Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 210 - The War of the Triple Alliance Part 1: Night Demons

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Part 1/5. Paraguay picks a fight with an entire continent. Support the show https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Produced by Nate Bethea and Sarah Sahim Sources: Leuchars, Chris. To the Bitter End: Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance Kolinski, Charles. Independence or Death: The story of the Paraguayan War Whigham, Thomas L. The Road to Armageddon: Paraguay versus the Triple Alliance, 1866–70.

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me is Liam. Hi, Liam. Being censored, I might add. I am a muzzled bulldog. You have to be. You're a wild animal. Yeah, that's fine. Let's just move on. I'm not going to say any names

or call people something unpublishable. You're going to have to cut all this out. This isn't going to make any sense. That's fine. I don't pay him you pay him anyway i'm joe and with me today is liam hi liam hi joe it's the second time we're trying an intro because liam is mad pretty much always joe uh liam this uh the year of uh of 2020 uh, because my brain is fucking broken. Are you okay? No, I'm not.

2022 thus far for Lions and By Donkeys podcast has probably been just one continuous series after another. Get a kick to the metaphorical nuts, as it were. Yeah, I mean, you were certainly in for the worst of it. Cycled you out out brought you back and put you down into developmental to let your mental health recover yeah i went into triple a ball for a while triple a podcasting i put you down to the age of podcasting so you'd stop crying in the locker room you got to do what you got to do coach you know i it's a tough move but i i respect it but i brought you back in case anybody's

this is a bit liam has always been here hello and uh the reason why is because we're doing the longest series that you've ever done currently i think the longest series we've ever done sits at seven episodes this will not break that is that uh soviet afghan war uh i believe so yeah that one's gonna be hard to top uh for various reasons my my own bad research uh and presentation i was still learning i think i have it down now i have been doing this for four years so i'm a little bit better uh at writing and presentation and abridging myself a little bit better. Cannot relate. Yeah. I mean, that's mostly a lie because we're about to start a five-week-long series. Though the series has been requested

since I think we started the show. And for a long time, I felt like it was one of those wars that just fell into a category that I'm not going to touch. It's too hard. It's too chaotic. It's too complicated. I've had people ask ask when are you going to do a series on the u.s war in afghanistan never it's not going to happen just like the lebanese

civil war i'm never going to touch it i mean i guess on the timeline long enough when we run out of stuff i don't know we'll talk uh no we won't because that would just be me reading the audio book of uh hooligans. There's going to be bits and pieces, of course, that we cover. Like we touched on the Lebanese Civil War. We talked about Monty Malconi and we've touched on the war in Afghanistan multiple times. I just can't see a way where you can make a cognitive narrative of any kind about this or like the Syrian Civil War. Things are bad on a loop for four and a half hours. But one of those things for a long time

i added to that list was the war of the triple alliance now i think it is because for a long time i was simply unable to do that episode or that series right i am finally comfortable attempting this um now the war of the Alliance, probably the most requested topic that we've ever gotten, was a war that lasted between the years 1864 and 1870 and saw the tiny nation of Paraguay pick a fight against Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina all at once, ending with them killing a full 70% of their own population through war, mismanagement, famine, and disease, all while imploding their economy and entire state for generations to come. Ask me about my night out at the bar last week. Shoot.

That was it. That was a joke. That was the joke? That was goddammit. I still don't have a boo button yet. Thank you. Thank you. Now, I have been warned ahead of time. This topic is going to piss some people off.

Now, I promise everyone listening, my intention is not to piss you off, whether that be through mispronunciations of Spanish. I do not speak Spanish, nor does Liam. No. Spanish nor does Liam no or you know unless that some of that anger is coming from what I believe it is and that is incredibly weird nationalism in which case I'm

do mean to piss you off because I don't like you straight up I concur for the modern nation of Paraguay they they tend to lionize a lot of the dumbest people involved in this series oh it's a bad move. And I make no apologies

for anything I'm about to say about those people. Now, the main sources I use for this series are Chris Lutcher's book, To the Bitter End, Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance, and what is largely considered one of the first major research projects into the war in English is Charles Kolinsky's

Independence or Death, the Story of the Paraguayan War, which I got via the University of Florida. However, as always, you can see our full sources in the show notes. Let me repeat that. You can see our full sources in the show notes, just in case. I do have to point out that, hence one of the titles of the book, this war is known as the War of the Triple Alliance or Paraguayan War. I am using the War of the Triple Alliance. It's the most common. It's largely interchangeable. It's the same thing.

Now, with that, let's begin. And then, of course, to understand the roots of this conflict, we have to go back to colonialism. Yay. Yay. Back to colonialism. Yay. Yay. Now, the area we know today as Paraguay was discovered, if you can call showing up someplace where people already lived, discovered by a Spaniard named Sebastian Cabot.

Though his stay in the area was so brief, he pretty much only learned what the indigenous people called the place, which was the river that flows to the sea or in their language, Paraguay. I don't know if that's like a creation mythos of the state or not. That's what I found. I don't know. Don't get stuff getting out of us. Immediately after figuring that out, Cabot ran for his life because the native people of the area began killing his team because they're Spaniards.

That's what you do to them when they show up. All in all, a good call. However, in the 19th century, they couldn't kill enough explorers to stop the unfortunate tide of colonial history. But in order to get there, the Spanish who would rule over the area seemingly divided the area up at random

and at will as they generally did and do. In the 1530, it was a part of a massive province known as the Provincia Gigante de los Indos, which... Is that a large province of the Indies? Pretty much, yeah. Spanish is fun. Which included the borders,

or parts of the borders of Paraguay, Uruguay, eastern Bolivia, and most of Argentina. So, as you can tell, things are already getting quite blurry when we jump into the modern age. 12 years after that, it became part of the vice royalty of Peru and split into two different governorships, that of the River Plate, headquartered in Buenos Aires, and then of Guaria, based out of Asunción. Now herein lies these seeds of a lot of future problems, as colonialism tends to do.

Now, the government base in Asunción had no seaport. That made it completely dependent on the government in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires very obviously learned this quite quickly that they had Asunción by the balls and levied huge taxes and goods being shipped towards Asunción.

