Part Two: Francisco Solano Lopez: The Worst Military Leader In Human History

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 solano lopez the dictator of paraguay probably the worst military leader in all of history the only person i've ever read of who was so bad at being a general that he got his entire country genocide it's like it's i 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 thank you a bit before introducing you i'm excited to see uh to hear about so many people dying always what i expect when i come on it's a good time always a good time human death and misery that's that's the james stout i don't know james that's what i gave you have a podcast i do yeah i have i have thanks robert i have covered human death and misery for many years uh but when i'm not uh 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 the politics behind going outside excellent uh yeah i'm gonna gonna 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 evicting the buffalo right and in 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 uh 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 solano lopez this is an i heart podcast guaranteed human this is matt rogers from las culturistas with matt rogers and bowen yang this is bowen yang from las culturistas with matt rogers and bowen you know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like okay hold on i got a new favorite food that's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try cupi mayo yeah it's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle you've probably seen it at the grocery store and this mayo is different most mayonnaise uses whole eggs cupi only uses egg yolks which gives it this rich umami flavor it's smoother deeper almost buttery once people try it they start putting it on everything egg sandwiches fries burgers chefs use it restaurants use it people who really care about flavor use it put it on just about anything then you'll understand cupi the original japanese mayonnaise want to know you're on the 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you're going to a party or if you want to enjoy the experience save money check live your night in just got legendary get ready to chase the rush spin win and redeem instantly straight to your bank account at legends with a z.com with free-to-play slots blackjack keno roulette and more experience all the thrills of vegas without leaving your couch legends has it all legends is a free-to-play social casino void prohibited must be 18 plus play responsibly visit legends.com for full details get in the game now and score a 100 percent match on your first purchase only at legends with a z.com 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 he 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 yeah 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 percent of every dollar off the top at least but everyone's also making shit loads 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 that 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 so i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a yeah you know i can buy shit it's uh yeah 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 sager insinuates right that's not as uncommon as you want to call it but it's a pretty massive scale like he is buying kids from the government 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 that they're just buying these slaves because they're just 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 so carlos again not a nice man but his documented moments of direct violent evil are few and the after he lopez returned from europe he's the clear front runner to his aging thought 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's 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 lit 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 um so about 500 europeans do agree to move there and start farming with paraguayan 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 gonna farm okay that's a pretty douchey thing to do right there and they're like but you said you were gonna support us as farmers and he said well there's no judiciary so no one's gonna hold me to that really yeah a contract only works one way it reminds me of the scots who tried to establish a colony in the daddy end and like yeah not a good idea yeah northern european people in jungle uh yeah it's not a natural habitat always works i was just reading a book that was like a countervailing narrative to the explorer percy faucet'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 uh 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 yeah that's what i look for on a holiday yeah yeah so this contributed uh 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 1850s as carlos gets older in 1850s he's like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die several men are arrested for conspiring to assassinate the president. 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 rst was james canstat 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 deco 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 deco at the insistence of francisco who liked to flower 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 echoes executed perhaps the only great atrocity committed during the reign of lopez the first is how it's often described i know that i'd say only but that's like kind of the most visibly bad thing he does yeah that's like a textbook dictator evil dictator shit right right and the fact that he does his first real textbook evil dictator thing to support his son wanting to like rape ladies shows you how the francisco lopez regime is gonna go in a lot of ways right now james canstat 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 because the lopez's are the judiciary right yeah and so that conflict brews and carlos as this is kind of like going on carlos sends his son over well not quite overseas but since his gun 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 then it's ours right that's kind of the argument brazil's making yeah yeah um right uh and and now i mean it would never again be made in history never again be made not relevant to today's politics uh no settlers doing that anywhere so argentina wanted some of southern paraguay and refused to give them unrestricted river access as 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 kind of the issue i'm not an expert on a lot of politics in this period this is i'm trying to give you the overview here um 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 de orquiza 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 to me it's a very bloody battle and it's a very bloody battle and it's 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 um 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 yeah 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 gonna keep to that but um lopez is really proud and when orquiza the argentina 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 capital perfect he didn't want the sword because he didn't think it was sufficiently blingy enough it didn't have enough what are you looking at this thing it's got scrapes on it it's been used no thank you 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 not the best treaty ever