Richard Francis Burton

“ Seldom has aught more impressive been presented to the gaze of the world than this tragedy; this unflinching struggle maintained for so long a period against overwhelming odds, and to the very verge of racial annihilation; the bulldog tenacity and semi-compulsory heroism of a Red-skin Sparta, whose only vulnerable point, the line of her river, which flows from north to south, and which forms her western frontier, has been defended with a stubbornness of purpose, a savage valour, and an enduring desperation rare in the annals of mankind. ”

“ The war in Paraguay, impartially viewed, is no less than the doom of a race which is to be relieved from a self-chosen tyranny by becoming chair á canon by the process of annihilation. It is the Nemesis of Faith ”

“ Paraguay is to them another Poland in the martyrology of peoples, a weak, meek inland Republic to be strangled, after an “odious struggle of three to one,” in the huge coils of the Imperial Anaconda. They accuse the Brazil of the most interested views, they charge her with boundless profligacy and the “ most hideous vices,” as if these had aught to do with the subject; they declare that no nation has a right to impose upon a neighbouring and independent people a government not of its own choice ”

“ Those who read, dwelling afar, see one of the necessary two phases. Some recognise a nation crushed by the mere weight of its enemies; drained of its population to support the bloody necessities of a hopeless war ”

“ The fact is that nothing about Paraguay is known outside the country, and of its government very little is known even inside its limits. The foreign employés themselves must generally speak from hearsay, and some of them have not failed to supplement their facts by fancies, theories, and fictions. ”

“ The “War in Paraguay” is semi-historical, treating of what the author witnessed during the hostilities. “Letters from the Battle-fields” is a traveller's journal of much lighter cast, and necessarily more discursive.
I have attempted also to sketch the campaign, than which, rightly explained, nothing can be more easily understood. It is composed of three great acts, and the following is the skeleton :*—
Act No. 1. President Lopez raises a force of 80,000 men and resolves to brook no interference on the part of the Brazil in the affairs of the Platine States. ”

“ It is moreover an affair which, whilst testing so severely the gigantic powers of the Brazil and threatening momentous effects to its good genius—democratic imperialism, has yet been prosecuted with so many laches, with an incuriousness, an inconséquence, and in many cases with a venality which, common as are such malpractices in the non-combattant ranks of all semi-disciplined and many disciplined armies, here presents an ethnographical study. ”

“ Its personnel as a rule, admitting many brilliant exceptions, imperfectly represents the noble Brazilian people; its successes have been hailed with an enthusiasm run frantic, and its spare merits have been commended with an exaggeration whose consequences, operating upon public opinion, may do the country much real harm. ”

“ Thus ends the offensive portion of the campaign, which lasted about five months.
Act No. 2. President Lopez, commanding his armies in person, vainly attempts to defend the frontiers of the Republic, and gradually retiring northwards, before vastly superior forces and a fleet of ironclads, he fights every inch of ground with a prodigious tenacity. This defensive phase concludes, after upwards of three years, with the affair of Loma Valentina, the “Waterloo of the war.” ”