Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Francisco Solano Lopez: The Worst Military Leader In Human History

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

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World Zone Media. Welcome back once again to Behind the Bastards, a podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the worst people in all of history. And this week, we're telling the story of Francisco Salano Lopez, the dictator of Paraguay, probably the worst military leader in all of history. The only person I've ever read up who was so bad at being a general that he got his entire country genocide. It's like, it's, I shouldn't be laughing.

It's a really terrible story. People suffer horribly, but the level of incompetence is just like, it's honestly like almost awe-inspiring. Like, I've never read about anyone doing this badly at war. And that includes Hitler. Anyway, James Stout, welcome back to the show. Sorry to say Hitler right before introducing you. I'm excited to hear about so many people dying. Always what I expect when I come on here.

Always a good time. Human death and misery. That's the James Stout. I don't know. James, you have a podcast. I do, yeah. I have, thanks Robert. I have covered human death and misery for many years.

But when I'm not, unfortunately, covering horrible things, I like to go outside, touch a bit of grass, and my new podcast is called Natural Causes, and it's about going outside and politics behind going outside. Excellent. Yeah. I'm going to get to the bottom of Mike Lee, and why is he like this? Why is Mike Lee like this? What does everyone get wrong?

about fire suppression, all the important stories. Yeah. Who's evicting the buffalo from public lands? Who's evicting the buffalo, right? And in their defense, Buffalo haven't paid rent in a long time. It's true, that they predate the concept of rent, yeah. Yeah, they don't understand money also. Should we be calling them Buffalo?

So I'm sure somebody has strong opinions and they're already logging on to Reddit to tell me that they're called bison. I don't know. All I know is that there's cows and bigger cows and smaller cows, and all animals are one of those three. things including sharks. Anyway, let's continue talking about Francisco Salano Lopez. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Get Bell, purefiber internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month.

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Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Mansell. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Christoph. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know.

That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won't. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get at your podcast. So I just said Francisco, but we're still in the, in the reign of his father, Carlos

Lopez. And as I said last episode, Carlos Lopez is for the most part a relatively peaceful. He's certainly peaceful. He's entirely peaceful. He does not start shit beyond his borders, really. And he's generally even at home a pretty retiring and almost tolerant, semi-tolerant tyrant. Again, tyrant still, but semi-tolerant.

Because he's lazy. He doesn't like to do much. And while every single, I mean, he works hard, but he doesn't like to, he's not like an active suppressor of the people. That takes a lot of work, you know? He likes to outsource some of that. He doesn't like to go too hard because he, I think he understands also, if you crack down on people too much, it fucks him over. Because one of the things, I've just talked about how kleptocratic the Lopez regime is. And under Carlos, they are stealing like 25% of every dollar off the top at least.

But everyone's also making shitloads more money than they ever had before. because he just opens the country up and that's really good for the economy no longer being a hermit kingdom. Like that helps a lot. So people don't mind generally, right? Both that there's secret police and that he's routing a lot of the money

through his like family because things are so much better than they were under the last dictator. And people don't tend to think in terms of absolute like, is this fair or not? They think like, well, the last guy, we were all poor as shit and now I have some money.

Yeah, you know, now I can buy shit. It's a powerful argument. Now, again, these still are not nice people because one of the chief ways the Lopez family plundered Paraguay was through trafficking enslaved people. Benigno Lopez, Francisco's younger brother, had a thing for purchasing children of Afro-Indigenous extraction. And he is believed to have been a pederast at a pretty massive scale. Like, he is buying kids from the government to molest, is kind of what Sega insinuates, right? That's not as uncommon as you want it to be in, like, world history. Many of these slaves, specifically, this is always bad, but one of the things that makes this even a little grosser is that most of the slaves Benigno buys are of a, and Francisco's buying slaves too, I don't think he's raping them as much, but he's still buying a lot of slaves.

And most of the slaves they both buy because they're cheaper are called Liberto. Like that's a legal category of slave. And Liberto slaves, you're supposed to free them when they hit 24 or 25, depending on whether they're male or female. And the Lopez family just doesn't do this. They're just buying these slaves because they're cheaper and kind of breaking what's supposed to be the law. Now, I should also note that because no one else is allowed to take payment from like the Lopez brothers for the slaves they buy from the government, they're pretty much just free slaves as far as I can tell. They do it for the love of the game. They're doing it for the love of the game.

Jesus Christ. So Carlos, again, not a nice man, but his documented moments of direct violent evil are few. And the worst of them were committed as acts of nepotism in support of his fuckhead son, Francisco Solok. After Lopez returned from Europe, he's the clear frontrunner to be his aging father's successor, right? There'd been a little bit of debate still, I think, beforehand because people wondered, well, if he's incompetent enough, they could still bring in like Benigno, maybe. But after he gets all these treaties signed, everyone realizes like, oh, it's definitely going to be Francisco. So the two Lopez has put together a plan to bring European immigrants into Paraguay. Now, there's some racism in this.

they want to people the Chaco, which is this like desolate region of the country. And there's indigenous people there, but they think they're an inferior kind of native, right? Filling the region with Europeans would improve the prestige of Paraguay and the honor of the Lopez's. The problem was the Chaco is a terrible place to farm. Like even the indigenous people who'd lived there for a long time had kind of mostly given up farming because it's a really bad place to, if you have any other option, you don't want to farm in the fucking Chaco. Right. So about 500 Europeans do agree. to move there and start farming with Paraguay and governmental support.

But these volunteers are, per historian James Sager, gullible French citizens without the necessary skills. So they don't know how to farm. They don't know what they're doing at all. And they settle in like the worst territory to farm in the entire country. The colony collapses and the settlers who don't go home wind up strewn across Paraguay and in many cases are arrested by Carlos for breach of contract because he's like, you said you were going to farm.

Okay. That's a pretty douchy thing to do right there. And they're like, but you said you were going to support us as farmers. And he said, well, there's no judiciary, so no one's going to hold me to that, really. Yeah, a contract only works one way. It reminds me of Scots who tried to establish a colony in the daddy end. Yeah, not a good idea. Yeah, Northern European people in jungle.

Yeah, always works. It's not a natural habitat. Always works. I was just reading a book that was like a countervailing narrative to the explorer Percy Fossett's life. And one of the things this guy, he reads a quote from like, I think it was in like the 50s or 60s. like an ad for an Amazon cruise that's like, now you won't die coming. Like we have antibiotics now.

You'll probably live. Visit the Amazon. Perfect. No longer a distance for Europeans. On a holiday. Yeah. Yeah. So this contributed the uncertainty and anger as a result of like how this colony goes.

And in general, the fact that a lot of these Europeans who come over realize the country's not quite as nice as they thought, it contributes to an undercurrent of resistance to the Lopez dictatorship that starts to brew through the 18th. as Carlos gets older. In 1858, several men are arrested for conspiring to assassinate the president. They probably weren't.

