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Chestnut
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Фарнабаз
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Дата
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18.02.2005 12:33:11
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Рубрики
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WWI; WWII; Байки;
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Давайте заглянем в Британнику
Francisco Solano López in 1862 was the inexperienced, spoiled son of an iron-willed dictator. He overestimated the military strength of his nation and felt that Paraguay should have a larger voice in the affairs of the region. Thus, when Uruguay, wracked by civil war, was threatened with intervention by Brazil, López took an increasingly bellicose position. When Brazil ignored his warnings and ultimatums and invaded Uruguay in August 1864 to support a pro-Brazilian faction in the civil war, López decided to use the strength of his military machine. In November he ordered the capture of a Brazilian war steamer and sent units of his army and navy north to invade the Mato Grosso, simultaneously preparing a larger army corps to strike south to destroy the Brazilian army in Uruguay. When Argentina denied his request for transit of a Paraguayan army, he declared war on Argentina as well, in March 1865. In May, as Paraguayan troops were approaching, a puppet Uruguayan government signed the Treaty of the Triple Alliance with Brazil and Argentina, committing all three to the war against Paraguay.
The Paraguayan force heading southward was destroyed at Uruguaiana, in Brazil, and a strike into northeast Argentina resulted in heavy Paraguayan casualties and the virtual destruction of López' fleet in 1865. Much of the rest of the war was fought in southwestern Paraguay, near and around Humaitá. In May 1866 López threw the cream of his army into suicidal attacks against allied forces at Tuyutí, losing almost 20,000 of his best men. Other lost battles in 1866–68, as well as widespread epidemics of Asiatic cholera, devastated the population of the country. In 1869 and 1870 the tragedy was completed as López, pursued by large allied forces, retreated through the interior of his nation with a shattered army and thousands of civilian refugees, dragging famine, disease, and death in his wake. Perhaps at this point unhinged, he ordered the executions of hundreds of people, including his own two brothers and two brothers-in-law and scores of his officers. Finally, on March 1, 1870, his last camp was attacked at Cerro Corá by Brazilian cavalry, and López died in combat. His country by then lay in ruins, with one-third of its former population of 450,000 dead. A Brazilian occupation army remained, further draining the country, until 1876. This Paraguayan War, or War of the Triple Alliance, was the bloodiest in Latin American history.
In hoc signo vinces