Then in 1776, yes, things happen in the world outside of the United States during this year. Rather than America number one, USA, USA. The Spaniards fucked around again, and those two governorships were smashed together to form the Viceroyalty of the Plate,

or the Viceroyalty de la Plata. Welcome to the Union of Disappointment, boys. Once again, even with one government, it was centered on Buenos Aires. This caused some very serious rifts as the Argentines were... Now, the term Argentine and

Argentina didn't quite exist yet. I'm going to use that for the sake of my own needs, quite honestly. Even during this war, Argentina wouldn't be called Argentina yet. So just bear with me. But the Argentines were already much better off on their Paraguayan neighbors monetarily because of the port. And they also held all of the political power as well, because as you imagine, it's attached to monetary power. It's not a new

thing. It's not a new thing. It's always been a thing. Now, this became an independent struggle, which the Argentine side attempted to snuff out of the Paraguayan side. After all, they had a sweet gig being the colonial administrators for the Spanish. Why would they let that slip away and let someone else have power? That's just bad for business. Yes, of course. Famously.

Yeah. someone else have power that's just bad for business yes of course famously yeah speaking of that colonial administration as you can imagine it was technically in control of the spanish crown but uh you know the spanish had quite the empire they couldn't govern everything themselves and neither could they plop a spanish guy and spanish institutions down to control them are we going to get one of those bizar bizarre world corporations that does all sorts of horrific stuff? Not quite. Instead, they empower locals to do horrible things

on their behalf. Obviously, this is not a Spanish-only thing. The French and the Belgians were famous for doing this as well. You give one part of society a lot of benefits for upholding the colonial norms to oppress the rest of them. That, turn creates a feedback loop where the now privileged locals don't want to give that up for any kind of equality, whether that be independence or otherwise, because that

ends up fucking them over. It's not good. They left a lot of the control of the River Plate to local River Plate authorities. This is within the spanish colonial administration this was equal parts of their belief that they understood the area better which they did and because fuck it keep paying us taxes and we truly don't care what you do right now this meant the administration in buenos aires it was in their best interest to keep things going the way it's always been going they could pay the sp Spanish and continue reaping the benefits of being their administrators. The Spanish paid such little attention to

this shit they didn't even bother marking borders between their own colonial states. Again, add that to the list of problems this is going to cause in the future. Oh no. But the local authorities of the vice royalty were based out of Buenos Aires, meaning that they had just no mechanism, the Spanish

or the Paraguayans, well, the Spanish if they cared, but certainly the Paraguayans, from simply dominating the Paraguayans. Everything would be in charge of the Argentines. Which is exactly what happened. And there wasn't exactly a grieving process in a colonial empire. You couldn't file a complaint

to HR. Just running a list of grievances and getting your dick down to the floor oh that sucks please forward your complaint to the government in buenos aires okay but my complaint is about the government in buenos aires good luck oh god yep yeah now this eventually as it always does festered and grew into hatred and resentment over time. Then Spain got invaded by France in 1808 as Napoleon, man famous for never doing anything wrong, stormed through Europe,

eventually placing his idiot brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. Now, this caused a split among Spain's American colonies. Some of them wanted to accept their new King. Y'all can have Florida back. While others accepted the previous Spanish bourbon King. This created a schism amongst inbred assholes, beefing over a throne a thousand miles away. Still others growing rich in Buenos Aires is like an upper class of

merchants. Like why are we doing business with the Spanish at all? While they're busy shooting at each other, we should go for independence. Now, the Argentines in Buenos Aires didn't exactly just want Argentinian independence. They wanted independence within the boundaries of the voice royalty that they were in charge of. This included Paraguay. So just self-government, like devolvement or? No, no, it's straight independence.

Oh, okay, okay. Now, there was some people who advocated for that kind of setup, but Spain was falling apart at the seams, so it was a good time to exit. They saw their independent national boundaries as the entire vice royalty of the plate. This entire colony is now whatever we're going to call it.

This meant they wanted to take Paraguay with them. Paraguayans looking at this entire situation and seeing that, wow, now we're not going to only be fucked by the Argentines and the Spanish. We'll just be fucked by the Argentines. Refuse to play along with this game. An assembly was called and they decided they were going to break off from the vice royalty and go work on themselves for a little while. Respect it. This led Buenos Aires to dispatch

General Manuel Belgrano to kick the Paraguayans into line. And by that I mean, become subservient to Buenos Aires again. Sure. This became known as the Paraguayan Campaign or, and also, the Argentine War of Independence, while also simultaneously being the Paraguay War of Independence. If you're like me and you only learned your South American history from Top Gear, you may remember the Belgrano as the ship that sank and launched the Falklands War.

I was about to say that this would not be the only Belgrano that gets its teeth kicked in. I don't have a dog in this fight. Nope, nope, nope. I'm not weighing in on the Falklands today. On the Falklands? Fuck it. Who cares? Honestly, it's one of the few pieces of colonialism that hardly matters.

There was no indigenous population there that was displaced. It's just people fighting over rocks and prestige. It doesn't actually fucking matter. In that case, the Falklands are British and always will be. And that's the only time I'll ever say that. Wait, I have a centrist position. Her Majesty's Ila de Melvinas.

You gotta share it like the Canadians and the Danes do with that one island off of greenland yeah occasionally you just show up with a flag plot it out like stanleyville or whatever the fuck that one city is called and then just trade take the other guy's flag off yeah so on and so forth there you go that's what we gotta do this podcast is now banned in argentina oh whatever we had a good run belgrano expected to steamroll the Paraguayans while the Paraguayans decided

to be much more pragmatic in their independence goals. For instance, the Spaniards suddenly became their friends because not exactly wanting to lose to Argentina and thus weaken their grip along all of their colonies, the Spanish were like,

hey, Paraguay, need some help kicking those guys out? And they're like, all right, I don't know if we should trust you. Like, no, we're good for it, bro. Trust me. This is just to kick out the Argentines. Trust me. Trust me, bro.

So they did. An important part here is the Paraguayans had not yet declared independence. Rather, only their freedom from the vice royalty of the River, only their freedom from the vice royalty of the River Plate, meaning freedom from the Argentines and their own independent struggle. Therefore,

Spain was like, this is almost like a universal theory of fuck that guy, but I really don't want to hand it to the Spanish because they had bad intentions. Right. Now, the Paraguayans pledged loyalty to the Spanish crown, at least for now that was a very pragmatic rule nobody really believed in it i'm just here so i won't get shot and most of the

same people that were like yeah go spain we're also working for uh like a patriot movement was forming behind closed doors like they realized that if we're gonna be smart we need to have spain on our side to kick these guys out of our yard if we're going to be smart, we need to have Spain on our side to kick these guys out of our yard. Otherwise, we're going to get fucking rolled. And on the flip side, maybe Spain loses too many people in this war to continue oppressing us.

