Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1875 — The Paraguayan War With Brazil. [ARTICLE]

The Paraguayan War With Brazil.

In traveling in strange land#! you heir many interesting stories, but ore nas made such an impression on me that I cannot forbear giving you a few, items from it. It is about the Paraguayan war. It is said that such fighting never was known. It began about a question of boundaries with Brazil. Lopez, the President, asked for leave to go through the Argentine Republic. It was, of course, refused. He then divided his army of 75,000 men into three parts, sent one to Brazil, one into the Argentine Republic, and kept one at home. Meeting with reverses, he collected all together at home, and raised an army of 150,(XX) men, and they fought like Trojans, or rather like madmen. * The war lasted five or six years, and out Of a pdpulation of 1,500,000 there’ are only--120,000 left, all told, men, women and children, only 40,000 of these being men, and more than half of them are wounded or crippled. Such fighting w-as never known. Canoes struggled against a

Brazilian iron-clad, and succeeded in boarding it and holding it for three hours. Eighty thousand women were marched from the frontiers in such forced marches that many of them fell dead from exhaustion. One General held out for a length of time on a point of land with Brazilian iron-clads on three sides of him and a swamp beyond in which was the Argen. tine army. Ammunition and provisions were short. Repeatedly called on to surrender, they refused, but finally the Argentines prevailed on them to do so. Strange to say, all the fighting was done for tyrants—tor the Lopezes, father and son, were both tyrants of the first water. In this so-called Republic it was tha fashion for the dying fathzr to Itequeath the Presidency to the son; and Lopez IL, who was the cause of the war, punished his unsuccessful agents. The General who surrendered when holding out was an impossibility and the single survivor of the canoe tragedy suffered from his hand, together with their families. He is even said to have sacrificed his brothers and sisters to*his political ambition. Often his armies were forced to live on bitter oranges. Their sufferings were fearful. Finally the tyrant’s day came, and he fell fighting in an engagement, in March, 1870, and his grave was dug on the spot where he fell, by a woman whose history was linked to his, and who,’ people led him on in many of his tyrannical actions. She buried him and her son side by side. Her courage, her suffering and her struggles drew pity from the Brazilians. One is reminded of past ages. Spartans and Trojans are called to mind. Paraguay is at present dead, to all intents and purposes.—Buenos Ayres Cor. Cincinnati Enquirer.