THE WAR ON THE PARANA..
THERE is something singularly exciting to the imagination in this war on the Parana. A sicgle man inheriting absolute power over the only native race in America who in our time have proved themselves capable of civilization, a race almost European in physique, and exempt from the curse of sterility which has fallen on all other Indian tribes, living still its own life yet capable of the organization which uses steam and electricity, has hurled himself and his nation upon powers whose territories bear to his own the relation which Europe bears to Switzerland. The scene of action is a region whose grandeur the mass of Europeans have scarcely begun to realize, the whole eastern side of the South American con- tinent, that mighty Valley of the Plate, in which, over terri- tories vaster than the greatest European kingdoms, the rich luxuriance of tropical production flourishes under a climate in which Europeans can work all day in the open air. The con- test, the nominal objects of which we shall speedily try to explain, is really for the dominance of the Valley, of a country, that is, which could with ease support a hundred millions of inhabitants, which is already the home of almost every Euro- pean race, and which might under a progressive government present a picture of prosperity such as the world has never witnessed, or witnessed on the Susquehanna alone. There are grass-covered plains on the estuary of this river in which Ireland would be lost, mountains on its upper waters amidst which might nestle twenty Switzerlands, forests along its banks which would swallow France, valleys at its head to which any valley in Europe is a field. Buenos Ayres, the State on one side of its mouth, is one-third larger than Austria, and probably twice as rich in all resources save the men who can develope them ; Uruguay, the State which is the immediate object of the struggle, is greater than the United Kingdom ; and Brazil, the instigator and principal in the contest, is an empire with a territory equal to Europe, of which no man among its own people knows more than that it includes every climate, altitude, production actual or potential, and form of mineral wealth. The other principal is not indeed so remarkable for mere bigness. Paraguay, its conquests from Brazil and the "Missionea " being excluded, probably scarcely exceeds Great Britain in area, but it is inhabited by a race who can fight and build, who obey a single man, and that man one who has had for years the patience to collect a treasure, to import artillery, to oollect steamers, to introduce skilled artificers, and to drill his whole nation with the single object, as we judge, of building on the Parana a mighty civilized State, a monarchy it may be, as Spanish Americans, who are slaves of words, denounce it, but at all events a State guided absolutely by himself. This Dictator of Indians marches to battle with agents who stretch out the elec- tric telegraph behind him, uses Indian cavalry and rifled artil- lery, employs bowmen and men with needle-guns, marches an armymto Brazil while fighting two Republics with esteem fleet, and evidently, it may be from the foolhardiness which comes of absolute power, it may be from genius, considers himself a match for all South America combined, has already inflicted a blow upon Brazil which has called the head of that cumbrous empire personally into the field, and while expecting attack from its forces has dared to declare war also on the powers who hold his only road to the outer world, the river, in their hands. It is the future of a world which these three men are fighting out, and each one of the three is worth a moment's glance, Lopez, as the only hereditary dictator yet seen in South America, a man trusted entirely by his people, who in March while creating him Captain-General, and furnishing him enor- mous means, passed, in their fear of losing him, a resolution that he should not visit his army, yet who rules them as absolutely as Napoleon, did he inspire the same trust, might rule France; Mitre, once held to forced labour on the roads, now Generalissimo and President of the Argentine Republic, with 30,000 troops at his disposal ; and Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, a Braganza with some ability, the nominal lord of a vast monarchy, the greatest on earth except Russia in undividedterritory,with a lofty ambition and Ctesarist ideas, but hampered by a slaveholding aristocracy identical in mo- tives, objects, and machinery, that is in all but pluck and ability with the aristocracy which so recently governed the South.