It's probably more likely to say that these guys were mostly Europeans who'd pissed off the regime by causing problems for it, right, in part as a result of business disputes and stuff. And the Lopez's wanted to get rid of them. I think that's more what was going on. One arrestee was James Kandstadt, who was a British citizen with Uruguayan citizenship as well. He's like mixed race. and I think the issue is that he'd been in some sort of business relationship with a Lopez

that soured. And the same was true of the Deco brothers, one of whom worked for Francisco Lopez and then embezzled money and fled the country. Now, his brother, Carlos Decoe, had done nothing wrong, but he had gotten engaged to a woman that Francisco had a crush on, and she'd turned the future dictator and current vice president down, and he'd gotten enraged. Sager describes what happened next. It was widely believed that the government persecuted young Decoe at the insistence of Francisco, who liked to deflower young women of the best families of the nation,

not a breach of the honor code. His position made him unaccustomed to rejection. Thus, the Lopez's head that it coes executed. Perhaps the only great atrocity committed during the reign of Lopez I was often described. I don't know that I'd say only, but that's like kind of the most visibly bad thing he does. Yeah, that's like textbook dictator,

evil dictator shit right now. Right. And the fact that he does his first real textbook evil dictator thing to support his son one of the same, to like rape ladies shows you how the Francisco Lopez regime is going to go in a lot of ways, right? Now, James Kansstat, the British guy, stays alive because the British government protests immediately and says, well, if he's done something illegal, he needs to have a fair trial, which can't

exist in Paraguay, because the Lopez's are the judiciary, right? Yeah. And so that conflict bruise, and Carlos, as this is kind of like going on, Carlos sends his son over, well, not quite overseas, but since his son to Argentina in 1859, to secure what would prove to be Francisco's greatest diplomatic achievement. So for most of the last couple decades, Argentina had been quarreling with Brazil for regional dominance, often over Uruguay, where both nations had intervened militarily at least once and through other means constantly. Both Argentina and Brazil also disputed their borders with Paraguay.

Brazil thought they were entitled to parts of North Paraguay and kept moving settlers over to try to claim it, because Brazil's attitude towards like borders is, well, if we have people there, and then it's ours. Right? That's kind of the argument Brazil's making. Right. An argument it would never again be made in history. Never again be made. It's not relevant to today's politics. No settlers doing that anywhere.

So Argentina wanted some of southern Paraguay and refused to give them unrestricted river access. Partly this is a broader fuck you to the Brazilians because like, well, if you're letting Brazilians into your waters, Paraguay, then we can't give you control of the river because you could let Brazilians into Argentina. I think is kind of the issue. I'm not an expert on politics on this period. I'm trying to give you the overview here. So in 1852, Argentina has a split because there's also a lot of disagreement and instability

within the nation of Argentina. And there's like a civil split between the capital, Buenos Aires, and a bunch of provinces that are united under a guy named Jose di Orchiza. In 1859, the dispute between these two sections of Argentina escalates to civil war. And after some very bloody battles, both sides decide to bring in a neutral intermediary. And for reasons that never really make a lot of sense, Francisco Lopez gets the job. He does surprisingly well. There's a temporary treaty that secures peace.

And everyone seems to say like he did a pretty good job helping to negotiate it actually. He's not bad, you know. Lopez, though, is proud of this achievement way out of proportion to what it represents. Because it's good to help broker peace between two sides that don't want to go to war anymore. But if they've already decided, they're kind of done being at war. When they've asked for arbitration, I do feel like the biggest hurdle has been crossed that they've stopped killing each other. Yeah, if they've already wanted to, well, they're not going to keep to that. But Lopez is really proud. And when Erkiza, the Argentinian leader, offers him his sword,

Francisco insists, your thanks are the only reward that I need. And then when he gets home, he has a gold medal made for himself and he puts it on the display in the capital. Perfect. He didn't want the sword because he didn't think it was sufficiently blingy enough. It didn't have enough gold brain. What are you? Look at this thing. It's got scrapes on it.

It's been used? No, thank you. You've been using that shit? That's not what that's for. Is it gold? No, thank you. It's not all gold. In 1861, the treaty collapses.

So just after two years, and Argentina goes back to war with herself. So not the best treaty ever either. Yeah, real peacemaker shit. Still, for a couple years, it's a big success. and it's marred only slightly by the fact that S, he's trying to leave Argentina. And he's in Buenos Aires, trying to go back to the flagship of his entire Navy, and the British Navy sails in and impounds it. You're like, no, you're not getting on this boat.

Sorry, we're taking this fucker. We're the British Navy. Have you heard of the Royal Navy in 1859? Yeah, they are not to be fucked with. I bet. I bet you wish you had the sword. No. Could have gone on there giving it.

some personal bravery like Napoleon. You want to fuck with us. Oh, okay, sure. Well, we'll just take, we'll shake out literally the change in our wallets and blow you out of the fucking scene with it. We're the Royal Navy in 1859. Now, obviously, the British are pissed

because of the arrest of that British Uruguayan dude, right? And so they're taking his capital, his flagship hostage to be like, look, we won't give your fucking boat back unless you let our man go, which is pretty effective power politics to give the British Empire credit. Yeah.

Back in the day, they went hard for that shit. They sure did. And they're in the right here, right? This guy probably did nothing wrong. Francisco's a giant asshole. Yeah. In what has to be a... Again, this should say something about the kind of asshole.

Francisco Lopez is that, like, the British Empire are consistently, like, the most reasonable people in this story. Yeah. The British Empire and the Brazilian Empire are, like, consistently rational actors here. So, um, so... In what had to have been a humiliating scene, though, Francisco is forced to order James's release. And, you know, this is a massive L for Paraguay and for him. But he gets his big stupid boat back, even though it's outdated at the time and not very good anymore.

Now, by the time this all goes down that he's negotiated this treaty and kind of the 1850s are ending, the 1860s are starting, Francisco Lopez has developed a new theory of South American geopolitics. And because of all of the conflicts Brazil and Argentina had had over Uruguay, he comes to see Uruguay, as he calls it the great Gordian knot that's like locked in all of the political machination of the powers of the Plata region of South America, which is where Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina are either in habit or touch. All of them are kind of wrapped up in Uruguay. It's this Gordian knot. And if you can cut it, then you can take real power, right? You know, that's kind of his idea. Okay.

And I think he believes this mainly because Brazil and Argentina can't stop fucking with Uruguay in politics. and previously, like, his dad doesn't seem to really want to get involved. Dr. Francia certainly didn't, but he's going to be convinced that like, well, if Paraguay wants to be a player, we got to start fucking around with Uruguay. Yeah, there must be something that it's worth it. Yeah. And this gives us another beautiful moment of shade from Sager's book, although no executive before or sense has thought that Uruguay and affairs were so essential to Paraguay's security, Francisco saw Brazil's intervention there as an insult to his nation and himself. the only man who ever considered this important. So while he strategized, Lopez continued to obsess over his army, and he begins increasing

conscription rates to a level that would have eventually made the state go broke. He starts conscripting so many people that, like, it is completely unsustainable, even as good as the economy's been. So if there isn't the war that's going to come, Paraguay would have gone bankrupt because of him building up his army to such an extent. And part of the reason why Paraguay's army becomes so abnormally. large for its size is that Francisco hired a really incompetent asshole to do a census. And so he thinks Paraguay has like a million people in it and it has maybe 450,000.