It's going to work out in our way. Sure. Now, the Paraguayan campaign ended in a complete and total defeat for the forces of Belgrano. Winning the separation... That's crazy how that works. He was not hit with an exocet this time though yeah yeah not a big fan of the british obviously uh being sarcastic when i say they will they're british and always will be but uh i don't know do you have a rule britannia drop i don't and i don't know if i ever will i assume i'm gonna get yelled at in

the comments that's okay some of these things are jokes of course of course we're joking i just think that like imperial prestige projects are the dumbest fucking thing on earth that entire war was one of choice yeah yeah nobody gives a shit it was a nationalist dog whistle from two failing shitty right-wing governments nobody cares what he said don't get mad at me in the comments please yeah i mean if you're the kind of person that gets mad of those islands i don't know what to tell you uh there's a japanese version of you getting really mad over the senkakus which much like those are barren rocks with no life on them i include stanleyville as barren rocks with no life on them. I include Stanleyville as barren rocks with no life

on it. Like I said, Belgrano was soundly defeated. And meanwhile, in Asuncion, the royal governor, the man appointed to rule the area for Spain, kind of like a governor general, was forced to step aside because the military government kind of ruled by patriots, if you want to call them that. didn't they were they were not down with the with they were not down with the crown I didn't I didn't write that down I just thought of that that was that was three rhymes in one dude

yes it is an ICP reference because ladies and gentlemen oh my god dude I'm getting a lot of mileage out of that one now jesus fuck now uh this led to a military government headed by a guy named i quit dude a military government led by captain falencio yigros and a lawyer named jose gaspar rod Rodriguez. You never want to be led by a lawyer. Especially one with more than two names. Thankfully for me,

he's commonly known as Dr. Francia. Easy enough. He was called that because he was one of two Paraguayans in the entire country to hold a PhD. Also, he was really weird and I'm kind of in love with him. Most dudes that hold PhDs are strange people.

Yeah, in my experience, everyone that I've met with a PhD has weird tics that they develop over the years of just forfeiting large sections of their social life for studies. You'll leave my mother alone. I am including my professors in this. Unless they're listening, which case you're you're perfect um nothing's going to be what a jawline now previous to this dr francie had retired out to the countryside where he'd tell anybody who would listen to him that the government was completely incompetent which was true and they were coming to kill him which may or may not have been true local native tribes because he lived out in

the rural areas, which was mostly native and local native tribes believed he had a kind of mystical powers because they heard him out at night talking to what they called, quote, night demons. Oh boy. This is because he had a neat habit of getting blind drunk and yelling out

into the night skies, literally cursing the stars. KXCs are some strange folks. Like I said, I kind of like this guy. I can respect a man who, in the solemn loneliness of his own home, gets blind drunk and screams at the air.

I can respect that. Now, obviously by then he'd been rehabilitated. He's working with the captain. And these two men led Paraguay to decide to become a republic in 1813, ruled by co-councils. Now, as anybody who's paid attention to any other situation where there's been more than one person calling themselves councils, you already know how this ends. Now, Congress named Francia and Valencia Y Yigros as alternative consuls for a year. Alternative consuls? It was like sixth man of the

year. Yeah. Congratulations, dude. You're on the B team. Francia was given the first four months. His term was followed by a four-month term for Yigros, which was then followed by a second four-month term for Francia. Each consul controlled half of the army in a system that was developed to absolutely never fucking work.

I don't know how good that is. I gotta be honest with you. This is the South American version of, like, the Lebanese government. Like, this is never gonna work. Right. Within a year, Dr. Francia's made the sole council of Paraguay, a decision not everybody would live to regret. Francia hated the Spanish and their aristocracy

that they had left behind. So in 1820, whether it was real or otherwise, nobody is entirely sure. A plot to overthrow him was found. And it was decided that the aristocracy was the root of all of these problems in this plot, and they had to be just wiped out. Most of them went via firing squad,

including Captain Egros for good measure, despite the fact he was not a member of the aristocracy. Oh, well, you know. Then, for reasons nobody is entirely sure or been able to quite figure out, he did the same thing for a vast majority of the Creole population. Why? Despite the fact that he himself was partially Creole. He just said that they were disloyal. Well, George, did you know that Hitler was Jewish?

Ah! he just said that they were disloyal well judge you know that hitler was church through pure insanity and bloodlust nobody would ever go on to question dr francia's rule ever again at least from inside the country however that didn't mean he wasn't paranoid as hell through all times through the rest of his life he He slept with a gun under his pillow. Nobody was allowed six paces of him, and even canes were banned from being used anywhere nearby him. If someone needed a cane to actually walk, they'd be forced to sit on the ground and address him like crisscross applesauce. Poor dad, dude. Every bush and tree along his route from his home to his work office were uprooted to make sure nobody could ambush him, which just seems like good sense. I'm actually going to do this on my

way to the corner store just to be safe. Understandable. This, however, brought with it questions about threats from outside the country. With the threat of Argentina on one side, the newly independent Brazil, then the Brazilian empire. Yeah, that was a thing. I can't believe Pedro the second would ever do anything bad. We're going to learn a little bit more about Pedro the second in a bit, but I always play him in. Congratulations on all the slavery,

I guess. Oh, no, no. I always also play as England or America. So, you know, that's a trifecta.

Listen, I'm not a moral person most days. Everybody knows the moral thing to do in Civ is to play as Gandhi and nuke everybody. Francia decided the best way to protect Paraguay going forward was to effectively become South America and North Korea and become

a hermit state. Paraguay and Juche. Honestly, that's not too far from what he envisioned. Juche. Minus the thin veil of communism over the top. Paraguay was already a very remote and secluded place. So shutting it down was made virtually as easy as banning all river travel within its borders. Because that was its main route of travel in and out of the country.

Boom, borders are closed. Like the countryside is so rough, really the only people that make it through there are native tribes where the goings on of the central governments are immaterial to their existence. Sure. So effectively, Paraguay has been shut. One port was kept open and closely monitored by a small army of spies. And as you can imagine, this was not great for a country. You can't be that isolationist and expect to not, I don't know,

collapse inward on yourself, which is kind of what happened. The economy collapsed and people were largely reduced to subsistence farming. He also confiscated the Catholic Church's property because everyone eventually does one good thing. And he named himself rather than the Pope as the head of the Catholic church's property because everyone eventually does one good thing. And he named himself, rather than the Pope,

as the head of the Catholic church in Paraguay. Ah, son of a-kidness, baby! I don't know if that makes him technically an anti-Pope or not, but I still like it either way. Those people, listen, man, I'm not a big fan of the Roman Catholic church, but those people are like super duper freaks. You? No, can't imagine.

