waterways of South America.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR'S PALACE IN SAO PAULO.]
In 1863, Flores, a defeated chief, returned from Buenos Aires and set up
the standard of revolt in Uruguay. Penetrating as far as the Brazilian
border he received assistance, and Aguirre, the Montevidean president,
protested. At the same time the latter ruler refused to settle certain
claims on behalf of Brazilian citizens which the Rio government had
been pressing. The Emperor decided to intervene and help Flores, and
thereupon sent a man-of-war up the Uruguay River, which blockaded a port
and destroyed Uruguayan public property. Aguirre declared war, and
Brazil and Flores in alliance besieged and took the principal towns in
western Uruguay. The Argentine received satisfactory assurances and
remained neutral.
This high-handed adjustment of Uruguayan affairs furnished a pretext to
the Paraguayan dictator, Francisco Lopez, to intervene in his turn.
Under a line of vigorous dictators who concentrated all the forces of
the nation into their own hands, that country had become menacing to the
loosely organised Argentine Republic. Lopez even thought he was strong
enough to bid defiance to Brazil. The tyrant was, in fact, an impossible
neighbour for the two more progressive and civilised powers. For years
he had been preparing for war and at the moment was stronger in a
military way than either of his bulky neighbours. He hated both
Argentines and Brazilians, and his people had been taught to despise the
courage of the latter. Though Brazil's intervention in Uruguay was a
matter in which he had an interest, a dignified protest would have
obtained ample assurances that the latter's independence would be
respected, for there is no evidence that the imperial government
intended to do anything more than to replace its enemy Aguirre by the
friendly Flores. But the arrogant tyrant wanted to draw the world's
attention to himself. He appreciated how difficult it would be for
Brazil to send an army against him and how much more difficult it would
be to maintain one, and he also knew that she was unprepared to
undertake a serious war on foreign soil.
Without any declaration of war, in the fall of 1864 he seized a
Brazilian steamer which was making its regular trip up the Paraguay
River to Matto Grosso. The crew were imprisoned, and only the
intervention of the American minister saved the lives of the Brazilian
minister and his family. This outrage left Brazil no alternative. Lopez
followed up the seizure of the boat by an expedition up the Paraguay
River against Matto Grosso, and easily conquered the principal southern
settlements in that province.
The geographical position of the Argentine made her attitude of decisive
importance to both belligerents. Uruguay and the southern provinces of
Brazil were separated from Paraguay by the Argentine provinces of
Corrientes and the Missions. Argentina had favoured Flores's
pretensions, and Lopez was so obnoxious that the secret sympathies of
Buenos Aires were with Brazil. Further than neutrality, Mitre, then
president of Argentina, would not go. He declared that no permission
would be given either belligerent to cross Argentine territory with
troops. Lopez was made desperately angry at this refusal; he thought he
could count on the alliance and support of Urquiza, the virtually
independent ruler of the province of Entre Rios and Mitre's enemy, and
seems to have believed that he might as well finish up with both
Argentina and Brazil at one sitting. In March, 1865, he deliberately
declared war on the Argentine, and eighteen thousand Paraguayan troops
crossed the Parana and began offensive operations against Corrientes,
Uruguay, and Brazil.
Instead of rising against Mitre, Urquiza declared himself against the
Paraguayan dictator, and as his province of Entre Rios controlled access
to Paraguay by water, Lopez found that the only result of his rash act
was to open up the way by which his enemies could most conveniently
reach him. On the first of May, 1865, a formal alliance was made between
Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Mitre was agreed upon as
commander-in-chief; the allies promised not to lay down their arms until
Lopez should be overthrown and expelled from Paraguay; and pledges were
given to respect Paraguay's independence. Of the three allies Brazil was
the only one which could be expected to give its whole force. Flores
could only answer for the colorado faction of Uruguay. Argentina did not
represent much more than Buenos Aires. Entre Rios was Urquiza's, and the
other outside provinces had no great interest in the result.
Nevertheless, the alliance was very advantageous to Brazil. It would
have been well-nigh impossible to wage a successful war against an enemy
shut up in the middle of the continent, and accessible only by a
three-months' march across nearly impassable country, or by tedious
navigation up a single river running through a third country, and where
an army would have to be disembarked direct from ships on the enemy's
soil. The adhesion of Argentina made an aggressive war possible, and the
event proved how hopeless would have been a campaign by Brazil alone.
