THE EXTINCTION OF A PEOPLE.
IT is doubtful whether the whole annals of mankind present a more extraordinary tragedy than that which has been acted out in Paraguay during the last seven years. It stands second, perhaps, only in horror to the story of the fall of Jerusalem before the arms of Titus, though differing widely from that in many of its features,—in perhaps none more than this, that whereas in the latter case the extermination of the conquered was forced by themselves on a victor who fain would have been clement, in the latter there seems strong reason to believe that it was planned, though not avowed, by the con- querors from the first. Thus Mr. Masterman, who in his preface indeed, implies that the Paraguayans were "a band of slaves, madly resisting the very men who offer them freedom and independence," in his appendix quotes the opinion of "a gentleman recently returned from the Plate, who has had un- usually good opportunities of forming a correct judgment," that "the war was intended, from the first, to be one of utter exter- mination ;" that it was "intentionally protracted, in the hope that the unfortunate Paraguayans would die from want and disease ; and that Brazil intends to absorb all she has left of the Republic." So Colonel Thompson has stated that the Brazilians have purposely allowed many of their prisoners to go and join Lopez, "as they are deter- mined not to leave a Paraguayan of any age or sex alive," and that the allies, "while professing extreme humanity, have, under the cloak of civilized warfare, exterminated the Para- guayan nation, and never once tried to get at Lopez, the pre- tended object of their warfare,"—the latter assertion, indeed, being apparently scarcely correct, since the Comte d'Eu took the supreme military command. Nor do these statements stand without indirect corroboration. Those who have followed the history of Paraguay know that its independ- ence has always been an eyesore alike to Brazilians and Argentines, and that the maintenance of that independence primarily against the latter (whose pretension was to claim Para- guay as a mere member of their federation) was the hinge on which the lifelong policy of Francia and the elder Lopez turned. Whilst the text of the secret tripartite treaty of 1865, although binding the allies "to respect the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the Republic of Para- guay," really aims at its hopeless dismemberment, by tearing off from it to the north, for the benefit of Brazil, the yerba mate' districts, Paraguay's chief source of revenue, as giving her the practical monopoly of an article in great request throughout full one-half of South America ; after which the whole remainder of the country must sink almost necessarily into a province of the Argentine Republic.
Now, the world has seen ere this—let Poland bear witness of the fact—such things as a combination between three neighbouring powers, under pretexts the most hypocritical, for the physical or moral extermination of a fourth in their midst, and that extermination allowed to be carried out before the eyes of civilized mankind without a finger being raised to prevent it. The world-has also seen, on the part of the nation so to be exterminated—let Poland again be the instance— resistance of the most heroic character, under chiefs whose genius was called forth by the very emergencies in which they found themselves placed. But what the world has not seen is this,—a small people thus hemmed in on all sides by neigh- bours immeasurably richer than itself in men, money, physical resources of all kinds, yet exhibiting such superior courage and endurance to that of its enemies, a heroism so undaunted, that its resistance must have been successful, but for the incapacity, the cowardice, the selfishness, the cruelty of the chief, whom yet it followed from first to last with absolutely unswerving faithfulness.
Now that the records of the war are before the world, it is perfectly clear that nothing that has been said, in the pages of this journal or elsewhere, in favour of the moral powers of resistance of Paraguay has ever been exaggerated. The one element that has not been taken into account has been the chance that all those powers might be utterly thrown away, from being wielded by a Francisco Lopez.
Nothing is more marvellous than Colonel Thompson's account of the slender resources upon which Paraguay entered upon the war. An army of about 80,000 men ; perhaps 100,000 horses in the whole country, "only half of which could gallop two or three miles " ; much of the cavalry and almost all the infantry armed with mere flint-lock carbines and muskets ; the greater part of the artillery consisting "of old honey-combed iron guns, probably taken by ships for ballast and brought to Paraguay . . . . like the guns which do duty as posts on Woolwich Common " ; the heavy artillery all smooth-bores, only a few rifled 12-pounders ; a navy of seventeen steamers, all small, and all but two passenger vessels ; drugs scarce from the beginning. In the course of the war, the artillery was in great measure recruited at the cost of the enemy, the Paraguayans, even on two occasions when defeated, bringing often with them pieces of a larger calibre than any they had, whilst among the guns manufactured by themselves out of all the church bells and copper saucepans in the country, two whole batteries were cast expressly to fit 9-pounder rifle shells, "which the enemy sent over in profusion, and the greater part of which did not burst ;" and another large gun to fit Whitworth's 150-pounder shot, "of which some thou- sands were collected." During the whole war, "Paraguay never received supplies of any kind from abroad, except those taken in Matto Grosso and Corrientes."
