Militaria Trivia Quiz - Question 9

[Bloodstained Angel]

Question 9, 10Dec01

In 1865, Paraguay fought a war against an alliance of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

What is the interesting feature of this otherwise virtually forgotten conflict ?

cheers

 

[NYMets]

oK I'll bite. LOL Knowing the area, I am tempted to say that it was about soccer but it's too early in history for that.

It might be the first Latin america war that didn't involve a European power or the US.

Also it probably involved the mad dictator "Loopy" Lopez which is one of the few things I know about Paraguay is the Triple Alliance War where he put the whole population in the frontline even barefoot women & young children. No ammo no clothes etc. I think he was a paranoid nut,( like the modern dictator Stassner or whatever his name is who used to drop suspected enemies out of helicopters), who killed all his generals thinking they were plotting against him so you have a ragtag army with no leaders.

Brazil wanted river transport access through Paraguay I think. Just guesing here. Maybe there were Australians involved as there was a community of them down there but I don't when.

 

[Cyclops]

From memory, Paraguay was almost annihilated as a nation, losing over half its population from the resulting starvation, disease and devastation.

There was a peculiar river battle where the Paraguayan forces in canoes captured some opposition (Brazilian?) gunboats-shades of "Apocalypse Now".

I think the mad Paraguayan dictator was eventually hanged by his own side.

Are any of these features interesting?

 

[Bloodstained Angel]

well done guys - you are both more or less right.

The really interesting thing about the War of the Triple Alliance is that it makes a good case for actually being the bloodiest war ever fought in recorded human history.

Of course more people died in greater conflicts but in proprtional terms, no greater carnage and devastation and suffering was visited on any other nation on Earth than what Paraguay endured in these 4 years.

Prior to the Lopez dictatorship, Paraguay was a prosperous and peaceful South American country with a population of 525,000 people.

By the time the war ended, Paraguay had lost 70 percent of its entire population.

Thats not just males of military service age.

Thats not just males in the general population, and not even all adults in the general population.

Thats 70 percent of everyone - adults, children, old people, non-combatents, everyone.

And it wasn't just disease and starvation either - as you point out NYMets at the end when Paraguay was running out of troops - everyone including barefoot children had to go into the frontlines and fight in real battles where they were killed in their thousands.

Paraguay never really recovered from the catastrophe. A cruel peace settlement took away its access to the sea and nearly 30 percent of its land area, including all the good bits where the fertile soil and mineral resources were.

Paraguay slipped into poverty and dictatorship for the next 120 years and it wasn't really untill the end of the Stroessner dictatorship in the late 1980's that things started to look up for the Paraguayans.

cheers