I feel like that's going to first, not pass a sniff test. At some point you're going to be like, I know, this guy's not full of shit. Maybe we should get somebody who can count better. Yeah. And he bases, like one thing I've heard is that if Paraguayette had like a million people, he would be conscripting too many of them for the state. to be able to afford and he's off by a factor of at least two.

So he's drafted way too many fucking dudes. Now, that said, he winds up with a really good army. Probably man for man, it's the best army in the region at this point, right? By like a meaningful level, you know? That said, one of the issues is it's still small and objective numbers.

Even though it is a really good army for its size, if it starts suffering casualties, these really good soldiers are just not going to be there anymore. And there's no depth to the Paraguayan bench, right? Yeah. Because they've drafted so many of their men already. That said, when it comes, if you're just objectively viewing, well, how did he do in terms of taking the Paraguayan military to where it was before and to where it was after? He does a pretty good job of modernizing the military, you know, if you're just looking at it in military terms.

He gets a bunch of modern cannon from Europe, and he purchases both modern rifles as well as modern. smoothbore muskets for his men. Unfortunately, as I said last episode, he's one of these rich kids who gets really excited by whatever arms merchant he happens to have talked to last. And so he buys a bunch of different calibers of rifles and smoothbore muskets. And so there's no effective standardization among the Paraguayan forces. And that's a really bad idea. Like in the U.S. military, you have most guys in like a platoon of like actual fighting

inventory are going to have some version of like an AR, you know, that fire, that is chambered in 556. And they'll have a squad automatic weapon or two that's also chambered in 556. You know, you might have the odd marksman who's using like an AR10 and 308, but most people's rifles, whether using a machine gun or an assault rifle, it's 556, because you want everyone as much as possible to have the same bullets. And anyone who was a handgun, they're 9mm. It doesn't matter that is that the best absolute bullet. It matters is that the bullet we can get the most of and is it interchangeable between everybody because you don't want to have to fuck with a bunch of different calibers. And so Paraguay and like infantry units are going to have to have to.

have like so many different guys can't just hand each other ammo right which is a huge problem in a gun fight yeah yeah yeah get into my book i wrote about the spanish civil war and among the anarchists they literally had uh no ammunition communality whatsoever yeah so they would be and it's a huge huge problem yeah it was a huge issue they'd have to run out after a firefight and gather up all their brass so they could reload it uh because yeah which is not not what you want to be doing as a country Not great. And so this is going to be a problem for Paraguay, too. He also starts construction of new iron foundries in an arsenal that gets named after his most effective deputy, a guy named Whitehead, who is going to purge not long after establishing the armory that his military is entirely reliant upon.

Factories for producing modern steamship parts are also created. But most of these factories, whether they're making steamship parts or cannons, cannot make full steamships or full cannons without importing parts from Europe, which means that even though he, he's industrialized Paraguay, he has not made it like capable of autonomously arming and supporting its military in the field. It cannot even repair a lot of its guns on its own without taking things in from international areas. And it's it's landlocked. So if it were to be at war with Argentina and Brazil, the countries that border it, it

would have no way to get the replacement parts it needs, right? So obviously, one thing you think, if you're the leader of Paraguay is, well, under no circumstances could I ever allow myself to be at a war with both Brazil and Argentina. That's frankly unwinnable. Yeah. Right? One would assume for where we're going. We'll do a little cool back later to that one.

Yeah. We'll talk about that some more later. Yeah. So it's also worth noting that Univian once he gets these factories going, he'll regularly have them like stop making weaponry and parts for the military to build fancy like wrought iron structures for his homes and for like the mansions of his relatives and his mistress. So it's like military production and or producing luxury goods for just my family. That's the most efficient way to do it.

Yeah. That's what I've heard. So in the latter years of his father's rule, Lopez started employing journalists, both to write for local papers, which he edited, and to write articles for foreign papers. He would pay journalists to write puff pieces about him to put them out in like British mainstream media, right? He had mixed success with this because, for one thing, the articles are so bad and so obviously full of shit that a lot of editors are like, well, I don't want to publish this. And he's getting, this must have been a great gig if you're a journalist with no soul because, like, one of the reporters who's writing a puff piece for him quotes as his like pay, he wants 150 ounces of gold for a propaganda article, which is a crazy rate per word, by the way.

Like, shit. I need to get up my game, apparently. Yeah. I've done better than most writers of my age, but I don't think I've ever gotten 150 ounces of gold for an article. That's a hell of a rate. I didn't think I've ever gotten any gold. I didn't think I could ever buy a single ounce with what I made from a single article.

I got paid in liquor once, but never gold. That said, this guy doesn't actually get paid with gold either. Lopez counter offers with like a huge quantity of high-quality Yerba that's worth 150 ounces of gold and the journalist says, yes. So I guess the journalist has to learn the Yerba trade or something. Yeah, wait.

How do you dispose of that much Yerba? Maybe he's just taking it all. Cheap coffee! I've done some working kind where I got like free bikes, but yeah, yeah, a bunch of Yerba will be hard to get rid of, I feel like. A shitload of Yerba.

I'll take it, man, if any Yerba companies want to advertise. Okay, yeah, come at us. Yerba Matae, I don't have an issue with it. I think it does cause cancer. But what doesn't? Anyway. Email Sophie, she'll sort it out.

Email Sophie, if you know what doesn't cause cancer. Oh, I was going to talk about selling the Yerba mater. Okay. Oh, either that, sure. Email Sophie for any reason you want. She loves emails. I write okay. That's right.

On the B-sky. That's her email, a blue sky address. Yeah, she doesn't use email. Everything's Blue Sky DMs. Everything's blue sky DMs. If you see my face, you've hit the right account. In 1862, Carlos Lopez died. It had already been decided for quite some time that Francisco would follow in his father's footsteps.

There was a brief formal delay so Congress could convene and vote him president, but Congress only convened when Lopez ordered it, and he literally, people couldn't speak in Congress unless they were reading like a script that he'd had written for them. That's how Congress works to be parriced under him. That is amazing. Congress is a play. I would say not at all like our Congress, but actually these days it's a little like at least half of our Congress.

Yeah, at least half of our Congress, right? Yeah, yeah, that's great. What a perfect system? This is pretty much just for show, the whole Congress convening this stuff, right? One of his first changes, once he's now the president, is to make his Irish mistress Eliza the official center of a Sunsian high society.

Whether or not Ms. Lynch invited you to her home is how you knew you were in favor with the president, who could and increasingly did order people in prison for annoying him. A lot of people found out they were about to be imprisoned and eventually in some cases murdered because they'd get uninvited from like one of the regular parties Eliza would throw and then it's like, okay, get your fucking will in order, man. Francisco's pissed. Yeah.

