It can be said that the period of time when the Zacharias ministry governed (3 August 1866 to 16 July 1868) was the most difficult and disagreeable of the Paraguayan War.

Not long after their formation, the allied armies suffered the great reverse of Curupayty (22 September 1866), and only days after the cabinet’s dissolution did the Humaitá fortifications, the final trench lines of the formidable Quadrilateral, fall under our power. No truly decisive military action from this period, except the passing of Humaitá (19 February 1868), lifted the public spirit, which was so awakened, so enlivened in the initial moments of the war, from the apathy it had fallen into.

The campaign appeared endless. Caxias seemingly wanted to defeat the enemy by means of patience. Only after the fall of the Zacharias ministry could that general launch rapid assaults on López, ushering the greater part of the Brazilian army along the road constructed through the Chaco, fighting alongside them personally in Itororó like Bonaparte at Arcole (a 65-year-old Bonaparte), annihilating the military power of Paraguay’s army in Avay and Lomas Valentinas (December 1868) and drawing the remains of López’s army into the Azcurra Cordillera, with López repelled, expelled, and starving.

Caxias had certainly not allowed politics to influence his military plans; the waste of time that follows the defeat at Curupayty, and continues until the siege of Humaitá, ending when the remains of the troops that garrisoned it surrender (5 August 1868), was imposed by the difficulty of organizing the army, which was mainly composed of conscripts, decimated by cholera, poisoned by the waters and miasmas of the swamp on whose shores it camped, under the rays of the scorching sun.Read More »

Given the reality of the war, the Brazilian government’s denunciation of the Spanish bombardment of Valparaíso (1) continues to be important.

On 31 March 1866 the Spanish fleet bombarded Valparaíso from nine in the morning until the afternoon. It is said that the value of the goods burned in the port’s storehouses surpassed 8,000,000 pesos (2). Mr. Layard, speaking on behalf of the English government in the House of Commons (15 May), laid the most solemn condemnation on Admiral Méndez Núñez’s conduct in “the bombardment of a perfectly defenceless city, which contained a large amount of neutral property.”

The communication Saraiva directed to our representative in Madrid, with the order to read it to the Minister of State, is enough to rectify the idea that the empire, due to its different institutions, had not felt solidarity with the rest of the continent. Precisely at that time, Peru took leadership over a campaign against the Triple Alliance by the Pacific Republics. The protest by Peru, and the other republics that followed it (Chile had not yet come to occupy first position in the Pacific), did not produce any effect. The supposed fear of Western America’s republican spirit yielded before the firmness and resolution of General Mitre. Having ensured that two republics joined the empire in the war against Paraguay was no minor result of the May 1^st treaty. Without that, the situation would have been grave for Brazil. This was, indeed, the same time as Napoleon III’s and (another Hapsburg) Maximillian of Austria’s endeavors in Mexico, and the abolitionist cause’s victory in the United States: nothing could pose a greater threat to the strengthening of Brazil’s prestige and ascendency. It can be said that Latin America’s hostility towards us was the norm; and if, instead of having had the Argentine buffer, Mitre had been against us, aided by Prado, Pérez, and even Johnson (3), the empire’s isolation would have proved fatal. Chile was not close with us at that time, and it can be said that their only foreign policy was nothing more than a vague continental sentimentalism, shown in its acceptance of all the ideas of the Pan-American congresses, and in its chivalrous defense of America against Europe, the latter being the sentiment that brought it to intervene in the conflict between Spain and Peru.

The diplomatic history of the war is linked in a certain way with the reestablishment of our relations with Great Britain, interrupted in 1863 due to the reprisals for the frigate Forte, in the mouth of the bay of Rio de Janeiro. With the pressure of this blockade, the Brazilian government was made to pay, not without protest, the compensation the English government demanded for the shipwreck of the Prince of Wales, later accepting the Belgian king’s arbitration, regarding the treatment of the officers of the frigate Forte (4). The empire’s eminent diplomat in London, Carvalho Moreira, later Baron of Penedo, requested of the Court of Saint-James: 1^st That it show its regret for the events that occurred during the reprisals; 2^nd That it demonstrate that it had no intention of violating the empire’s territorial sovereignty; 3^rd Compensation for the interested parties. The English government having refused everything, our minister in London resigned. On 18 June 1863, with the arbiter Leopold, uncle of Queen Victoria, chosen, the dispute was decided in our favor. England was left in debt to Brazil, and morally condemned by the arbiter, because of the force that it employed in retaliation against—in part due to the reprisals—actions that were proven to not intend any offense to the dignity of the British navy.