either 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 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 this betty wish you had the sword no yeah could have gone on there giving it some personal bravery like napoleon you want to 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 we'll take it we'll take it we'll take it we'll take it and blow you out of the fucking sea with it we're the royal navy in 1859 um 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 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 is a giant asshole yeah and what has to be a and 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 um so uh in what had to have been a humiliating scene though francisco is forced to order james's release and you know this is this is a massive l for 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 um 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 circles and all of the political circles and all of the political circles and 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 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 he wants to be a player we got to start fucking around with uruguay yeah it must be something that is worth it yeah and this is this gives us another beautiful moment of shade from sager's book although no executive before or since has thought that uruguayan affairs were so essential to paraguay's security francisco saw brazil's intervention there as an insult to his nation and himself like the only man who ever considered this important yeah 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's he thinks paraguay has like a million people in it and it has maybe 450 000 i feel like that's gonna first not pass the sniff test at some point you gotta be like i know this guy's not full of shit maybe we should get somebody who can count better yeah basis like one thing i've heard is that the if paraguay 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 he's drafting way too many fucking dudes yeah he's drafting way too many fucking dudes yeah now that said he winds up with a really good army probably man for man it's the best army in the region at 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 so 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 where it was after he does a pretty good job of modernizing the military you know just if you're just looking at it military terms um he gets a bunch of modern canon 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 infantry are going to have some version of like an AR, you know, that fire, that is chambered in 5.56. And they'll have a squad automatic weapon or two that's also chambered in 5.56. You know, you might have the odd marksman who's using like an AR-10 and.308, but most people's rifles, whether using a machine gun or an assault rifle, it's 5.56 because you want everyone as much as possible to have the same bullets. And anyone who has a handgun, they're nine millimeters. 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 Paraguayan like infantry units are going to have like so many different, guys can't just hand each other ammo, right? Which is a huge problem in a gunfight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Getting to an old, my book I wrote about the Spanish Civil War and among the anarchists, they literally had no ammunition communality whatsoever. Yeah. So they were- 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 because they- Yeah, which is not- Not what you want to be doing as a country. Yeah, not great. And so this is going to be a problem for Paraguay too. He also starts construction of new iron foundries and 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 being built. 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's industrialized Paraguay, he has not made it 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 landlocked. So if it were to be at war with Argentina and Brazil- Yeah. The countries that border it, it would have no way to get the replacement parts it needs. Right? So obviously- I'm sure this won't be a problem. One thing you can 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 callback later to that one. Yeah. We'll talk about that some more later. Yeah. So it's also worth noting that, you know, even once he gets these things done, he's 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. It's like all of the military factories he builds. And that's the most efficient way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I've heard. Exactly. 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 the newspaper. 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, shit. I need to get up my game, apparently. Yeah. I think, like, 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. Yeah. I don'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. The editor offers with like a huge quantity of high quality Yerba that's worth 150 ounces of gold. And the journalist says yes. And I guess the journalist has to learn the Yerba trade or something. Yeah, right. How do you, 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, a bunch of Yerba would be hard to get rid of. Yeah. Shitload of Yerba. I'll take it, man. If any Yerba companies want to advertise. Okay, yeah. Come at us. Yerba Mate. 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. Please. Oh, I was going to talk about selling the Yerba Mate. Okay. Oh, either that. Sure. Email Sophie for any reason you want. She loves emails. Yeah. I write okay. That's right. On the BSky.app. That's her email. A Blue Sky address. Yeah. She doesn't use email. Everything's Blue Sky DMs. That's how we run this shit. If you see my face, you've hit the right account. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. 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 a script that he'd had written for them. That's how Congress works. Do you have Paraguay under him? That is amazing. Congress is a play. I would say that 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 stuff, right? One of his first changes, once he's now the president, is to make his Irish mistress Eliza the official center of Asuncion 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 imprisoned 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 one of the regular parties Eliza would throw, and then it's like, "Okay, get your fucking will in order, man." Francisco's pissed. Time to flee. Yeah. Time to get the fuck out, although it's illegal to leave the country without explicit permission from him. Jesus Christ. Okay. Lopez officially declared that attending parties and events that his family members and mistress threw was a "patriotic duty." If this lady I'm shh-t up and throw this in, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. Francisco's a party. In order to be a proper Paraguayan patriot, you have to show up. Amazing. If she's invited you. Yeah. 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. It starts to get one under Carlos, but again, Dr. Francia wipes out what had been there. It's 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 fundamental. It's fundamentally subservient of him. The whole Paraguayan ruling class exists to recognize and proclaim the honor of Francisco Lopez. That's what it's for. Great. Yeah. He's a little sick of that class. Might be better to be poor. It's not going to be better to be poor because he just drafts them into his military. 