My girlfriend's Catholic, man. Listen, I have to go to some sort of confirmation next month, and I'm just like, I don't even belong. Like, what? No. I'm going to go, but I'm going to complain about it. My mom grew up Catholic, and I was endlessly happy she never tried to force the faith onto me. But as head of the Catholic Church slash president for life or council for life whatever he's going by he made primary school compulsory and then banned all other education uh okay yeah

take win some lose some i guess is how i would say that so people were literate kind of kind of they do their abcs yeah i mean they they mean, they read at a very low level. The idea behind this was he saw intelligence as a threat to him personally. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, he's not the first person to do this. No, not at all. And he saw anybody going to, say, college is like, why do you want to be as smart as me?

You trying to come after my fucking position? So he outlawed college. I like that dictators never have any original ideas anymore I will say this is very original for his time and especially in the area even comparison to his neighbors he was you could safely call him eccentric

I was thinking some weird Khmer Rouge shit or some who was the dictator of Myanmar slash Burma? A super weird general one that was ruled by his dreams or whatever. Oh, yeah. He had like a soothsayer. I don't know.

But yeah, I know who you're talking about. Oh, Ronald Reagan. Aha. Now, he seemingly centralized the entire state, which is generally a good thing for the running of a government. I'm not going to say politically it's good. I will say for the running of a government makes things easier. Sure. You know, creating ministries and making ministers for those to run affairs.

He didn't do that part. He simply centralized it onto himself. He micromanaged and ran the entire state at every level i repeat my point why bother and weirdly enough he was pretty good at it uh like he went down to like even so far as fixing the roads in the capital uh fixing drainage in the city's capital. And despite the fact he was clearly not well and a dying alcoholic for half of his life, he dedicated his entire day from sunrise to sunset to work. Outside of that, he lived a Spartan existence.

He ran it all on his own. Then he fucking died in 1840, leaving nobody in line to take over. That's one of the problems when you run a country like this is when you die, nobody has any idea how to replace you. Now, as crazy and as paranoid as he was, he was not corrupt.

He lived in like a single bedroom home. His only personal belongings were like a tobacco case and a pipe, and he left the state treasury with two times the amount of money in it than when he had gotten it. Oh, wow. So, benevolent dictatorship

moments. Who's to say if it's bad or not? Yeah, I'm not saying that he wasn't a psychopathic dictator. I'm just saying sometimes psychopathic dictators are okay on the books. If you're the accountant if you're the, if you're the accountant,

you're like, yeah, this guy's not so bad. Sure. He murdered half of my family, but at least tax time is okay. Uh, it reminds me of,

uh, uh, Charles Taylor's election campaign in Liberia. He killed my mom. He killed my pop, but I shall vote for him or something. Nailed it. Uh,

which is, you know, weird flex. I look forward to 10 years where that's adopted by some third party in, like, Nebraska or whatever. And, you know, he didn't draw his personal salary. He put it right into the treasury.

So he might be the best crazy dictator we've ever talked about. It's a low bar. It's a weird, flexible bar that doesn't have the style of General Butt Naked, though. He didn't have style. I'll give him that much. He was no Bocasa.

Casa, that's it. Yeah, I was thinking of General Butt Naked. I'm not going back on it. Yeah, I mean, General Butt Naked certainly had style, too. It was just an affordable one because you didn't need clothes. Gotta have swag, Joe gel you needed no clothes you needed a clown wig and plenty of human flesh and it turns out you two can rule a slice of western africa he's a preacher now weirdly enough yeah isn't uh ray lewis a preacher now too uh i know they have a lot in common they both killed a guy allegedly killed a

guy allegedly killed a guy ray lose is gonna show up at my doorstep with a knife now allegedly killed a guy no he allegedly killed two guys to be fair that is true now in his place congress which did exist during all this suddenly finding itself itself with power again, chose a guy named Carlos Antonio Lopez and, again, Mariano Alonso as co-counsels because they learned their fucking lesson last time. Apparently not. Though,

as always, within a few months, Lopez exiled his co-worker, becoming the sole ruler because... Oh, what a dick! Yeah, of course he fucking did. They were not, in fact, hom homies as icp would say oh i love that that drop makes you so mad it makes me furious and honest to god makes me furious it's gonna be your intro music like if you're a professional wrestler the lights are gonna hit fucking pyro's gonna go off and you're gonna come into like fucking magnets how do they work

i will not be doing that no I might be doing that who knows what secrets lie within the hearts of man yeah now the office of council was replaced with the office of president with 10 year term limits rather than a perpetual dictator under Francia though I'm sure you're aware the 10 year term

moments were a perpetual dictatorship with extra steps yeah now I assume they did this because they wanted some layer of legitimacy and also because they wanted a small window where maybe they don't have a crazy dictator that's having them pull up trees like go tree stumping in the backyard so someone doesn't assassinate him now lopez was described as a morbidly obese man who would never remove his top hat i don't know why that's important. I just find it weird. Just imagine him taking

off his top hat and just the stink wafts out of it. Oh, they call me Old Smellahat. Now, he was a pissy, short-tempered asshole who lashed out at everyone. And unlike Francia, he was cartoonishly corrupt, almost like he had a

makeup for lost time. He saw Paraguay as his personal property and treated it as such. He gave out random rights and privileges to his own family. For instance, his wife was given the first right to purchase all cattle coming into the capital of Asuncion. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. I don't know. Okay.

His daughter bought new banknotes and sold them to the Central Bank of Paraguay. Should make a profit at least. Oh, God, yeah. Good for her, man. His daughter was effectively the mint. Grind never stopped, Joe. His son was made a general and the minister of war, despite the fact he had no military training or experience whatsoever. His other son was made an admiral despite the fact they

had no navy. They are landlocked. They're landlocked, yeah, okay. They did have a riverine fleet, but they didn't have a navy. What is that? Greenwater navy or something? I think Brownwater navy, but it'll become important during the actual

war. Everybody has riverine navies and they're quite important. His brother became head of the church and all of the new increased taxes went directly to the president personally, not the state. Oh, boy. However, this influx of money did give him a very good reason to open up Paraguay to the world for trade. I mean, for him mostly and his family. open up Paraguay to the world for trade. I mean, for him mostly and his family. He banned all internal

travel within the country and made the chief administrator of each district a military officer. And then priests were ordered to turn over people's personal confessions to the state for prosecution. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's bad. Unlike Francia, he did not

try to run all of this himself, which honestly is for the best. He probably couldn't even run a dictatorship. He even created different ministries of government, which previously did not exist, though he staffed them all with family members and shit. Every minister of government pretty much became a feudal lord over his little domain. Sure. He attempted to modernize what he could and even outlawed slavery in 1842. Kind of. Beating us by 23 years.