Read More »

When news of the May 1^st treaty arrived in Rio de Janeiro, the Furtado cabinet did not exist; and Otaviano, negotiator of the pact, had been named Minister of Foreign Affairs, a role that Saraiva undertook in the interim, Saraiva being the man that brought us closer to Argentina, and who understood better than anyone the necessity of the alliance and the impossibility of going to war with Paraguay without it. The treaty was the kind that, once signed, would inevitably be ratified, because if one of the parties refused to do so, distrust and prejudice of the other would be aroused, making difficult any renewal of candidness and cordiality.

But the Argentine government believed, like the Brazilian government, in a soon end to the war (Mitre didn’t give it more than a year in duration), and in 1865 it formulated a draft of a peace treaty, which Otaviano presented to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That draft by Mitre brought the government’s attention toward the necessity of approving the treaty’s various clauses. Saraiva heard about it in the Foreign Affairs Department of the Council of State (1), of which Pimenta Bueno and the Viscount of Uruguay formed a part, Pimenta Bueno the representative of our traditional policies in Paraguay, and the Viscount of Uruguay a man of the past, but an oracle of the doctrine that he had played a principal role in creating in the Plata. The third member of the department was Jequitinhonha, an itinerant politician, of proverbial inconstancy, and at that time the most exalted representative of conservative jingoism.

After criticizing the various clauses of the treaty, they said: “What truly saddens us is the stipulation in article 16. The Argentine Republic becomes owner of the entire left bank of the Paraná up to Iguazú, and what’s more, of the entire right bank of the Paraguay up to Bahía Negra, near the fort of Coimbra. By this article, at the same time that Brazil is fixed with limits beyond the realm of reasonability, a large part of South America is conceded to the Argentine Republic, a part it aspired to possess before, but without daring to openly expose its ambitions … The act of leaving in the power of the Confederation the territory that Paraguay holds on the left bank of the Paraná up to Iguazú would, instead of favoring Brazil, damage it. If we were to open a military path crossing the River Iguazú, we could, with or without the consent of the Argentine Republic, invade Paraguay by Candelária and Itapúa. How could we do so now? Only by going down the Iguazú, because above it the shore of the Paraná, facing Candelária and lower, is composed of rough mountains and unpopulated lands … we have lost much, as such, and we also have, instead of a weak neighbor, another strong and ambitious one on the border of Iguazú, San Antonio and Pepiry (2), a border which until today we have not liked to recognize. But that is not as bad as the calamitous ceding of all the right bank of the Paraguay up to Bahía Negra. The Confederation did not have a single pretext for desiring such a thing. It ought to have contented itself with the right bank of the Paraguay, from the confluence of the Paraná up to Pilcomayo, a little below Asunción. Paraguay never recognized any claim to this territory by the Argentine Republic, except up to the River Bermejo, a little above Humaitá. By way of this article, the Confederation acquires 740 miles of coast on the Paraguay, above the river Bermejo, with an immense hinterland around the Gran Chaco, that is, the territory of a great fertile state, scored with navigable rivers and ready for a grand colonial future. The alliance is turned as much against Paraguay as against Brazil, and in exclusive favor of the Confederation.”Read More »

The Olinda ministry could do nothing in Mato Grosso.

Furtado decided to send an expedition to that province “with the purpose” (as he said in the Senate, in his speech on 13 August 1867), “of reinforcing the threatened capital’s defenses and, later, taking the offensive if possible.” Colonel Drago, named as civil and military governor, was put in command of the expedition, and marching through Santos, São Paulo, and Campinas with large heights along the path, he reached Uberaba where he incorporated the Mineiro brigade commanded by Colonel Galvão. Not abandoning Mato Grosso province, Furtado obeyed the demands of the general public; but any expedition sent from Rio de Janeiro with the purpose of taking the offensive would have had the same end as this one, since nothing had been organized to sustain the vast extension of unpopulated terrain that had to be crossed. Drago’s delay in marching to Mato Grosso exasperated the government, who ended up dismissing him and ordering he be charged (Ferraz).

According to Furtado, the cause of the disaster was not Drago’s delay, which allowed the rainy season to grow nearer without beginning the march; nor was it that chief’s abandonment of the road of Sant’anna do Parnaíba, where deposits of provisions had been established, because he believed it was exposed to the Paraguayans. Furtado attributed it to the column’s change of objective (a change decreed by Saraiva, interim Minister of War), by virtue of which the expedition, instead of directing itself to Cuiabá and joining that capital’s forces there, had to come to Cuiabá’s defense by situating itself in Coxim.