Time to get the fuck out, although it's illegal to leave the country without explicit permission from him. Lopez officially declared that attending parties and events that his family members and mistress threw was a patriotic duty. If this lady I'm shed up and throws a party in order to be a proper Paraguayan patriot, you have to show up. Amazing. If she's invited you. Yeah. Now, part of his goal, one of the things he's doing here is he's consciously building

a ruling class for Paraguay because it hadn't had one. You know, it starts to get one under Carlos. But again, Dr. Francia, like, wipes out what had been there. So it's kind of a blank slate. And he's able to, Francisco is able to make, because he's also doing this during his dad's reign. he builds the new ruling class of Paraguay in his image and to be fundamentally subservient of him. The whole Paraguay and ruling class exists to recognize and proclaim the honor of Francisco Lopez.

That's what it's for. Yeah, he might be better to be poor. It's not going to be better to be poor because he just drafts them into his military. So since the first dictator had left basically no ruling class behind, again, what exists in Paraguay is entirely a creation of Francisco. Now, he becomes mildly annoyed in 1862 when Argentina concludes its civil war and makes a fellow named Bartolome Meeter, Maiter, the president, M-I-T-R-E. Maiter had congratulated Lopez during the negotiations in 1859 that he'd conducted. They'd have, like, a decent relationship back then. But Francisco cannot forgive this guy for the fact that, like, they go back to war after he makes a peace treaty for them, and that the guy he had liked most isn't the leader after this new.

war finally ends. It's this guy, mighter, right? He considers the sustain on his honor. Like, and it's offensive that they went back to war and then made a different guy in the president. But they snubed him. He considers that a direct insult.

Yeah. What an incredible way of conducting yourself in the world? Like, like, this is a big tragedy here is that you guys snubbed my peace deal. Sager will note he's also really pissed that Argentina doesn't stop Great Britain or try to stop Great Britain from impounding his flagship back in 1859. And Sager thinks that probably was an insult by the Argentinian state. I don't, he knows more than I do, certainly, but like, could Argentina have really done anything? Yeah.

Could anyone do much? Yeah. Like, in the Americas, maybe the U.S. Navy, but I honestly, in 1860, I don't, yeah, probably in the Americas, in the Americas, maybe. But not during the Civil War, right? Which this is. Right, you're going to say they're about to shoot each other. Yeah. No one really wants to fuck with the Royal Navy at this point in time.

It is peak Royal Navy. Yeah. They're kind of doing as well as they've ever done here. Yeah, really good at boats. Yeah, very good at boats. As Sager notes in his biography of the man, Francisco Solano Lopez was myopically obsessed with himself and his own honor to a degree unusual even among potentates.

Quote, historians who spend their time reading correspondence between leaders of the Hispanic world, including monarchs, are struck by Francisco's excessive use of me, I, and my. Critical readers of his correspondence without any other knowledge of his character would judge him at least an outlandish egotist. Francisco proclaimed his honor feeling correctly

that he needed to remind others of it. Honor was a zero-sum game. It was a value system to which he clung in the absence of other personal qualities, such as pragmatism and common sense and empathy. Really hates this guy sacred us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's motivated by a burning hatred.

My favorite kind of doubt. of a biographer for for sure. I can just see what it must have been like in grad school for this guy, just burning the midnight wheel with duty fucking hates. Yeah, Sager, if you happen to listen to this, first off, I hope I haven't fucked this story up too bad. And second, I hope you find another man to hate and write about it, because I want to read it if you're still alive.

You might be dead. I don't know. I think the book was published in 2007. Every negative aspect of Lopez's personality, including his obsessive reading of military theory and micromanaging the army, which convinced him he was a budding military genius. Right? Like he is just absolutely sure that he's like a fucking like Napoleon in waiting and he just needs a chance to like establish himself.

And he's going to finally in the early 1860s get that chance. And I want to quote now from an article in The Collector by Ilias bin Abdaljali. Quote, he established an alliance with Uruguayan president Bernardo Barrow of the Blanco Party. Lopez aimed to unite the smaller regional nations as a third force on the continental level and directly influenced the Rio de la Plata Basin. This displeased Brazil, who then openly supported a rebellion of the Colorado Party in Uruguay in 1863. Despite Paraguay's threats of intervention, Brazil invaded Uruguay in 1864. Francisco Salano-Lopez declared war in December of 1864, invading the province of Mato Grosso. So that's how the war that we've been building up to starts, right? Lopez is pissed that

Brazil and Argentina are bossing him and everyone else around. That's how he'd frame it. And so he wants to unite these smaller nations, starting with Uruguay and like a third force. And like, then we can compete. And by we, he means he, because he wants to lead it with these great powers, right? He wants to turn Paraguay into a great power by uniting these smaller nations under its banner. And he does this by getting involved in Uruguay in politics. And then Brazil basically supports, you know, a rebellion in Uruguay and sends their army in. And he declares war on them. And he is going to invade Madagrosso, which is a province that's got a lot of minerals. This is, if you If you're Paraguay and you want to be a more powerful nation, this is like the first place you'd want to invade because it gives you the ability to actually start producing industrial products of your own in a way you currently can't.

Now, that said, starting a war with Brazil as Paraguay, not necessarily a great idea. Yeah, it's a bold move. It's a bold move. Brazil in 1864 had between probably 10 and 12 million people, right? Paraguay's population is again, at most, maybe half a million, probably like 450-something,000 people. It's giving paper covers rock. Now, that said, while this isn't a great idea on its face, there is some justification here, right? Brazil did intervene and basically push this rebellion in Uruguay. Like, they're kind of the dicks at the start, right?

And so there's an argument to be made, right, for why Paraguay would need to get involved here. And there's also the potential when it's just Paraguay invading Montagroso. there's the potential that this could end with some sort of negotiated thing that works out for Paraguay, right? If Paraguay can hand the initial Brazilian forces in the area, a substantial defeat,

and then force them to make peace or at least lock them into a war where Paraguay's kind of defending the territory they've taken and they can make it too expensive. Brazil might sue for peace, right? It's a chance, but that actually could have happened, right? Yeah.

So in November of 1864, Lopez orders his men to seize a Brazilian merchant vessel anchored off of Assuncant. That's how he starts this war against Brazil, which is a really good move because first this thing is loaded with military equipment.

There's a lot of shit that Paraguay needs desperately. So this is going to fuel their war effort. The fact that they've captured this boat and some other stuff they're going to capture in the early days of the war is what gives them the arms

and armaments to be able to fight. They also capture the governor of Mato Grosso, who happens to be on board at the time, which is a great way to start your invasion by capturing the guy in charge of the province. Kind of found money.

Right? You're doing, Lopez is doing pretty good at the start of this. And they, when they invade, the Brazil scenes, there's two armies, I think, in Madagroso, and the Paraguayans just absolutely smash both of these Brazilian armies. Because these are like Brazilian frontier forces. They're meant for more police actions. And Brazil isn't really expecting to come into a pure conflict. And Paraguay's built a pretty good military. And so he just beats the fuck out of these early Brazilian forces and sacks the provincial capital of Kweba. And Lopez announces that Matto Grosso is now part of Paraguay. He annexes it all. So again, if I'm like wargaming this, the smart thing to do would be fortify what you've taken and hold down and try to your best to keep really good relations with Argentina so that you can still get more supplies through trade. You know, you would hope maybe the fact that Argentina and Brazil have been at each other's throats so long is something you can take advantage of, right? A smarter leader. Right. And maybe, probably honestly, in the best case scenario, Brazil would sue for peace, and then in another 20 years, there would have been another war and they probably would have taken it back, right?