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. He makes a fellow named Bartolome Mitre, Mitre, the president, M-I-T-R-E. Mitre had congratulated Lopez during the negotiations in 1859 that he'd conducted. They'd have a decent relationship back then, but Francisco cannot forgive this guy for the fact that 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 Mitre. Right? He never really. He considers this a stain on his honor. It's offensive that they went back to war and then made a different guy the president. They snubbed him. He considers that a direct insult. Yeah. Yeah. He also considers- What an incredible way of conducting yourself in the world. It's really funny. The 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. Sager thinks that probably was an insult by the Argentinian state. I don't. He knows more than I do, certainly, but could Argentina have really done anything? Yeah. Right? Could anyone do much? Could almost anyone? Yeah. Yeah. In the Americas, maybe the US 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 just going to say they're about to start shooting each other. Yeah. Yeah. No one really wants to fuck with the Royal Navy at this point in time. Yeah. It is peak Royal Navy at this point in time. 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, Sager does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's motivated by a burning hatred. My favorite kind of biographer, for sure. It's good to see what that's been like in grad school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. school for this guy, just burning the midnight with students. dude. He fucking hates. Yeah. 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 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, he is just absolutely sure that he's like a fucking like Napoleon and 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 Ilyas Ben Abdel-Jalil. Quote, he established an alliance with Uruguayan President Bernardo Barro 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 Solano 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 in like a third force. And like, then we can, 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 Uruguayan 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 Mato Grosso, which is a province that's got a lot of minerals. This is 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, right? 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 thousand people. It's giving paper covers, it's 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 Mato Grosso, there's the potential that this could end with some sort of negotiated thing that works out for Paraguay, right? If Paraguay invades Uruguay, it's going to be a very good move because 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? So in November of 1864, Lopez orders his men to seize a Brazilian merchant vessel anchored off of Asuncion. That's how he starts this war against Brazil, which is a really good move because first, this thing is loaded with military equipment. It's a really good move because first, this thing is loaded with military equipment. 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? Lopez is doing pretty good at the start of this. And when they invade, Brazil seems. There's two armies. There's two armies. There's two armies. There's two armies. There's two armies, I think, in Mato Grosso. 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 Coiba. And Lopez announces that Mato Grosso is now part of Paraguay. He If I'm like wargaming this, the smart thing to do would be fortify what you've taken and hold down and try your best to keep really good relations with Argentina so that you can still get more supplies through trade. 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 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 not 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. It's Sophie all the time, yeah. Yeah, because I gave everyone her email. But yes, also the products and services that support this podcast. All of them have been 5150'd. They're not allowed to make any decisions for themselves, so you can get some pretty good deals on their websites right now. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devoto. Devoto is a complete HIV treatment by prescription only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devoto is right for you. Most HIV pills contain three or four medicines. Devoto is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devoto. 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That's betterhelp.com slash behind. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, wait. That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try Kewpie mayo. It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it in the grocery store before. And if you've ever just walked past it, some people would say that's a huge mistake. Because this mayo is different. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Kewpie only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers. Some fans even swear by dipping pizza crust in it. And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. People who really care about flavor use it. Never tried it? Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. Put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand. Kewpie, the original Japanese mayonnaise. 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 ass you to take into fighting two massive powers. Yeah. So, what's actually. What 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. the area were prepared to put down but brazil has reserves in a population like 20 times it's right and like all authoritarian leaders who confuse themselves through 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 if you're listening and you can't see this on on the you know 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 yin 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 um yeah or pretty much completely surrounded by brazil and argentina so keep the keep in mind the fact that paraguay doesn't touch uruguay and the start of this war is because he's getting involved in uruguayan 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 keeping track he has 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 marshal 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 he has to direct this continental war yeah his huge dub um 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 corrientes then occupied the sleepy little town of the same name not content with anointing himself the new master of the corrientes 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 in 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 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 yeah 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 middle of the world but he's a great unifier of peoples and he's a great unifier of the military in the country yeah really bad idea yeah damn ready that's not advised yeah for for for like a reference in military strategy and this has been going on for hundreds of years the at the the attitude up to the present day really is that if you want to be certain