It was an outlaw of slavery, but everyone around them still had slaves. So there was an agreement for most places that he would return runaway slaves. Cool. Great. He constructed one of the first railroads in South America that ran for 72 miles. He built a lengthy telegraph infrastructure none of these things existed before mostly because francia while knowing about them kind of lacked the ability to do that himself and since he wanted to be a hermit kingdom he couldn't exactly bring in people who knew how right and unlike francia he attempted to

build a modern military bringing in experts and engineers from Europe and the United States. Before long, he had created somehow the most powerful and well-trained and professional military in South America. Especially the Navy. Oh boy. Yeah. You don't want any of that smoke. However,

all of their weapons are like a hundred years old. So, you know, professionalism can only get you so far. Getting wrecked by just some dudes with muskets on my paraguayan riverboat now this didn't stop lobez from being quite honestly one of the most racist people in this entire story yeah of course not and not just against like people that were say white or european whatever anybody who was in paraguayan he fucking hated well this is

consistent yeah i mean but this wasn't something that he did for the masses this was his own personal beliefs and uh his personal ideology and it because of that it became popular at the time because you know it's popular or else right now his belief was to equate any foreigner with an enemy, and this extended to political meetings with fellow heads of state. This caused everyone to fucking hate Lopez. Consternation is the word I think I'm looking for. Yeah. Now, he died in 1862, leaving the office to his son, the main character of our story, Francisco Solano Lopez.

Now, in case you're wondering, how does a president simply leave power to his son he couldn't there was a legal mechanism to do that they were technically supposed to have elections and stuff um it was effectively a coup uh and nobody argued too hard against it because the military was full of lopez loyalists and if solano lopez who i'll be calling simply lopez from here on out uh would just be like, okay, we'll shoot the Congress. The military probably would have done it. So Congress is just like, okay, I guess he's president now. It's like a baby doc sort of situation. Yeah, kind of.

They made it legitimate within their laws in a roundabout way. Like all of his other previous work experience, this was a job given to him by his father, which he was unqualified for. He was a general, previous to this, and minister of war, and during that time, he was a military attache to Napoleon III, famously known for being the worst Napoleon.

Yes. It was during this time that he witnessed a Crimean war, but did not actively take part in it. Depending on what personal story of his you read, he was some kind of war hero, and he was more of an observer from very far away. This is part to do with his own father's doing of fluffing up his son because he was minister of war, but also Lopez himself when he became president and did everything we're about to talk about.

He had to church up his resume a bit, as we have all done from time to time. I have also added that I have fought in the Crimean War to a resume. Oh, they did, dude. Yeah. Now, he met with Napoleon III after Napoleon had declared himself the emperor again. Right. And something about the pomp and the grandeur of it all, much like Bocasa, had an impact on him. He's like, I want people to treat me like this.

Now he never ended up declaring himself emperor, but he did want to become the Napoleon of South America. And he even put it secondhandedly, the emperor of the plate. Quite a few people have heard him talk about that. He never wrote that down or anything. Cause the idea that he wanted to declare himself emperor of the plate is contentious

now like his father Lopez are short and very round he had bow legs and was described as quote jowly two things you never want to be described as jowly I feel like also with chronic disgustingly

horrible breath now I have to couch that with horrible breath for the 1800s. Oh no, fucking awful. That's what we call rank, boys and girls. Now, he was an abrasive

asshole. Lopez was called fixated on purpose, bordering on stupidity. He saw people as little more than instruments of his rule and the state as him. There was no difference between the Republic of Paraguay and Solano Lopez. They were one and the same.

With him goes the country. This will be very, very bad later on. Yeah, I feel like it usually is. Yeah, it's never a good case. I can't say I'm shocked, I gotta tell you. I can't say I'm shocked. I got to tell you. I'm just going to say bold take here.

Anybody who considers themselves like the father of a nation or the embodiment of a political body. It's never a sane man. That guy is probably an asshole. That guy's a fucking lunatic. That guy's a fucking lunatic. He saw people, like I said, as a little more than instruments and tolerated absolutely zero disagreement at all from anyone. This included his Congress, which, once again, pretty much... I don't know. What's those teacher jobs where you can't work around kids anymore, so they lock you in an office so you can be making a paycheck?

Yeah. He has one of those. The Congress has one of those making a paycheck. He has one of those. Like the Congress has one of those. Now, after the death of his father, he demanded the princely sum of $5 from every single person in Asuncion with the cause of it being to build a memorial to his glorious father. Nobody ever saw the money again

and no memorial was ever built. Yeah. This is the first like go fund me rug pull i think i've ever read about you guys you guys are coney 2012 never jerk off in public is my advice i'm sorry what what nothing what's going on joe what is that all right you have my attention fucking what what? You remember the coding 2012 guy? Oh, God. I forgot that's what he did.

Yeah, everybody jerked off in public, dude. Yeah, he was like running through the streets of like San Francisco or whatever. Yeah. Don't multitask, folks. No, no. Can't recommend it. Now, within two years, anyone who opposes rule was gone, whether they be in some inland prison which was generally a death sentence or just straight up executed he found himself the absolute and unquestioned ruler of paraguay now in argentina things were a little bit more chaotic for starters even the name of the

country argentina wasn't a thing until 1862 however i'm going to continue calling it that because it makes sense. The independents they sought from Spain left them with no real demarcated borders and even a functioning coherent central administration or government. That meant, as a working state, they kind of had to start from scratch. That's tough.

Yeah. It's never a good sign. No. The country was generally split between the better-off European influenced middle class in Buenos Aires and the suburbs that sprouted off from there. And a whole lot of indigenous tribes who really wanted everyone else to leave them the fuck alone. Understandable. Yeah. And even then, the both of these groups are further split among smaller groups.

So one to rule themselves with little to no input from a central government. There's a lot of confederation, stuff like that. As you can tell, this is not an exhaustive history of Argentina. If this interests you, please read further on your own. Might I suggest checking our sources? Perhaps!

Now, this led to a foreseen kind of instability, right? You had one group of people who wanted a very strong central government and a whole lot of people who wanted, at best, a loose confederation. They left the fuck alone. Yeah. Yeah. Led to instability, coups, and wars.