The story of the military operations belongs to the history of Paraguay,
and only those events which bore a direct relation to internal affairs
in Brazil will be mentioned here. The successful naval battle of
Riachuelo, on the Parana, just below the southern end of Paraguayan
territory, in June, 1865, aroused great enthusiasm in Brazil. National
feeling was hardly cooled by the news which soon followed of a
Paraguayan invasion of Rio Grande, and rose again with the defeat of
that invasion. Brazil's regular army numbered less than fifteen thousand
men before the war, but at the Emperor's call fifty-seven battalions of
volunteers were organised in the fall of 1865. A loan of five million
pounds was arranged in London, and no expense was spared in fitting out
the army and in strengthening the fleet. By the end of the war Brazil
had eighty-five ships, not counting transports, of which thirteen were
ironclads. The voyage from Rio de Janeiro to Paraguay takes a month, and
the transportation of men and material was tedious and extremely
expensive. The government resorted to the issue of paper money, and
outraged the feelings of the financial world by compelling the Bank of
Brazil to give up the reserve it was maintaining for the redemption of
its note issues. The premium on gold rose and the currency fluctuated
wildly, although general trade continued to boom.
In September, 1865, the Paraguayan army which had invaded Rio Grande was
captured in a body, and peace was confidently expected. Lopez, however,
decided to fight it out to the bitter end, and it was April, 1866,
before the allies could gain a foothold on Paraguayan soil. For the next
six months Brazil was sickened with accounts of desperately bloody and
indecisive battles, of which the last was an awful repulse before
Curupayty. For more than a year thereafter the allies lay motionless in
their camps in the south-western corner of Paraguay, while the cholera
carried off thousands.
Though his favourite general, Marshal Caxias, was a Conservative, and
not on good terms with the Liberal Cabinet, the Emperor insisted that he
be sent to take command. Re-enforcements were vigorously recruited from
all over the empire, and in July, 1867, the cautious Caxias began a slow
advance. The expenses were mounting up to sixty millions a year; the
country chafed at the delays, Caxias quarrelled with the ministers. In
July, 1868, the Emperor dismissed them on his own responsibility, and,
though the Liberals had still a large majority in the Chamber, called in
a Conservative Cabinet. On this occasion the Emperor's pressure was not
influential enough to change a minority into a majority, and the Chamber
preferred dissolution to submission. Meanwhile Caxias had at last begun
to win victories. The very month of the fall of the Liberals he took the
great fortress of Humaita, which guarded the passage up the Paraguay,
and Lopez retreated to the neighbourhood of his capital accompanied by
almost all the surviving Paraguayans. In November Caxias cleverly
outflanked him and taking him in the rear compelled him to fight outside
of his trenches until hardly any Paraguayans were left. By the beginning
of 1869 Lopez was a fugitive, the Brazilians were in possession of
Asuncion, and the war was over except for pursuing Lopez and the few
starving soldiers who followed him through the woods.
[Illustration: HOSPITAL AND OLD CHURCH AT PORTO ALEGRE.]
Elections were held in March, but it was not worth while for the
Liberals to make even the show of a contest. The Liberal leaders issued
a manifesto declining to take any part, and, censuring the Emperor for
calling the Conservatives to power against the known wishes of the
majority of a legally elected Chamber, announced that they would respect
the laws and would confine themselves to a non-parliamentary propagation
of the doctrines of anti-absolutism, liberalism, and emancipation. From
this time dates the systematic propaganda for the republic. The war
ended with the Emperor's son-in-law hunting down the Paraguayan bands.
In March, 1870, Lopez was caught with the last few hundred men who
remained faithful and speared by a common soldier as he tried to escape
through the woods.
The war had cost Brazil three hundred million dollars and over fifty
thousand lives. She had gained no substantial result except assuring the
safety of Matto Grosso and securing the free navigation of the Paraguay.
The Emperor did not attempt to use his victory by establishing a
hegemony over South America. Rather did the end of the Paraguayan war
mark the beginning of a policy of systematic abstention from
intermeddling with outside matters. Paraguay and Uruguay were left in
full enjoyment of their independence, and the Argentine then began her
marvellous industrial progress and political consolidation. The Plate
republics reaped the benefits of the war, while Brazil bore its heaviest
burdens. Most of the Argentine provinces had taken little part except to
furnish provisions and horses at high prices, and the opening up of
Paraguay redounded to the benefit of Buenos Aires and Montevideo--not to
that of Rio. No spirit of imperialism spread among the Brazilian
people, though they are still proud of the record their soldiers and
sailors then made. Their bravery in field fighting and the assault of
fortified places was proved beyond question, no matter how poorly they
may have been commanded, and how deficient their organisation. The
history of no war contains more examples of heroic and hopeless charges,
or stories of more desperate hand-to-hand fighting. But a successful
battle was followed by torpor; Brazilian tenacity was shown in the
patience with which defeats were sustained, and in holding on month
after month in camp, rotting in the miasmatic swamps, rather than in
pursuing advantages obtained in the field.