of 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 one something like that right not great not a great um 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 since led by president mitre meter 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 supremo counter-attacks to the north and leads his men to the battle of which is an immediate and terrific military disaster 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 were 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 has 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 does no yeah but at least john snow wasn't against guys with fucking cannons yeah yeah swamp running is famously a really easy thing to do and you want to be 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 yeah yeah i've moved through a few jungles and uh yeah it's a lot of you just be sitting there shooting people and again this is by any objective 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 choked thickets as their adversaries opened fire for every yard they gained the paraguayan ranks were decimated by shot and shell the closer they got to the allied positions the more terrible the carnage became those few hardy 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 six thousand times in a day and he's not ready for the next battle 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 four thousand men die on both sides when you can just one six thousand paraguayan soldiers die in this battle and when you consider how small sorry you were saying oh yeah i was gonna say a country that is like a fraction of the size of the u.s exactly three percent of the entire nation is 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 yeah incredible stuff yeah like yeah that must have been horrific yeah from this point on the war is unwinnable for lopez like he has run out of dude i would say so yeah he got he's got no dudes left no very few well yeah he has a lot 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 encircle 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 marquee 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 paraguayan army these young men would prove some of the marshal's most devoted followers the use of child soldiers would be one of the biggest stains on the marshal's record and as one of the great controversies of the war for the paraguayans they felt they had no alternative according to the marshal'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 marshal 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 paraguayans 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 allies strangled the paraguayans the brazilians showed that they could not win the war but they could win the war but they could win the war but they could not win the war but they could not win the war but they could not win the war and 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 upriver and shell Paraguay in positions, Jumaita 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 were dying. When they surrender, and the guys who surrender are known by their resilience as 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 initially, 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, murdered, all that good stuff. Lopez demands a, 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 stance is, nuh-uh. So this doesn't really work out. The allies eventually carry on in another attack, and they assault his forces at a place. It's called Curupaiti. 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 manage 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, you know, 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 ally army constantly because it's a war in the 1860s. And that's just how shit goes. Yeah, everyone's shitting themselves. Yeah. The Paraguayans a bit less because it's their territory, you know. Yeah. For the next year, a small army of Brazilians augmented by an even smaller Uruguayan force keep the Paraguayan military bottled up. It only takes four or five thousand. 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, Asuncion, 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 it 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 Wiggum. 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 the law of the Indies. 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 in medieval times under the Siete 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 Jumaica, 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 pederast is, like, well, he's comparatively, not nearly as evil than that sort of, yeah, great. Yeah, ooh, boy. So, he hears about this coup that may or may not have actually been brewing, and Lopez 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, Benigno. He executes Washburn. After torturing all of these guys, they're tortured horrifically. He executes dozens and dozens of highly placed and powerful men. 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, 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 and tortured. Yeah, it's like one of those paintings of hell. Yeah, it's like, 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 now, 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 big 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 Wiggum 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, enjoyed 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 in 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 for help. 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 man. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Did he land 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 friends. The elites. 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 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. It's something else. Lopez, by this point, has been massacring, is massacring, his own people at home, including members of the clergy and his own family. But the slaughter he wreaks 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. Yeah, that's the other thing, right? He's got the meat grinder that he could put these people into, but he's taking 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 Paraguayans also get cholera en masse 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 meat grinder, but because he started this war and now a bunch of the country is occupied, diseases become endemic and people are dying in fucking mass. Perfect. He's a 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, like, the Paraguayan side, at least, is a bloody series of suicidal charges and attempted ambushes by armies of 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. Right. Right. is like ablative armor, essentially. - Right. Yeah, he's just throwing them down with the bodies of children. Yeah, wave after wave of his own men. No, not men, children. Yeah. Yeah, is that Branigan, but with like 13-year-olds? So the summary of one such slaughter in 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 Cajas and his soldiers reached the far end of the span, the desperate Paraguayans, 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 Brazilians' 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 weary Brazilians began inspecting the enemy dead and realized that a sickening number of them were boys no older than 30, 15, many of the soldiers wept. One thing that should 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 funny. I was talking to a soldier in Myanmar, a 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. 