It's just a much bigger country. I don't know that I see this ever would have worked out for them in the long term, but it could have worked out for Francisco Lopez during his lifetime. That wasn't impossible, right? But as soon as the fact that he beats, and he's like, he's not like leading leading, but he's at the head. He's leading his army. He's there, right? the fact that he starts this war and it immediately goes so well and his forces win two big battles,

it goes to his head immediately. He loses his mind the second this happens. And you know who else loses their mind? Me? Is it the product? Yeah, because I gave everyone her email. But yes, also the products and services that support this podcast. All of them have been 51-50.

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I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart. These are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silent.

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And we're back. So, as I left off, Francisco Lopez has had like his first little hit of military victory and then completely lost his fucking mind and decided, I am the god of war and cannot be defeated. Oh, this is going to go really badly for everybody. Yeah. It's a good as you'd take into fighting two massive powers. Yeah. So what's actually happened here is that because of unsustainable conscription and military

spending, he had assembled an army way more powerful than Brazil was. Brazil's like forces in the area were prepared to put down. But Brazil has reserves in a population like 20 times is, right? And like all authoritarian leaders who confuse themselves from. military masterminds, Napoleon included Francisco immediately oversteps. Before I talk about the next stage of this war, I want to show you all a map of the Plata region of South America, where all of this shit is going down. So if you're listening and you can't see this, on the east side, you've got Brazil,

big country, and on the west side, you've got Argentina, pretty big country. And then in the middle, it's almost like Brazil and Argentina are doing a yin-yang thing. and then the dot, one of the dots in between the Yan Yang is Paraguay and one of them's Uruguay. And one thing you'll notice is that Paraguay doesn't touch Uruguay, right? Like they're kind of close, but they're not bordering each other, whereas Paraguay is completely surrounded by Brazil and Argentina. Yeah. Yeah.

Or pretty much completely surrounded by Brazil and Argentina. So keep in mind the fact that Paraguay doesn't touch Uruguay. And the start of this war is because he's getting. getting involved in Uruguay in politics and considers that to be the Gordian knot that he has to solve, you know, in order to become a regional power, right? Now, what this means, the fact that, like, Paraguay isn't touching Uruguay is that if he wants to, if Lopez wants to reinforce his allies that have just been overthrown in Uruguay, he's going to have to go through Argentina to do so.

And so after he beats these Brazilian armies and takes Madagroso, he reaches out and he says, hey, Argentina, can I, like, send an army into Uruguay through your territory so I can, like, handle this whole situation and Argentina says no and Francisco showing his true brilliance as a military leader says fine I'll declare war on you fuckers too and he declares war on

and invades Argentina oh god great stuff he is now declared war on and invaded the two countries that surround him both of which are vastly larger than his own country so Argentina's population at the time is roughly one and a half million

which is three times or so the population of Paraguay, in addition to the population of Brazil, to say nothing of the population of Uruguay, which is also going to get involved against fucking Paraguay. Lopez starts calling himself by the old dictator's nickname, El Supremo. He convenes Congress, and he tells them to declare him Marshal of Paraguay. So Napoleon was a marshal. Marshall is like a really fancy military rank. It's even better than general.

So he's got to be a marshal since he's such a great military leader now and to direct this continental war. Yeah, his huge dub. So he's declared Marshal of Paraguay. Next, per an article in the Warfare History Network. Lopez followed the declaration by capturing two Argentine naval vessels in the Bay of Corientes, then occupied the sleepy little town of the same name. Not content with anointing himself the new master of the Coriantes province on the basis of this petty triumph,

Lopez declared himself the new ruler of the adjoining province of Entre Rios as well. It was then that the would-be warlord's luck began to run out. By this time, the Flores faction had managed to come out on top in Uruguay. those are his opponents, whereupon the new regime promptly announced its intention to stand shoulder to shoulder with Argentina and its hour of need. On April 18th, Argentina and Uruguay declared war on Paraguay. Two weeks later, with its own axe to grind, Brazil secretly threw in with Argentina and Uruguay, pledging to help bring all their forces to bear until the existing government of Paraguay should be overthrown, and no arms or elements of war should be left to it.

The stage was now set for a wide-ranging South American war. So Lopez's enemies now call themselves, the Triple Alliance. And he has now started a three against one fight where the population is more like 30, like 25 or so against one, something like that. He really brought people together. He's a great unifier of people. I think his enemies can call on between two and three dozen men for every single man he has

in the country, not in the military, in the country. Yes, Christ, yeah. Really bad idea. Yeah, definitely that's not advised. Yeah. For like a reference in military strategy, And this has been going on for hundreds of years. The attitude up to the present day, really, is that if you want to be certain a victory

in an offensive action, you want to have about three times the numbers of the defenders and wherever you're attacking. So, again, he's outnumbered 36 to 1, something like that, right? Not a great start. Yeah. So in April of 1866, the Triple Alliance launches an invasion across the Parania, shattering a major Paraguayan fortress and battering Lopez's navy, which was now horribly outdated in a war of ironclads and modern cannon.

The army Argentina sends, led by President Mitre, or whatever, is 60,000 men on its own, more than 10% of the entire Paraguayan populace. So he has invaded with an army that's 10% of all of Paraguay. More, really, than that more like 15. Genius that he is, El Suprimo counterattacks to the north and leads his men to the Battle of Tuuti, which is an immediate and terrific military exasper. disaster. Now, it shouldn't have been. He still has, going into this battle, the best army in the region. It is a better army pound for pound than the Brazilian army. And it's like a huge

dense swamp thicket. And because of the situation, the smart thing, military historians agree, well, if he just have like, once he had the, the Brazilians kind of in the area and there was, they knew a battle was coming, he should have entrenched his forces and tried to get them to attack him. The smart thing to do, and the smart thing to do based on like the military tacticians that Lopez claimed to admire was to kind of dig in and try to goad the enemy into a defensive battle.

Lopez, though, is convinced that he can't be beaten, and so he orders a charge, and he sends this precious veteran army that he is painstakingly built and blooded and in two countries, and he sends them sprinting directly through a thick swamp into a line

of guns. This does not go well. He literally thinks he's John Snow. He does. No. Yeah. But at least John Snow wasn't against guys with fucking cannons. Yeah. Swamp running is famously a really easy thing to do.

And you want to be moving through a swamp. Like I've read a lot of, you know, I've seen a tiny amount of battle. And I've read a lot about battles. I can't imagine a worse situation than sprinting through a swamp into a gun line. That's terrible. I've moved through a few jungles. And it's a lot of you just be sitting there shooting people. And again, this is by any ejected territory, a good army.

They could have at least won or at least pulled out a pretty close loss if someone competent had been in charge. But here's what happens to continue with that article from the Warfare History Network. Blundering forward in a series of waves, the heat of the noonday sun beating down upon them, Lopez's troops doggedly slogged through the reed choked thickets as their adversaries opened fire. Forever yard they gained, the Paraguayan ranks were decimated by shot and shell. The closer they got to the allied positions, the more terrible the car. carnage became. Those few hearty souls who managed to get within reach of the allied positions found themselves blasted to pieces by withering volleys of rifle fire. Entire battalions were lost.