And the things became so wild that you really wish your government was as stable and normal as the one being ran by the guy next door who had just banned college. Yeah. Remember a good side when you're rooting for that guy. When the guy next door who had just banned college yeah never a good sign so what are you rooting for that guy when the guy who gets drunk and yells at the moon like some kind of like possessed wolfman is the best case scenario between the two you have fucked up that's the damn truth

now it was during this entire mess that the military government of argentina no not that military government the other other one. Sorry, I have to differentiate here. Attempted to take over Paraguay and failed the Belgrano expedition. Well, they also attempted to take over Uruguay at the same time and also failed. This time

with the Uruguayans as well as with the assistance from the Portuguese coming down from Brazil to throw their hat in the ring. Oh, wow. I never want to hear the Portuguese are coming. It to throw their hat in the ring. Oh, wow. Yeah. I never want to hear the Portuguese are coming. It's just going to be embarrassing. Then other parts of Argentina decided that they don't really want this whole

central government Buenos Aires thing, leading them to be having the shit beat out of the government, which was then ruled by Belgrano and Rivadavia, which then created officially a confederation system ruled by a dictator, Jean-Manuel de Rosas, a man who would go on to become a brutal tyrant, generally things

that you don't consider with a confederation. As you can tell, this isn't going to work great. He solidified his power by slaughtering native tribes and betting the confederation of Argentina to its will, which you will note is the exact opposite of what a confederation is supposed to be. As you can imagine, this led to more problems and more you will note is the exact opposite of what a confederation is supposed to be. Yeah.

As you can imagine, this led to more problems and more than one more and the eventual overthrow by Jose de Aracuaza, who was not a confederationist and more of a centralist leading Buenos Aires itself to attempt to break away from the confederation only to get kicked in the teeth until they rejoined once again, leading to a piece that lasted only about two years before the confederation collapsed once again into a pile of civil wars. My head hurts.

Things are going great in Argentina. And really, throughout all of this war, they don't get any better. Of course they fucking don't, dude. When they lie and slap my dog, he's a thing. They're not better. On the other side of all this, in 1862, Bartolome Mitter emerged victorious and organized

the Argentine Republic, and which he was elected president of. While he was attempting to unify the country in various shapes of success and failure, a fair amount of it still really didn't want any part with his republic. That is even counting the fact that the government still claimed Uruguay and Paraguay, and claimed everything that was part of the viceroyalty. Uruguay and Paraguay and claimed everything that was part of the vice royalty. Nobody was even sure if this government would stick around. And meanwhile, various provinces are forming their own leagues, all with the goal of breaking off from the Republic and reconstituting a

confederation or possibly having their own independence. Anyway, Argentina land of contrast moving on. I just made an entire country mad at me, and I apologize. Oh, my head hurts so bad. Now in Brazil. Fuck you, man. It would be fair to call them the main independent

player of this entire conflict. As you're well aware, Brazil is huge, and they were seen as a major threat by seemingly everyone else for the simple virtue, which, sure. And their size meant they could pretty much always have border disputes with several countries all at once, because if you remember,

none of these borders are marked down. Right. And the states that... It's just some guys. Yeah, whether it be a Portuguese successor state in the Empire of Brazil, or Spanish ones, just constant border fuckery.

Nobody's shit was stable at all. However, Brazil, or the Empire of Brazil as it still was, really liked fucking around with local politics with its neighbors. Of course. Because it's the most powerful country in the area, economically at the very least. Militarily, eh, debatable. Though they did invest in an actual iron-clad Navy, it's hard to call them a military powerhouse. They included things that they had claims on

as the entire voice royalty as well. And when they realized they weren't just going to be able to walk in and take them over when Spain fucked off, they decided to start fucking with them internally. This included Argentina fought an entire war against Brazil on the side of Uruguay in 1852, and it would not be the only one. The birth of the Brazilian Empire itself was an act of political meddling that is incredibly weird.

Brazil was a colony and later a client kingdom of Portugal, ruled locally by Portuguese royalty that were related to the king of Portugal. The man who made the kingdom in 1808 I think it's João? João? Yeah, I think that's the name. João VI. Yeah, João VI.

Definitely, dude. I definitely know what I'm talking about. Eventually became King of Portugal. So, you know, he got a start in Brazil, got promoted to King of Portugal. So, like, it was kind of a file-through system. The JV. The JV League. Yes, I am simplifying things incredibly. Now, when that happened, the Portuguese government,

now that Zhao was king and he had no reason to court relations with the Brazilians or the Portuguese in the Brazilian court, decided to strip Brazil of its elevated status of client kingdom, reverting it back to a colony. Now, since the crown prince wasn't in charge anymore in Portugal, nobody actually cared about this. And it just made them easier to control. However, Brazilians or Portuguese in Brazil at the time, the Portuguese aristocracy, many of whom were partially Brazilian or Brazilian themselves, really did care about this. They enjoyed the privileges they were getting, and they liked this whole royal court thing they had going on.

So they moved for independence. Yeah, I like Bridgerton too. This led to Pedro I, Zhao's own son, who was, remember, king of Portugal at this time, to declare the empire of Brazil. Bold! Bold! Imagine what family dinner on Sunday is like. and then even weirder pedro the first who had just declared independence of an empire therefore becoming emperor would eventually

go on to also be king of portugal yeah it's kind of confusing it's weird to play triple a ball with imperialism yeah it's it's a lot of inbred bickering. Who gets to exploit Brazilian people the hardest? Which group of Portuguese people, really, at this point? Right. Eventually, after wars and strife, the Empire of Brazil would stabilize under Pedro II. In history books, he's described as a modern, progressive, and tolerant man, but he is still Portuguese. And therefore, a bastard. Yeah.

And being so, he was related to half of Europe as well as most nobility was at the time. I say that because despite all of his praises, 30% of his empire's entire population lived in one kind of enslavement or another. Jesus. It was a lot. There was a whole lot of slaves in Brazil. That's bad.

And I believe Brazil was the last country in this part of the world to outlaw slavery almost in the 1900s. Cool. Yeah. It was like late 1800s. He did institute elections in a parliament, though the emperor picked the prime minister. And that prime minister, under Pedro II at least, was at least allowed to do his job without imperial meddling.

Though in order to vote in these elections, you had to meet certain land ownership and income requirements, which meant out of 10 million people, about 200,000 could vote. How convenient. And also the votes were corrupt and everybody knew it. Yeah. The empire was described as stable, but the entire system depended

on slavery. It was a unique position to be alone in after 1865 and the destruction of the American Confederacy, which meant they had very few friends in the world as the U.S. had come around realizing that slavery is bad for optics. I'm not going to say that America came around to disagreeing with slavery because I feel like that's actually... Yeah, we didn't. I don't think it's fair to say that we did. Slavery, it turns out, is not a good way to create a stable country.