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, there's, one of the things interesting when you read quotes about this, there's no, like, bravado or, like, you know, very little pride, even, martially, 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, fighting the fucking child army. Yeah. And that's, 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 Veleta, 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. 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 with the dogs to that point, right? Kids can be dumb. Shocking loyalty, you know, that speaks very bleakly to the amount of brainwashing that's done to these kids. You know what else speaks to the amount of brainwashing? 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 want us to say that about them. Well, 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. Fuck it. This ad is brought to you by Veve Healthcare. They're makers of Devato, Dolutigravir, Lamivudine. If you're living with HIV, do learn about Devato. Devato is a complete HIV treatment by prescription. Only for some people 12 and older. Your doctor will determine if Devato is right for you. Devato is as effective with just two. No other complete HIV pill contains fewer medicines than Devato. It is unknown if Devato is safe and effective if you have HIV and Hepatitis B. If you have Hep B, don't stop Devato without talking to your doctor. As it may get worse or harder to treat. Don't take Devato if you're allergic to its ingredients or taking Dofetilide due to serious or life-threatening side effects. If you have a rash. or allergic reaction symptoms, stop Devato and get medical help right away. Visit devato.com or call 1-877-844-8872. This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. It's smooth. Smoother, deeper, and almost buttery. Chefs use it. Restaurants use it. If you've never tried it, grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store. What it sounds like when you road trip to the iHeartRadio Music Festival in the all-new Hyundai Palace Aide Hybrid. Wow, this is really nice inside. The Palace Aide Hybrid has more luxury than ever. Whoa, this sound system is awesome. Turn it up. More tech than ever. Sweet. You got the available built-in dash cam? And more range than ever. Because the Palace Aide Hybrid gets up to 600 plus miles of range on a full tank. So do we ever have to stop for gas? Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. This is Tony Ayo from The Real Report. Tony Ayo and Uncle Murda. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rents going up. Streaming services are going up. Even your favorite burrito spot suddenly thinks salsa should cost extra. But with Boost Mobile, you and your phone bill don't have to play the will-it-go-up-soon game. Because Boost Mobile has an unlimited talk, text, and data plan at a price that'll never go up. It's the same price you'll pay for life. Meaning you're set to never worry about your bill increasing again for as long as you're on the plan. While the world keeps finding new ways to nickel and dime you, Boost Mobile gives you, unlimited wireless at one set price for life. Imagine something in your budget actually staying the same. You'll pay the same for unlimited wireless when you're posting mirror selfies in your 20s and when you're posting mirror selfies in retirement. Some things never change. Switch now for unlimited wireless at a price that'll never go up. Only at Boost Mobile. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan. And we're back. Soapy 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 Bileta, 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, that is one of his tactical favorites, isn't it? Yeah. So he heads towards Bolivia, which is basically the only place that's not currently at war with him. Yeah, right. 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 Aquitaban 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 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 Parabellum is. was some estimates say that 90 percent 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 yeah it's like two-thirds isn't it yeah at at the end of the war there are 28 000 adult male paraguayans like that that's yeah that's pretty yeah that's pretty fucking poor yeah it's 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 genocide yeah the level of incompetence because they are 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 wanted in on the okay yeah yeah sure right yeah that's putting it a little strong um before we go i do want to read one last quote uh from the book francisco solano lopez of the ruination of paraguay by sager i can see now how he got to the title it's a good title given the ruination is putting it lightly to be honest yeah yeah lopez was buried at cerro cora by lynch his mistress and brazilian major and later president floriano pixoto panchito was buried there too lopez's mother dona joana had been unable to protect her younger sons from the murderous francisco who had executed benigno her favorite child and tortured to death another benancio 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 she's a she winds up back in europe poor broke but she lives okay yeah yeah i think uh i'm less sympathetic to her than i was at the start after the whole genocide thing yeah yeah hard to be yeah um 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 who i guess people who aren't very well informed about his regime people the fucking child catcher from 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 yeah yeah 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 it stopped yeah anyway james you got any pluggables to plug i do yeah uh i mentioned my book earlier so plug that it's called against the state it's uh it's out now you can find it anywhere the good books are sold uh and in your library if you uh don't want to buy it you can go to your library and ask for it uh publishes ak press um 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're going to talk about the endangered species act and why people hate it uh we're going to talk about drilling in the arctic plain and well we're going to talk about a lot of oil drilling actually there'll be there'll be a lot of there'll be many oil drilling episodes unfortunately uh which will also be comically evil just 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 war of choice with everyone else yeah really just be nice to go it's a it's almost like trying to do 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 minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes and five times your size yeah yeah and then getting battered and then somehow getting someone else battered on your behalf yeah like the best case scenario is that he got like 60 to 70 percent 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 cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts 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 percent of you statistically speaking what it sounds like 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