So I don't, you're not ready for how bad this fucking battle goes. Lopez burns the pride of his army in a single day. More than 6,000 Paraguayan soldiers are killed. For an idea of how bad that is, the battle of Antietam, which occurs close to the same time, is still the deadliest day. in U.S. military history. Fewer than 4,000 men die on both sides. When you can 6,000, Paraguayan soldiers die in this battle. And when you consider how small, sorry.

You were saying? No, yeah, I was going to say a country that is like a fraction of the size of the U.S. Exactly. 3% of the entire nation dies in a day on the battlefield. I was about to ask for how much of the population that was. Three percent of the Paraguayan nation dies on the field in one day.

That's mad. Dude is a terrible leader. Yeah, that is. Come me. Incredible stuff. Yeah. That must have been horrific. Yeah.

From this point on, the war is unwinnable for Lopez. Like, he's run out of dudes. I would say so. Yeah, he got no dudes left. No, very few. Well, he has quite a few dudes left. He has no more dudes who are like of responsible age to fight. left. Oh, God.

Yeah, yeah, that's where we're headed. So the Allies in circle, his chief fortress, the Humaita, and in September of 1868, they finally managed to breach it under the command of a Brazilian general, the Marquis de Cassius. This write-up from history is now describes how Lopez prepared for and lost this battle. For the Marquis, a pitched battle was what he wanted. He was simply unable to achieve it at this stage. Lopez knew his numbers were low, and he had limited prospects of getting more men. Pre-teen boys and old men were being conscripted into the paris.

Paraguayan army. These young men would prove some of the Marshall's most devoted followers. The use of child soldiers would be one of the biggest stains on the Marshall's record and as one of the great controversies of the war. For the Paraguans, they felt they had no alternative. According to the Marshall's propaganda, the Allies were going to partition the country and the Brazilians were going to enslave them. As has been seen, Marshal Lopez was not one to sit and wait for anything to happen to him. He would make attacks during the siege and at times put the allies back on their heels. Active defense seemed to be the tactic Marshall Lopez excelled at, but his army was also starving. A larger proportion of his soldiers every day was made up of

children and old men. Weapons were outdated. Ammunition and powder were short. It was amazing the paraguans held on as long as they did, but the marshal could feel the squeeze he was being put under. Slowly, steadily, month after month, the ally strangled the Paraguans. The Brazilians showed early in the siege that their ironclads were able to run the guns of the fortress and make it up river, virtually defeating the purpose of the fortress at that location. With the fleet now able to go up river and shell Paraguay in positions, Humaita slowly became untenable. Small-scale counterattacks would not be enough. The allies inexorably closed in.

So, you know, at this point, it's not like obvious massive mistakes. It's just he's made the war unwinnable for himself from the stage, right? Lopez abandons his positions, and he takes the best of his men with him, leaving a starving rearguard to hold the fortress made up entirely of children and starving men who are dying. When they surrender, and the guys who surrender are known by the Brazilians having like yellow skin that's just hanging off them because they're just nearly dead. They look like they just got out of a death camp. Right.

When they surrender, he has his spies hunt down the family of the officer responsible and torture them. Because he's like, how dare you surrender when you were all about to starve to death to try to save the literal children that I left in your command? Cheers to that dude for trying to save the kids eventually I guess He's got one good officer left I guess

Yeah Not anymore That guy's no longer in the army Yeah true And his family are also tortured Yeah tortured Yeah tortured murdered All that good stuff

Lopez demands or asks For a brief parlay at this point And there's like a peace negotiations Between the Triple Alliance and Lopez But their stance is like You're done Right You're done and there need to be consequences

And Lopez's stances Nouh So this doesn't really work out. The allies eventually carry on in another attack and they assault his forces at a place called Kuru Pite. And again, Lopez is as idiotic as he is in his grand decisions. When it comes to, like, tactical moves, he's not always awful, right? And the Paraguayans have good defensive positions like they should have had at the other battle we talked about. And they managed to throw back the allies and inflict horrific casualties. So many that, like, the Argentinian

president quits the war entirely. He doesn't pull Argentina out. but he no longer has stomach for direct command. And there's like a year-long lull where basically the Allies have to like recover and redress their militaries and whatnot and, you know, get them out of the country. Also, everyone's sick and dying in the Allied Army constantly because it's a war in the 1860s and that's just how shit goes. Yeah, everyone's sicken themselves and yeah. The Paraguay is a bit less because it's their territory, you know. Yeah. For the next year, a small army of Brazil.

augmented by an even smaller Uruguayan force, keep the Paraguayan military bottled up. It only takes four or five thousand men to do that at this point in time, but they're not able to take any more territory. And while this is all going on, our boy Francisco Lopez is stuck in his capital, Assuncantian, which he knows he's not going to be able to hold on to that much longer, getting angrier and angrier and crazier and crazier and taking his problems out on everyone else.

In the early years of his reign, Lopez had publicly disdained torture. He didn't keep doing that for much longer. So I want to quote now from an article published in the Journal of the Americas titled Court of Blood by Thomas Wiggum. Court of Blood is what they called Lopez's like palace and whatnot. Like his basically his like close friends because he kills and tortures his friends and family during this period. Is that like he's calling that? He's like you're invited to the court of blood. It's the nickname that people develop because he kills all of his former buddies basically.

Great. Here's Wigam. In 1868, he issued a. decree invoking the old laws of the Indies and establishing a series of two-man tribunals to investigate and prosecute those accused of treason. In fact, the government had already suppressed the colonial legal codes during the early 1840s, but the regulations concerning treason, as first defined for Spain and medieval times under the Siette Partidas, were still in force. Under this medieval code, the monarch's subjects were required to acknowledge, love, fear,

honor, and protect the king by the command of God, whose place he occupies on earth. Any individual failing in such duties would necessarily be guilty of treason and would be put to death on this account and if he could not be found, he must lose all his property and be forever banished. So that's the attitude that he establishes like if you are not loving and respecting

and fearing and protecting me, then you die and if you escape, I'll fucking kill your family. Is kind of how things go, right? The fear part, I think he's probably got locked down at that point. The other one's not so much. Not so much the other ones.

Now, the story, goes that as Francisco is fleeing the Humaita that fortress with some of his men before it falls, he learns that there's a coup brewing in the capital centered around his younger brother Benigno and the American ambassador Charles Washburn. And there had been from the time he got to power, and this is another thing that contributes to him like getting increasingly angry at his brother Benigno. A lot of people thought Benigno should have been the president, not because he was smart or better, but because he was like dumber and less of an asshole. And people were, I mean, he's a pedophile monster.

So, like, that shows you how bad Lopez is, is that, like, the, the pederist is like, well, he's comparatively not nearly as people. The messer of two. Yeah, great. Yeah. Ooh, boy. So he hears about this coup that may or may not have actually been brewing, and Lopez wines gets really pissed.