What could not however be supplied from the stores of the enemy was,—men. This want the Paraguayans could only meet by showing themselves a match for him at con- stantly unequal odds. This they seem to have done invari- ably. In the naval battle of the Riachuelo above referred to, seven armed merchant vessels, one 6-gun paddle ship made for warlike purposes, and six fiat-bottomed boats, attacked the Brazilian fleet of nine fine war steamers, with "immeasurably superior guns," and would probably have taken it, "had they immediately gone alongside, instead of running down past it." In the first great action by land on the Uruguay, 2,500 Para- guayans met 13,000 Orientals, and perished to within the last 200 or 300, scarcely a man accepting quarter, after having caused a loss to the Allies in killed and wounded equivalent to their whole number ; 8,000 more kept 30,000 at bay for months, and when they at last surrendered, only 6,000 came out alive, the men "having for some time had nothing but a ration of lump sugar." Later on, when the two armies were encamped opposite to each other on the Parami, parties of from 100 to 200 men would cross the river daily, "in full sight of the enemy, standing up to paddle their
canoes land, and drive the enemy half a mile in- land, fighting all the while, and go back after a few hours, taking their killed and wounded with them." On one such occasion "400 Paraguayans were absolutely fighting with 7,200 of the allied troops," to whom, after receiving a re- inforcement, they caused a loss of 50 officers and 900 men killed and wounded, losing only 170 themselves. It would be positively tedious to attempt enumerating the engagements in which the Paraguayans appear to have inflicted a loss on the enemy—at the battle of Lomas Valentines, December, 1868, in killed alone—equal to the total number of their own com- batants. But ef what avail could this be, when, by the end of 1866, "nearly 200,000 males had been drawn from a popu- lation of less than a million," and of this number scarcely 25,000 remained,—no less than 80,000 men having "perished in the hospitals from disease, or rather from bad and scanty food and want of the commonest necessaries of life," the rest through the other casualties of war ?—desertion, indeed, ex- cluded, since, as Mr. Masterman tells us, "love of home and of country is a passion with them " ; and though Paraguayan prisoners were forced by the allies into a "Paraguayan legion," they took every opportunity of passing over to their countrymen, although certain of meeting only with contumely, punishment, and often death. Two years later, at Lomas Valentines, the 25,000 of 1866 were reduced to 1,300, and without a single gun met 4,000 Brazilians, besides Argentines, with 60 guns, and fought still with their wonted determination.
Be it observed that although often compelled to exhibit the heroism only of despair, this was by no means the type of Paraguayan courage. Those who speak of them as mere Indians, and would confound their resistance with the stolid endurance of the North American red-skin are wide as the poles from the truth. The late Charles Mansfield, in that work of his, the real revelation to Europe of this strange people, which has been so unaccountably passed under silence both by Colonel Thompson and Mr. Masterman, had fully appreciated the intense vitality and vivacity of the Paraguayan character. Colonel Thompson relates how, "when a man was rolling a wheelbarrow, a percussion shell struck his high morion and burst in it, singeing his hair and driving some grains of powder into his forehead, with- out hurting him. The moment it happened, he dropped his wheelbarrow, rushed after his morion and put it on again, and seizing the barrow began wheeling it again with redoubled 'vigour, to the great delight of his companions, who set up a yell of pleasure." On another occasion, a 9-pounder shell, unburst, which had been placed under a cooking-pot, exploded and sent the dinner of some cavalry men flying, to the "intense delight" of the expectant diners. As late as 1868, "the more their enemies . . . . the more the Paraguayans would laugh. They used to play all sorts of pranks at night with the Brazilian guards, shooting at them with bows and arrows," and with balls of clay such as boys in Paraguay use to shoot parrots with. Their contempt for the Brazilians seems, indeed, to have been unbounded till the last. We do not, of course, wish to deny the existence of darker - sides in the Paraguayan character ; the outrages which ac- companied their first offensive operations ; the cruelties of which Mr. Masterman's book is full, and of which many (though clearly not all) made themselves the far too willing instruments. But of outrage and cruelty they had in the war by no means the monopoly ; the taint is one common to both the Spanish and Portuguese races, and which blots many a ghastly page in the history whether of Brazil or of the South- American Republics. Their worst faults in these respects appear to have been those of their race or of their ruler, whilst observers such as Mr. Masterman, whose personal sufferings should always be taken into account in weighing his harsher judgments, cannot help bearing testimony to "their unaffected kindness and charity to each other, when no shadow of the Government was upon them." So has perished a small people, in its fall at least never to be forgotten. It may be, as Mr. Masterman says, that "the sturdy German and the Anglo-Saxon will soon fill the void this war of extermination has made ; permanent prosperity will banish all trace of its devastations." But that the noblest by far of all the South American peoples should have so perished, self-sacrificed to a third-rate tyrant like Francisco Lopez, will remain one of the darkest moral riddles of history. It is idle to talk of the Paraguayans as mere slaves, when they have shown so magnificently that they could fight and die like
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