The appraisal of the suffering and privations experienced by these troops until their withdrawal from Coxim merits attention; but not even Drago’s delay, nor his column’s change in objective in 1865, can be blamed for the outcome of the impracticable attempt, in 1867, to cross the Apa and invade Paraguay with such meager forces. In August of 1866 the Olinda Ministry had left power and on 23 March 1867 Colonel Camisão joined the war council which agreed to cross the enemy border. The endeavor of attacking Paraguay with less than 2,000 men would never have entered the thinking of the Furtado Ministry, who assigned an army of at least 12,000 men for this goal, nor of its successor. It was born from the replacements that death or sickness produced in the column’s command, bringing it into the hands of General Camisão, who, burdened with an excess of military pride, wanted to erase from his record, at any cost, any stain from the abandoning of Corumbá, in which he was implicated. Drawing on the power to invade Paraguay if conditions were favorable, a power granted to the expedition’s chief given how formidable this force was expected to be, Camisão makes a per fas et nefas command. The consequence was that sad and heroic retreat of Laguna up to the left bank of the Aquidabán, related in one of the most beautiful books of military literature (1), and in which our soldiers saw themselves closely pursued, at times across flooded plains, at others between burning scrub, decimated by hunger and by cholera, which at the same time protected them against the enemy.

Translator’s Notes

1. Nabuco refers to A Retirada da Laguna (“The Retreat of Laguna”) by French Brazilian writer and military engineer, Alfredo d’Escragnolle Taunay, Viscount of Taunay.

The Olinda Cabinet’s Minister of War, tireless, always at his post, consuming himself in it, fighting against the prejudices of party, military pretensions, and the general inertia that irritated him and increased his fatigue, keeping himself in perpetual excitement, is a figure of grand proportions. Just as before in 1860 he had, according to Nabuco, been entirely dominated by the fiscal spirit, now he was absorbed completely by the war.

The opposition holds it against him that he forgot past offenses in order to figure in the same ministry as Saraiva. Whenever he speaks one takes note of the mysterious intuition of a near end, the shadow of another life. The emperor, now quite practiced in the treatment of ministers, appreciates Ferraz’s qualities so much that he keeps him at his side, as will be seen later on, having him pass from one ministry to another.

Ferraz’s error, if there was error in him, was not having thought of Caxias, or not having withdrawn, as he later did, if it was Caxias that did not enjoy his company. But would Caxias, who after Curupayty (1)  became indispensable, and acquired the status in the campaign that he deserved, would he have had the same authority at Paso la Patria and Curuzú if he had found himself at the orders of Mitre like Osório, Porto-Alegre, and Polidoro (2)? What’s certain is that whenever Mitre was in Paraguay, or, as it occurred at the time we refer to, in Corrientes, the May 1^st Treaty would withdraw that highest title from Caxias, the only man who could grant it the full extent of its merit, leaving him without freedom of action and without responsibility. As well, until Curupayty the operations of war did not give cause for discontent or division.

The military action of the Cabinet of 12 May can be summarized in this way: it annihilated the Paraguayan Army in Rio Grande; it made the army in Corrientes cross back over the Paraná; it brought the war to enemy territory and in so doing destroyed the army of Paso la Patria. If the honor of Riachuelo and even of Yatay can and must still be attributed to the Furtado Cabinet, the glory of Uruguaiana and Paso la Patria, and even the 2^nd and 24^th of May, must be accorded to the Olinda Cabinet. At the time of its resignation, our military is left dressed in glory, the alliance has had nothing but victories, and with better luck, the campaign could be practically decided in that same year of 1866. It cannot be made responsible for the discord that arose between the generals of the alliance, which resulted in the profound disaster of Curupayty. When this occurred on September 22^nd, the Olinda Cabinet was no longer in power.

What the cabinet did was unite the elements that, with different direction, could have broken López’s lines in that same month and cut off the retreat of his army, giving the Paraguayan dictator’s military power the coup de grâce that he came to fear after Curuzú. Its policies concerning the war could be nothing other than leaving to the generals the responsibility of operations.

Translator’s Notes

1. The battle of Curupayty was a major military defeat for the allies, costing heavy casualties and halting the steady progress they had been making for months afterward.
2. Polidoro da Fonseca Quintanilha Jordão, Viscount of Santa Teresa, general in the Brazilian army during the Paraguayan War.