And while that seems very obvious, let me walk you through a few things. On top of its countless ethical and moral evils, it creates a built-in population whose only method out of their immediate situation is violent rebellion, which then facilitates the state in building a massive security force to keep them in check, which then makes the non-slave population mad about all these cops and soldiers that they are having to pay for. Then the government gets mad of their own population

and their own overpowered security forces built in to keep everybody in line in the first place. Cool. Not to mention you simply don't have the infrastructure to free people if you don't want the entire country to fall apart because okay let's make 30 of the population suddenly free overnight what the fuck are they gonna do kill their former masters with any luck now i'm not saying that is ethically or morally wrong to do what they're probably going to do next.

I'm just going to say, if you want to hold together a country without some pretty serious institutional change within those borders, you're going to have a bad time. Which, of course, circles back around to keeping slavery in line because you don't want to, like, I don't know, be led out of your imperial chambers at gunpoint. Right. Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. You are nothing is not pragmatic joe sometimes i have to put myself in like the headspace of like the worst people in history to try to explain why because like it's very easy to say lol bad right

which is admittedly what i used to do and i still do it like this is inarguably a terrible fucking system and indefensible in every way possible. However, I feel like it's very, very important to understand where the worst people in history are coming from so you can mock them more efficiently. Not so you can identify with them. I did not mean to humanize any of these fucking people. They're terrible. If you're getting that from what I'm saying, you've taken a wrong turn. Go back around. Now, this put brazil in

a very weird place it was both stable but very volatile with a government that would lash out at any perceived threat worried that someone was going to run in and as the saying goes kick down the door and the whole rotten structure would come down which would happen after this war pretty swiftly i had the last player in this war was uruguay the smallest nation of them and accidentally the most major cause for it though and really that's through no fault of their own they were very much caught in the middle of imperial meddling and proxy wars of literally everybody that's surrounded hey guys happy to be here hopefully there won't be a bloody war for oh no guys isn't it cool to have an independent country guys oh god i said there's a bloody war for empire this is exactly what i didn't want to happen now at the time uruguay was known as

banda oriental but i'm gonna call it uruguay to make things easier on myself and everybody else thank you joe uruguay was possibly in the worst position of everyone. It was small and powerless. Both Argentina and Brazil attempted to swallow them whole after the crumbling of the vice royalty. The situation inside the new country was a lot like Argentina, with European-influenced liberals in its capital, Montevideo, which wanted to reform the country to make it more Western,

things like that, and rural conservatives who really wanted nothing to do with Montevideo. Which, sure. And unlike its neighbors, a huge amount of these people on both the rural side and the urban side were immigrants. It's very strange. Most of the country's known population were not Uruguayans. There's a lot of native populations that, of course, butted against the urban center because that immediately leads to their exploitation, as it always does. Right. Of course. There's at least 50,000 foreigners living within the country, many of whom were the urban side. And like a lot of people in this situation,

they want to acquire land because land equates wealth, etc., etc., etc. When you acquire this land, it's going to be taken from the rural areas, many of these people, natives. So you could see where the conflict's coming from. Right. And you could certainly see why the rural natives were like, yo, fuck Montevideo. Right. the conflict's coming from right and you could certainly see why the rural natives were like yo fuck monte video right this led to something that's generally considered a civil war though it goes through weird ebbs and flows between 1838 and 1851 it's a long fucking time damn dude

it was very very fluid and hard to keep track of um with very very hot periods and very very low periods the war eventually sucked in all of its neighbors as well as Britain and France. Oh, boy. Montevideo was besieged on and off for nine years, leading to a stalemate. But the war occurred outside of the siege and outside of what you think of force on force combat. It was a whole lot of just bloodthirsty crimes to the point that throat slitting became so

commonplace that a historian called it, quote, ritual. Oh, that's love life, man. Yeah. You always say the gruesome stuff for when I'm about to eat dinner. That's right, baby. Now, eventually, Argentina was able to bring the two sides to a ceasefire, but

the country's desperately poor and ruined, which led them directly to fall into the arms of Brazil, who was waiting in the wings to exploit them. This included five different treaties that effectively made Uruguay a client state of Brazil, with things like Brazilians having land-buying rights, having the right to solve all of their territorial disputes and even the right to command and control Uruguayan customs taxes. Yeah, Brazil controlled the country. Now, this was joined with a perpetual, unbreakable alliance. Uruguay had previously abolished slavery, but because of one of these treaties, promised to extradite any runaway slaves back into Brazil. Now, this unfortunately would turn into Brazilian slavers coming into Uruguay and kidnapping people they believed to be slaves,

which was just like... Or just get it at random, I assume. Racial minorities. Racial minorities. They were kidnapping racial minorities. Right now, of course. Yeah. Tale as old as time, Joe.

Now, this piece lasted about 10 years until the Civil War broke out again of Anacio Flores, leader of the Colorado faction, Tale as old as time, Joe. Now, this piece lasted about 10 years until the Civil War broke out again. Venazio Flores, leader of the Colorado faction, who are generally thought to be the progressives, launched a rebellion against a new president, Bernardo Barrow, who is the leader of the Blanco faction, which is the conservatives. This became known as the Uruguayan War, and it quickly became a massive, confused, and stupid proxy war dragging in all of its neighbors. Now, this is for a few reasons. Flores, the Colorado leader, had a kindred spirit in Argentinian leader, Miter. And the support of the Empire of Brazil, who were both pumping in support to their side of the war,

though technically it was supposed to be a secret. Brazil, despite being a de facto ruler of a much smaller Uruguay, had actually gotten kind of sick of Barrow, who was the leader of the Blanco faction. They figured the easiest way to get rid of him would just be to support the Colorados. On top of that, Mitterre and Flores really fucking hated Solano Lopez. Ah, fuck that guy. Look at that guy. And Lopez, who is already very, very paranoid and already nearly fought Brazil a couple of times before, saw this as a united front against him. The Colorados won.

They would take over Uruguay, at which point Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil would all be united against Paraguay. Now, I do have to say, this is where some people believe that Solano Lopez was right, and this is going to happen. There's actually no evidence about this. It's all based on the paranoid writings of Solano Lopez, who is not at all a trustworthy narrator. Some sort of a grandizer. Yeah, sure. And this is where the modern telling of the Solano Lopez stories comes in, that this was a proactive. It's like, well, I'm going to fight the war now rather than fight it later which is weird i mean even in the situation where this war is coming later there's no situation where paraguay could possibly win right so it doesn't make it any smarter but

that is uh more of a creation of the solano lopez mythos than anything that's based in reality got it for the blancos the legal government of Uruguay, they were left on their own and fighting the Colorados, fighting Brazil and Argentina. They immediately reached out to Lopez for support and Uruguay asked for an alliance and Lopez turned it down. He didn't want to get that close to him yet. At the same time, he wrote to Argentina telling them like,

hey, we know what you're doing. Stop supporting Flores. cut it out right lopez then sent them because this is the idea here he was worried in his own mind that uh lopez is anyway that argentina would see him as a bad faith actor they were hiding something from argent Right? So in order to prove that, because Lopez sees himself as a, the smartest man in every room that he's in, which demonstrably false, but also like this great diplomat,

despite the fact he did not understand diplomacy. As an example of that, to prove to Argentina that his goals were, were good or whatever, he released all of the diplomatic cables between Paraguay and Uruguay. Oh boy. Now

he was clearly trying to position himself as some kind of mediator into this war, showing that he wasn't hiding anything. Now releasing diplomatic cables in such a way is widely known as a dick move. You're not supposed to do this. Yeah, I was going to say.