And so he arrests all these guys, including the American ambassador and his own brother. And he hosts a bunch of show trials and mass executions. He executes his brother, many. He executes Washburn. After torturing, all of these guys are tortured horrifically. He executes dozens and dozens of highly placed in powerful Paraguayans and foreigners. I don't even know that we have like a good number for what becomes known as the San Fernando Massacre because they have this big open air concentration slash death camp.

There's a contemporary, semi-contemporary lithography, like an illustration illustrating San Fernando. So you just see this picture, it's just like hundreds of people in this open-air, fenceless camp being like whipped and stabbed. tortured. Yeah, it's like one of those paintings of hell. Yeah, it looks almost like a Bosch painting. Yeah, like you can see the fucking what must be vultures overhead for all the corpses. Yeah. It's just an awful situation.

Yeah. So he's pissed off the Americans now in addition to Argentina and Brazil. Yeah, and he pissed off the Americans a bit before with some of his fuckery. This really gets the Americans pissed off. Yeah, killing the ambassador is a bigger one. Yeah. the whole country gets pretty pissed off, or at least imprisoning the ambassador at this point.

So the article I quoted from earlier by Wigam includes a haunting description of how this open-air death camp worked. Prisoners of both sexes arrived at the latter camp daily. The detained women, nearly all upper class in origin, and joined the privilege of remaining unshackled with each receiving a cured hide for a bed. Otherwise, they had to suffer in the open air like the men and consume the same poor fare of unsalted beef and portions even smaller

than those doled out to the troops. Once a day, the prisoners received a cow horn of water from the nearby lagoon, but they were permitted to visit it only to answer the call of nature. Given the prevalence of dysentery in the camp and the reluctance of guards to escort the prisoners from their place of confinement, it was inevitable that many of the accused had to squat in their own filth. At night, all of the prisoners were chained, though the men's circumstances were more difficult than the women's.

Lassoes were stretched between heavy poles driven into the earth, and to these ropes the men were tied with leather thongs in groups of 20 to 30, placed in rows, stretched on the damp, slimy ground where they rested, suffered, and slept. Thus assembled, these accused conspirators, already thin, rapidly sunk. Many died. Jesus. Well, stuff. Nice, nice man.

Yeah. Yeah. Did he learn that one in his European trip? Sounds like he came up with some of that himself. This is also, maybe the first time I've heard of, like, a lot of death camps. You know, sometimes people who used to be close to the leader wind up in the death camp. This is the first death camp that's, like, entirely populated by, like, his former prince. And, like, buddies and family.

It's like an upper-class death camp. He kills two of his brothers here. Yeah. Jesus. He has his own mom arrested and tortured for, like, allegedly having suggested that he might have been born out of wedlock to, I think, like, a black woman. Come on. There's, like, rumors about that, too, that he's not really, or his dad, that his dad's

not the real father, I think actually was it. I forget exactly. Because there's a bunch of different rumors about his parentage. But, like, he has his mom, the fuck with his mom over this stuff. Yeah. That is psycho shit. That is fully unhinged. Lopez by this point has been massacring his own people at home, including members of the clergy and his own family.

But the slaughter he reeks on those closest to him pales in comparison to his continued insistence on waging a lost war now without a functional professional adult army. Right? Because that is still going on. That's the other thing, right? He's got the meat grinder that he could put these people into, but he's. He's taken the time to torture them at home instead. Yes, exactly. And I should also note that, as I said, every time the Allied armies show up in, like, force, their camps are these filthy disease-riddled hellholes, right?

And that keeps spreading disease to the locals, right? Local Paraguans also get cholera in mass and start dying in huge numbers. You know, obviously a lot of his soldiers die from that, too. But, like, his people are dying as a result of the war, not just because he's conscripting them and throwing them into a moment. meat grinder, but because he started this war and now a bunch of the country's occupied, diseases become endemic and people are dying and fucking mass. Perfect. He's done.

It's military genius. He's fucking brilliant. So the capital eventually falls after a renewed Allied assault in 1869. The rest of the war after this point is from, on like the Paraguayan side at least, is a series of bloody series of suicidal charges and attempted ambushes by armies of untransing untrained child soldiers, flung in the way of the Brazilian army by Francisco Lopez just to protect him, right?

He's just repeatedly having kids act as his like ablative armor, essentially. Yeah, he's just throwing them down with the bodies of children. Yeah, wave after wave of his own men. Not men, children. Yeah. Yeah, is that Branigan, but with like 13-year-olds?

So the summary of one such slaughter in that article, that article by the Warfare History Network, is chilling, and I'm going to read that now. Caballero, who is Lopez's general at this point, and about 4,000 of his troops withdrew, leaving the remainder, including a handful of middle-aged campesinos and a host of underage boys to face the enemy. As the Marquis de Cagius and his soldiers reached the far end of the span, the desperate Paraguans, down to mostly machetes and rusty bayonets, left their positions and rushed forward to meet the enemy head on in a suicidal charge.

From there, the action quickly degenerated into a vicious, murderous brawl, the Brazilian superior numbers and the simple fact that they still had bullets carried the day. In a matter of minutes, the fight at Yatororo was over. Afterward, when the Riri Brazilians began inspecting the enemy dead and realized that a sickening number of them were boys no older than 15, many of the soldiers wept. One thing that you tell you how horrible this is is a major problem for the Allies is that their soldiers and officers keep breaking down because they're murdering so many children.

Yeah. Like, they just can't take it. Yeah, it's, that's funny. I was talking to a soldier in Myanmar. fighter in Myanmar last week. It was telling me how emotionally difficult it has been for them fighting. Yeah, conscripted children. Same thing. Not good for the human soul,

actually. It's just really bad to mow down tons of like 13 year old boys. Yeah, who don't want to be there. Who don't want to be there. And like, you know that they're, like, there's no, one of things interesting when you read quotes about this. There's no like bravado or like very little pride,

even marshaly in what's happening at this stage. It's just a lot of traumatized Brazilian, arguably, There are more casualties at this point as a result of guys just getting their heads fucked up from killing kids than from actual enemy action. Right. Yeah. You're fighting the fucking child army. Yeah.

And that's kind of the defining image of the war against the Triple Alliance. Brazilian soldiers getting traumatized to the point of shattering their own psyches because Francisco Lopez keeps hurling legions of kids into their guns. Jesus. A few days after the Battle of Yatororo, that I just related, the Brazilians attack Lopez at a place called Beleta, under punishing rain. Caballero's army at this point is just old men and young children. There are multiple battalions of riflemen where no one is older than 13 or 14. And I called them riflemen. Number one, they're not men. And a lot of them don't even have rifles. Most of them don't have shoes. But they're brainwashed kids. So they're pretty motivated in the way that like kids can be when you brainwash them properly.

Yeah, the brain isn't done making itself and joining up all the dogs to that point, right? Kids can be done. Shocking loyalty, you know, that is, it speaks very bleakly to the amount of brainwashing that's done to these kids. You know what else speaks to the amount of brainwashing done to children who are soon going to be sacrificed in a series of pointless wars? That's probably not a good way to throw ads. Yeah, I'm not sure if they wanted to say that about them. We'll see. I don't know. Maybe Lockheed Martin will be doing the ad. Who knows? Let's see if Raytheon wants to give us some. money. Buck it. Get Bell purefiber internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month.

Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart. These are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up. Don't say anything.

Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silent. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip,

I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Sovi says Raytheon is now advertising on the pod. Raytheon. Aren't there too many kids? Anyway So, speaking of too many kids, Francisco Lopez still has a lot of children in his army.

Pretty much nothing but children at his army. I'm going to continue with a quote from that article from the Warfare History Network. At Avahi, the adolescent volunteers struggled vainly for nearly four hours to hold back the enemy in a contest they only partially understood. With all the obstinacy of youth, they would not yield. Refusing all quarter, they received no mercy.

Only a few hundred of Avahi's defenders lived to see another day. The rest, numbering well over 3,000 were cut down. When the Brazilians entered Villetta, they found that Lopez had once again used his human shields to cover his escape. Cahia's army was joined by 4,000 troops from Brazil's reluctant ally, Argentina, and another 600 Uruguayans. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to be in on the kill. After he flees from Avahi, Lopez creates a new capital for himself in this tiny little town named Piraboy, and he and his Irish lover, Eliza, and an army that's now just women and children, because, like, he's run out of old men. pretty much by this point.

He's gone woke out of necessity. Really inclusive, yes, the woke Paraguayan army. So the Marquis holds for like another 10 months while he reorganizes his army. And he's also now that they've taken the urban areas of Paraguay where most people live, he's also trying to deal with a humanitarian crisis. Like they're just trying to stop everyone from dying as a result of Lopez's actions.

So he can't finish the war for like another year. But he attacks the next summer and he finally slaughters the last of Lopez's forces. Now, do you want to guess what Lopez does while the last of his army is being wiped out? Is he doing more with the gold braid? Is he decorating his outfits again? No, no, no.

He just uses them as human shields again and runs away. Oh, okay, yeah, but that is one of his tactical favorites, isn't it? Yeah. He hits towards Bolivia, which is basically the only place that's not currently at war with him. Yeah, he doesn't have many other choices, does he? Yeah, and he's got this, like, rear guard

that's trying to like hold back his retreat and they just get massacred trying to protect him. So again, he sacrifices yet another army to secure his flight. On March 1st of 1870, though, the Allies finally drag him down. They catch him at a place called the Akitabon River,

which is close to the Bolivian border. All of his soldiers basically die kind of trying to protect him. Lopez, you'll find some people say that he and he finally died nobly, charging the enemy, you know, with a weapon in his hand. That's not true.

He gets wounded by a lance and he jumps into the river to try to swim away and then he gets shot in the back. Appropriate. Yeah, I'm not going to be sad for that. No. So after five years of war, the total death count of the war

could be as high as 1.2 million in total. It kind of depends on how big Paraguay was. Some estimates say that 90% of the pre-war population of Paraguay dies in this war. Holy crap. The lower estimates are just 300,000, which again is out of like 450,000, that's still like 70% of the fucking country or something dying.

Yeah, it's like two thirds, isn't it? Yeah. At the end of the war, there are 28,000 adult male Paraguans. Chee. Like, that's pretty bad. That's pretty, yeah, that's pretty fucking poor. Yeah.

It's, it's one of the most, like, extensive, genocides I've heard of entirely done kind of by accident by your own dude. Yeah, like auto genocides. Yeah. The level of incompetence. Not quite auto because they are, but like you made it happen. Yeah. Yeah.

Like it was, uh, yeah, just by like sheer incompetence. Yeah, by sheer fucking idiocy. And you were saying those kids were volunteers. Like they, they, they want to be in on the, okay. You know. Yeah, sure. Right. Yeah, that's putting it a little strong.

Before we go, I do want to read one last quote from the book Francisco Solano Lopez on the Ruination of Paraguay by Sager. I can see now how we got to the title. It's a good title given me. Ruination is putting it lightly, to be honest. Yeah. Lopez was buried at Serocora by Lynch, his mistress, and Brazilian major and later president, Floriano Pixoto. Panchito was buried there too. Lopez's mother, Donna Joanna, had been unable to protect her younger sons from the murderous Francisco, who had executed Benigno, her favorite.

her favorite child and tortured to death another, Benanzio. When Francisco died, she alleged that he was not the child of Carlos Antonio. His sisters thought him a monster. Their husbands had been persecuted and executed by their brother. They responded by joining his enemies. Perfect. So Lynch survives, though. Lynch does.

She winds up back in Europe, poor, broke, but she lives. Okay. Yeah. I think I'm less sympathetic to her than I was at a start. After the whole genocide thing, yeah. kind of hard to be. It's, he really fucked up pretty bad. Now, he has, his reputation has enjoyed what some will call a renaissance after he's

become in the last, like, I think 50 years, sort of a, there's been an attempt to, like, rehabilitate him as like a nationalist figure in Paraguay. I guess people who aren't very well informed about his regime. People, the fucking child catcher from Chitty Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, like, who hates children that much? I think that they're really focused on the trains. like really focused on the trains Yeah

Many people who love to rehabilitate dictators Do love to go to trains to do it Yeah Yeah he made the trains Not even a run on time He just made them He made the trains Yeah

That's where to stop Yeah Anyway James You got any plugables to plug I do Yeah I mentioned my book earlier I plug that

It's called Against the State It's out now You can find it anywhere The Good Books are sold And in your library If you don't want to to buy it. You can go to your library and ask for it. Publishes A.K. Press.

And I have a new podcast, which is starting on the 17th of August. It's called Natural Causes. You can find it wherever you found this podcast. And it is about going outside. We've got to talk about the Endangered Species Act and why people hate it. We're going to talk about drilling in the Arctic plain. And we're going to talk about oil drilling, actually. There will be many oil drilling episodes, unfortunately, which will also be comically evil, like this.

Yeah. Well, check out James's new show. And check out Paraguay. I mean, I'd like to. It seems like a great place when it's not starting having a dictator star warf choice with everyone else. Yeah, it would be nice to go. It's almost like tried you that, what, I'm a little guy strategy.

But instead, like, you never say, what, I'm a little guy. You just keep starting fights with, like, men five times your size. Yeah, yeah. And then getting batted and then somehow, or getting someone else batted on your behalf. Yeah, like the best case scenario is that he got like 60 to 70% of the country killed. Yeah. And it may have been over 90% pretty bad. Pretty bad. That is wild. Yeah. Anyway, be careful who you let run your country, folks. You know? Some good advice there, Robert. Maybe don't let anyone do that, arguably. Bad idea. All right. Well, enough of my radical

anarchist propaganda. Go away. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode.

For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. I survived nine months. in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live

through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality. Welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island to serve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture, with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed.

I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Mansell. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Christoph.

They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won't. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the I-Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport And Sean Clements We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook Each week we talk to someone in show business And try to help them with their careers And see what they have to offer us Everyone has a good time

And no one gets mad at their publicists For letting them do our show We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots That wouldn't be where they are without us Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

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