Absent the emperor, the ministry endeavored to begin recruiting volunteers all over the country. The foundation had to be the National Guard, and the government appealed to this organization. For the war in the south, Furtado had raised from the different corps 14,796 national guards (decree of 21 January 1865) and for Mato Grosso 9,000 from the corps of Minas and São Paulo. But it was necessary to find those men and organize battalions. The ministry resolved to draw on all the means of attracting the National Guard to service. Nabuco drafted every decree from the Council of ministers given with such goal, namely: making the volunteer corps equal to those of the National Guard (4 August 1865); conceding to the national guards the same favors as the volunteers received (30 August); exempting from recruitment and active service any national guard that could be replaced (12 September); extending the enlistment of volunteers until the end of the war with Paraguay (4 August).

Except in Rio Grande do Sul, where there were counted 23,574 men on campaign (1863), and in Bahia, which sent a battalion and later 2,000 men in loose detachments, the National Guard showed itself generally resistant to the war. On paper it was a force of 440,000 men; in reality it was a nuisance. Nabuco tests the waters of the National Guard of the court, addressing the following communication to its commander in chief, which gave rise to a curious incident:

“Minister of Justice, — Rio de Janeiro 10 August 1865. — Most illustrious and excellent senhor. — Sending Y.E. the attached decree, number 3,505, dated 4 August, regarding the National Guard, I should recommend Y.E. to make the greatest efforts in its execution. The decree says: ‘The corps of the National Guard that, with its current organization, with its officers and soldiers, march voluntarily to war, will be on the same level as the volunteer corps and will enjoy all the advantages conceded to those.’ Y.E. will make the National Guard understand that its cooperation is critical for our army to save and avenge our invaded and defiled country; that the empire’s constitution and its very institution impose this duty on it; that no national guard can, without dishonoring the Brazilian name, cease to follow its emperor, who finds himself in Rio Grande do Sul amidst the dangers of war, making a great sacrifice to give a great example. In effect, it is essential to defeat Paraguay and defeat it soon, so that the victory is not, being late, as disastrous as a defeat; so that the victory is not, being late, attributed to the time and resources of the Empire, instead of the patriotism and spirit of the Brazilian nation. Y.E. will give the commanders of the corps under your orders information of said decree, and propose to the government the conducive measures to make the National Guard, for its own honor and glory, and that of the country, the army’s true and effective aid in time of war. — God protect Y.E. — José Tomás de Araújo. — Senhor commander in chief of the National Guard of the court.”Read More »

On 17 August the Battle of Yatay was fought. Receiving news that Duarte’s column, which operated on the right side of the Uruguay (3,220 Paraguayans against 8,500 allies, of which 1,450 were Brazilian) had been completely destroyed, Estigarribia tried to pull back by way of the Itaquy road, but with Canavarro’s division having closed the pass he did not dare to attack it. That very day (19 August) Flores, who was still in Correntino territory, made the first offer of capitulation to him, which, although honorable, was rejected. From the 25^th on, with Flores’s and Pauneros’s troops, as well as Tamandaré’s fleet, having arrived, the siege begins to tighten in the presence of Porto-Alegre, who takes command of the Brazilian army.

On 2 September the allied generals renew their proposition offering Estigarribia free escape for him and his officers with all the honors of war and liberty to go wherever they want, and on the 5^th Estigarribia responds in the manner of Leonidas at Thermopylae: “All the better; the smoke of the artillery will give us shade.” The motives for this second proposition were that the allies wanted to avoid destroying Uruguaiana by bombardment, not to mention the fear that Estigarribia could be aided by the Paraguayan army if the siege was prolonged. The forces at our disposal were still not enough for an assault on the enemy trenches. A little while later (10 September) Ferraz and General Mitre (with whom Tamandaré, having gone to Concórdia in search of more infantry, returned) arrive, as does the emperor the following day. The situation of the besieged was desperate: they could not expect aid from Paraguay; they lacked provisions, were beginning to suffer hunger, and were under the fire, from land and from ships, of 54 cannons.

The military forces brought together by the three nations, that allied army which the emperor of Brazil looked over, must have seemed even greater than it really was in the eyes of those 5,000 some men, wearied, poorly equipped, starved, besieged, and in an unfamiliar country, the final remains of the army of Itapúa and Candelaria. And even the compensation of making the ultimate sacrifice, the only thing to which they could aspire, depended on the generosity of the enemy, since the enemy could reduce the intensity of their attacks, and defeat them through starvation.Read More »