And his plan failed entirely and quickly. I thought I was being a sly mediator, but the only thing that happened was this actually brought the concerns of a possible Lopez entry into this war to the attention of Mitter,

who previous this didn't really care about Lopez. Sure. Lopez also pointed out that everybody knew about the supplies and men that Argentina was sending to Flores. This pissed off Argentina anymore. It's like one of those things like, you're not supposed to fucking talk about this publicly.

Like, let's do this at a meeting like adults. Right, right, right. This is one of lopez's biggest weakness on top of uh you know all the other ones like i said he always believed that he was the smartest man in every room that he was in despite the fact that he was very clearly almost in way over his head in every situation that he that he found himself in he thought that he could play geopolitics like a video game, like in like a total war game. Yeah.

He was attempting to play Brazil and Argentina off one another without realizing that dynamics had changed. And they're both very clearly allies. Sure. After being asked multiple times, the Blancos finally sent in a guy named Antonio Carreras to speak with Lopez who played Lopez like a fiddle. Previous to this, the Blancos were trying to do things in a way that you consider the

geopolitical norm, pleading their case, why it's a good thing that Lopez, or more specifically, Paraguay should help Uruguay in the situation they found themselves in. Carreras had a different idea. He understood the kind of douchebag that lopez was and instead of pleading their government's case he buttered him up he just flattered him fawning over him calling him like a genius like whatever you say is clearly the best thing they're like the only person that could save our government is you oh boy of, this worked immediately. Jesus. I hate to see it. Immediately afterwards,

he began pumping the Blanco government full of every supply he could, his hands on, as well as a letter to the other two governments, Argentina and Brazil, saying that any occupation of Uruguayan land would constitute a Cassius Belair because of war against Paraguay because reasons sure then Brazil got directly involved threatening the

Blanco government with reprisal attacks in Montevideo via the fleet that they had that nobody else did should they not take actions to fix the complaints of Brazilian nationals living within Uruguay now these complaints mind you where Uruguayan government authorities not allowing Brazilian farmers who had propped up farms in parts of Uruguay. Now, these complaints, mind you, were Uruguayan government authorities not allowing Brazilian farmers

who had propped up farms in parts of Uruguay to use slaves in Uruguay. A hell worth dying on. Oh boy, do they die for it. Oh, of course they do. Paraguay wrote another letter pointing out that doing that would be a dick move

and an act of war. That being bombing Monte Video. Brazil countered by insisting that bombing the capital of another country was not in fact an act of war, that being bombing Montevideo. Brazil countered by insisting that bombing the capital of another country was not, in fact, an act of war because nobody in this fucking war is not stupid. Now, Viana de Lima, who is the Brazilian minister of Paraguay, consider the ministers of Paraguay like an ambassador, blew Lopez off, but he didn't take time to relay Lopez's complaints to the Brazilian government. Lopez, who thought of himself as one of the most

important men to ever walk the earth, got furious that he was told to fuck off by a mere ambassador. He wanted a face-to-face meeting with the Prime Minister, which he was not going to get. Also, Pedro II really fucking hated Lopez personally as well. Understandable, I think.

He's very hateable. Meanwhile, while all this is going, it was being seen as a pretty big problem in Uruguay. They were pissed that Lopez had published their correspondence, which then caused Barrow to resign and a guy named Anastasio Aguero to become president who also happened to hate Lopez, right?

Like everybody hates Lopez. Then as of seeing like how, how many governments you could piss off all at once, Lopez published their correspondence again. This dude loves doing it. This time in the official Paraguayan government newspaper, circulating it all around the country to build it, to be like trying to tell us people like,

look, I'm the fucking good guy. Huh? Argentina thought this was the funniest thing they've ever seen and they openly mocked lopez in their own newspapers which was joined in by brazil oh it turned into a regional roast battle like he was like why are you laughing at me i'm right after this geopolitical roast session lopez began to think that both brazil and argentina against him, that this war was coming whether he liked it or not. At the time, the two governments did meet and decide to work together.

If Lopez decided to openly get involved in Uruguay, that was it. If this idiot actually tries to get militarily involved, we'll kick him down. But they didn't have any overarching plans to take over Paraguay at all. By January of 1864, a general mobilization decree had been issued across Paraguay. And because of their much better centralization of government from their long string of paranoid psycho dictators, they actually managed to, at this point, amass an army larger than either Brazil or Argentina combined. For reasons we'll talk about more in part two.

But it is clear that during the meeting between Argentina and Brazil, general latitude was, he's not going to do it. Lopez is smarter than this. You see? It turns out he was not, in fact, smarter than this you see it turns out he was not in fact smarter than that yeah and that folks is what we'll pick up part two part two liam how you feeling so far about uh this war this guy's a fucking idiot like and i say that as a guy who's not too bright everyone here appears to be a fucking idiot i will say my opinion of everybody involved in this world.

It gets worse later on. Like normally when you're researching a war or a campaign or a battle, there's one guy on one side. It's like, well, he's not a complete dumbass, right? I don't think that guy shows up in this story until part four.

Oh dear. Yeah. It's not good. Anyway, Liam, plug your shows. Listen, it's not good. Anyway, Liam, plug your shows. Listen to 10,000 Losses. It's a Philly sports podcast that Joe has been on.

Listen to Well, There's Your Problem, an engineering disaster's podcast with slides that Joe is going to be on again. Yeah. See it or screw it whenever it comes out. Yay, Joe. I'm stealing it. I guess that would make more sense to be Go, Joe,

but I feel like that would get me a lawsuit from G.I. Joe's. Probably. Anyway, everybody, thank you so much for listening to the show. If you think what we do here is worth a buck, donate to the show via Patreon, get bonus stuff, or don't. It's your money. I can't tell you what to do. But reviewing us on your podcasting platform of choice is free. Those are very appreciated.

And until next time, please check out our sources. Please check out our bibliography. And also don't get drunk and yell at the moon. That seems fun. That's harmless. That does seem fun.