LOPEZ, Carlos Antonio (1790-1862), a Paraguayan ruler of great ability, born at Asuncion, November 4, 1790, was educated in the ecclesiastical seminary of that city, and by his ability attracted the hostility of the dictator, Francia, in consequence of which he was forced to keep in hiding for several years. He acquired, however, by study, so unusual a knowledge of law and governmental affairs that, on Francia’s death in 1840, he soon acquired an almost undisputed control of the Paraguayan state, which he maintained uninterruptedly until his own death in 1862. He was successively secretary of the ruling military junta (1840-41), one of the two consuls (1841-44), and president with dictatorial powers (1844-1862) by successive elections for ten and three years, and in 1857 again for ten years, with power to nominate his own successor. Though nominally a president acting under a republican constitution, he ruled despotically, the congress assembling only rarely and on his call, and then only to ratify his decrees. His government was in general directed with wise energy towards developing the material resources and strengthening the military power of the country. His jealousy of foreign approach several times involved him in diplomatic disputes with Brazil, England, and the United States, which nearly resulted in war, but each time he extricated himself by skilful evasions. Paraguay rapidly advanced under his firm and, on the whole, patriotic administration. He died September 10, 1862....
LOPEZ, Francisco Solano (1826-1870), eldest son of Carlos Antonio Lopez above noticed, was born near Asuncion, Paraguay, July 24, 1826. During his boyhood his father was in hiding, and in consequence his education was wholly neglected. Soon after his father’s accession to the presidency, Francisco, then in his nineteenth year, was made commander-in-chief of the Paraguayan army, during the spasmodic hostilities then prevailing with the Argentine Republic. After receiving successively the highest offices of the state, he was sent in 1853 as minister to England, France, and Italy, to ratify formally treaties made with these powers the previous year. He spent a year and a half in Europe, and succeeded in purchasing large quantities of arms and military supplies, together with several steamers, and organized a project for building a railroad and establishing a French colony in Paraguay. He also formed the acquaintance of Madame Lynch, an Irish adventuress of many talents and popular qualities, who became his mistress, and strongly influenced his later ambitious schemes. Returning to Paraguay, he became in 1855 minister of war, and on his father’s death in 1862 at once assumed the reins of government as vice-president, in accordance with a provision of his father’s will, and called a congress by which he was chosen president for ten years. He had long cherished ambitious designs, and now set himself to enlarge the army, and purchase in Europe large quantities of military stores. In 1864 he began open aggression on Brazil by demanding, in his self-styled capacity of “protector of the equilibrium of the La Plata,” that Brazil should abandon her armed interference in a revolutionary struggle then in progress in Uruguay. No attention being paid to his demand, he treacherously seized a Brazilian merchant steamer in the harbour of Asuncion, and threw into prison the Brazilian governor of the province of Matto Grosso who was on board. In the following month (December 1864) he despatched a force to invade Matto Grosso, which seized and sacked its capital Cuyabâ, and took possession of the province and its diamond mines. Lopez next sought to send an army to the relief of the Uruguayan president Aguirro against the revolutionary aspirant Flores, who was supported by Brazilian troops. The refusal of the Argentine president, Mitre, to allow this force to cross the intervening province of Corrientes, was seized upon by Lopez as an occasion for war with the Argentine Republic.
A congress, hastily summoned and composed of his own nominees, bestowed upon Lopez the title of marshal, with extraordinary war powers, and on April 13, 1865, he declared war, at the same time seizing two Argentine warvessels in the bay of Corrientes, and on the next day occupied the town of Corrientes, instituted a provisional government of his Argentine partisans, and summarily announced the annexation to Paraguay of the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Rios. Meantime the party of Flores had been successful in Uruguay, and that state on April 18 united with the Argentine Republic in a declaration of war on Paraguay, the news of the treacherous proceedings of Lopez having then but just reached Buenos Ayres. On May 1st Brazil joined these two states in a secret alliance, which stipulated that they should unitedly prosecute the ⅜war “until the existing government of Paraguay should be overthrown,” and “until no arms or elements of war should be left to it.” This agreement was literally carried out.
The war which ensued, lasting until April 1, 1870, was on the largest scale of any that South America had experienced, and was carried on with great stubbornness and with alternating fortunes, though with a steadily increasing tide of disasters to Lopez (see Paraguay). In 1868, when the allies were pressing him hard before the various strongholds still remaining to him in Paraguay, his mind, naturally suspicious and revengeful, led him to conceive that a conspiracy had been formed against his life in his own capital and by his chief adherents. His bloodthirsty rage knew no bounds. In a short time several hundred of the chief Paraguayan citizens were seized and executed by his order, including his brothers and brothers-in-law, cabinet ministers, judges, prefects, military officers of the highest grade, the bishops and priests, and nine-tenths of the civil officers, together with more than two hundred foreigners, among them several members of the different diplomatic legations.
Lopez was at last driven with a mere handful of troops to the northern frontier of Paraguay, where on April 1, 1870, he was surprised by a Brazilian force and killed as he was endeavouring to escape by swimming the river Aquidaban. His ill-starred ambition had in a few years reduced Paraguay from the prosperity which it had enjoyed under his father to a condition of hopeless weakness, and it has since remained a virtual dependency of Brazil.
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