A conflict in such a region, waged by such men, is worth watching, even if the assailant, the Dictator Lopez, were as vulgar an aggressor as it suits the Times correspondent, apparently an Argentine Spaniard, to imply. It is, however, exceedingly doubtful whether he is the aggressor at all, whether he is not at this moment defending his State and the people committed to his charge from enemies whose single object is to destroy their independence. We gave on the 25th of February an account of the origin of his quarrel with Brazil, which amounts in brief to this :—Brazil, as it stretches down its vast extent towards the southern waters of the Parana, marches with Uruguay, or to use the newer name current in the newer atlases, the Banda Oriental. The slave- holders of the Empire generally, and specially of the province of Rio Grande, want that Republic, and with it the control of the mighty river, and have already in defiance of treaties, laws, and ordinary international obligations, poured into it some 15,000 slaves. The ruler of Paraguay, besides being from instinct the advocate of freedom, sees clearly that if the Banda goes the independence of Paraguay goes too, and fights hard, his defence of the right cause being doubt- less rendered easier by the collateral consideration that in the enormous Brazilian province of Matto Grosso, just above him, he may carve out an empire which Brazil never can regain, while could he but defeat Brazil in Rio Grande he might force a path to the sea, and be in part at least inde- pendent of his treacherous riverain allies. He had cut heavy slices out of the Brazilian cake when the Brazilians, who have, as we said, a tolerably genuine ruler at their head, resolved to strike straight, and crush Lopez in the centre of his power. Far away from the ocean, a thousand miles up the Parana, or to be accurate according to atlases, its affluent the Paraguay, stands Assumption, the Paraguayan capital, and if armed steamers could reach this point the power of Lopez might end. The only obstacles were first the river itself, then the Argentine Republic, which might object to war steamers passing through its waters to attack a friendly power, and lastly, the fortress of Humaita, the great fortified post held by Lopez at the confluence of the Paraguay and Parana, and defended by the fleet. The first difficulty it was known could be overcome, Bra- zilian steamers ascending the river every month, and the second was not insuperable. Brazil has territory on the Parana, and as a riverain power had a right to send up mer- chantmen, which might be stretched so as to include men-of- war. It also might not, and Earl Russell thought it could not, but the Argentine Republic was accessible to reason from the Brazilian side, That Yower bated and dreaded Lopez, firstly, for his ambition ; secondly, for his constant appeals to Europe ; and thirdly, because it hoped to include Paraguay among its own possessions. " Both President Mitre and Senor Elizalde," writes Mr. Thornton,—a decided " Argentine " in policy,—to Earl Russell, " have at different times declared to me that for the present they wished Paraguay to be inde- pendent; that it would not suit them to annex Paraguay even if the Paraguayans should wish it, but that they were unwil- ling to make any engagement to that effect with Brazil, for they did not conceal from me that whatever were their present views on this point, circumstances might change them here- after; and Senor Elizalde, who is about forty years old, said to me one day, though in mere conversation, that he hoped he should live to see Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the Argentine Republic united in one Confederation, and forming a powerful republic in South America.' " If only therefore the Republic could be induced to allow Brazil free passage and refuse it to Paraguay when attacking the slaveholders of Rio Grande, the Brazilian fleet might penetrate to Humaita, silence the fortress, and steaming on to Assumption destroy Lopez and the free civilization of Paraguay together. It was induced. We have no means of describing the process, of showing whether this politician was convinced or that great official bought, but it is clear from the despatches of hostile diplomatists that the Argentines cordially aided the Brazilians, that they flatly refused Lopez permission to cross their territory on his way to punish the slaveholders in Rio Grande, that they also demanded explanations as to his presence in the "Missions," a territory Paraguay claims, and that in March last he had only two alternatives before him. He must either await in silence the attack of Brazil, assisted secretly by General Mitre,—who was at that very moment aiding a sedi- tious committee of refugee Paraguayans,—give up his claim to sovereignty over the Missions, and allow the .slaveholders to occupy the Banda Oriental, or he must risk a war with the whole Plate. He chose the bolder and it may yet prove the wiser course, called or coerced his people to arms—having only 8,000 men on foot in a population of a million and a half coercion seems improbable—and then, immediately after a formal declaration of war, descending the river in his stea- mers with a rapidity which had all the bad moral effect of a treacherous surprise, he seized Corrientes, the nearest Argen- tine port. A desperate attempt by the Argentine forces to dislodge the Paraguayans failed, the invader's soldiery refus- ing to accept quarter on the ground that " they had no orders," and a Paraguayan army, crossing the Argentine territory into the Rio Grande, gave the slaveholders a defeat at Boris which has called the Brazilian Emperor into the field. Lopez nevertheless had apparently miscalculated his strength. By land he was successful, but obedience will not make sailors, and between the 8th and 14th June the Brazilian armament arrived off Corrientes. It was instantly attacked by the Paraguayans with eight steamers and six gunboats, mount- ing 68 and 80-pounders, but the attack was repulsed, the Paraguayan Admiral losing in the conflict " half his stea- mers, all his gunboats, and seventeen-twentieths of his men," a statement which, however exaggerated, indicates at all events a:very severe defeat. Unless therefore he can capture the Brazilian squadron from the shore, which by last accounts is possible, the river is closed to the Paraguayan Dictator, who must either defend Humaita, and continue the war solely by land, which is his probable course, or surrender Paraguay to future invasion by a peace, the first item of which will be the erasure of his fortress. If he can defend the approach he may carry on the war unchecked, and even add largely to his dominions, neither the province of Rio Grande nor that of Matto Grosso being capable of defence against a chief who proclaims and secures freedom to the slave. But defending a fortress against a victorious fleet is the most serious of under- takings. The balance of probabilities is against Lopez, though why Englishmen should receive pleasure from a victory which will immensely increase the prestige of an empire which has enslaved some thousands of men enfranchised at British cost, will enable slavery to overrun a vast free republic, and will throw back a rising, indigenous civilization, we are wholly unable to perceive. President Lopez may be a tyrant, as his enemies say, though he has steadily, maintained friendly relations with Europe, but the tyrant who has so organized Indians that they die rather than retreat without orders, who has formed a fleet in the interior of a continent, who has placed foreigners on an equality with his own subjeots, and whose generals march to battle carrying wires, batteries, and signallers for field telegraphs, is at least as worthy of sym- pathy as the equally absolute Argentine, or the Braganza who would be absolute if he were not afraid of his slave- holding ;subjects.
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