Perhaps no other person was as obsessed with López’s defeat as the president of Argentina, General Bartholome Mitre. He took command of the still-evolving country in 1862. But his control was precarious as he faced strong opposition from his internal enemies, the Blancos. His refusal to allow López to march across Argentina provided the final spark that started the war during which he became commander of the allied forces. Despite the country’s battlefield losses, the war united the country, and what was once a confederation of different areas became the modern country of Argentina.
A safe strategy for López would have been to continue on the defensive and force the allies to fight him around the stronghold of Humaitá, located at the high ground on a sharp bend in the Paraguay River, one of the stoutest and best-defended fortifications in the world. López, however, was not endowed with clear thinking. With the support of Madame Lynch, he suddenly lurched into the offensive with his remaining able forces, including a newly raised unit of Paraguayan nobles. On May 24, 1866, López threw forward about 20,000 soldiers. They suffered ruinous casualties at what became known as the Battle of Tuyuti. The nobleman unit was virtually wiped out. Overall, the Paraguayans suffered 5,000 soldiers dead and another 8,000 wounded.
Rather than follow up with a quick thrust, the allies waited, building up their army. López emptied the hospitals and restocked the defenses with 20,000 of the walking wounded. And to encourage the others, López executed officers who retreated.
López, with Madame Lynch’s blessing, asked for a peace conference. Argentine president Mitre agreed to talk, and the two discussed a peace treaty for several hours in July 1866. Mitre’s main condition was that López abdicate and go into exile. López refused and since neither side would relent, the meeting adjourned. López left, convinced that all foreigners were out to get him, and thus began torturing and killing anyone he suspected of working with Mitre.
The hesitant allies now settled in for a two-year siege of the Humaitá stronghold. Brazilian ironclads pushed up the Paraguay River and bombarded the fortress. López countered with heavily armed canoes. Slowly, very slowly, the allies pushed through swamps and jungle in order to surround Humaitá. And as the allies closed in around his jungle stronghold, López slipped into madness. He arrested and tortured to death his brother-in-law for stealing money from the treasury that Madame Lynch had actually grabbed. He saw plots everywhere and encouraged Paraguayans to kill their neighbors if they saw any signs of treachery. Madame Lynch supported his paranoia; it was clear to her that the failures obviously stemmed from a well-entrenched conspiracy, not the inevitable outcome of a deeply flawed strategy.
By 1867 Paraguay had descended into total chaos with the entire economy devoted to supporting the dwindling army. Epidemics swept the population, farms lacked workers to harvest the meager crops, and what was harvested was taken for the army. To continue with the fight, Lynch ordered that all women between sixteen and forty be drafted into the army. She lightened their load by relieving them of any remaining valuables and taking their homes.
Finally, on July 26, 1868, the allies conquered Humaitá. López had long since decamped and set up his headquarters in the wilderness, starting the next phase of the war, a tenacious, two-year jungle retreat. To mark the occasion of the defeat, López shot the garrison’s commander along with the wife and mother of the second-in-command. He also took time out of his busy schedule to torture his little brother for his role in some fantasy conspiracy with the American ambassador. It took a special visit from a U.S. warship to rescue the ambassador, held prisoner in his own home, from López’s executioner.
López ordered the evacuation of the entire population, including Asunción. He led a convoy, with Madame Lynch and the children, and thousands of his troops — by now mostly children, walking wounded, and women — on a march north into the hinterlands. He stopped long enough to set up a new capital, torture and execute some enemies, and have a splendid meal with Lynch. It was less a retreat than a caravan of lame circus performers heading slowly north, complete with piano and wine cellar. López, always one to spread family joy, locked his sisters in a special traveling cage and let them out long enough to each receive a lashing. Now, López and Lynch stumbled upon what they decided was the real reason for their military failures: López’s seventy-year-old mother, who had hid her anti-Paraguayan feelings behind a facade of age and frailty. She was caged, repeatedly flogged, and added to López’s execution list.
By early 1869, despite the obvious challenges of moving an insane traveling caravan through the jungle, López and Lynch had managed to stay one step ahead of the Brazilian army. Frustrated at their inability to capture López, the Brazilian military leader, the Duke of Caxias, quit in a huff. In a moment of biting irony, he was replaced by the Comte d’Eu, the very man who married the Brazilian emperor’s daughter.
López and Lynch slipped farther and farther north, their caravan shrinking in size with each successive month. His army fought bravely, but their major weapons — stones and clods of earth — were no match for the Brazilians, who were armed with more conventional weapons.
Few people felt the fully unhinged craziness of Solano López and Madame Lynch as ferociously as his sisters, Dona Rafaela and Dona Juana. Comfortably settled into their roles as beastly leaders of the Asunción jet set, they were suddenly pushed aside with the arrival of Madame Lynch. They immediately teamed with López’s mother to embarrass and isolate Lynch from the rest of society. For their troubles they were turned into Lynch’s personal whipping girls when she became head lady. First López made them toady to his woman. Then, after war broke out, he killed their husbands, imprisoned and tortured them while dragging the pair along in his caravan of craziness. Before he could finish them off, the Brazilians ended their big brother’s reign. They got the last laugh as they saw their big brother turned into a bloody corpse and his mistress thrown out of their wrecked land.
By February 1870 López was down to 500 men and Madame Lynch’s last bottles of good champagne. They took up camp at Cerro Cora, his final capital. Realizing the end was near, he spent his remaining weeks composing his final words and designing a medal to commemorate his upcoming victory. To her credit, Madame Lynch stayed with her man, even though she had every opportunity to take off and head to Europe to live off the jewels she had stolen and thoughtfully shipped off to friends for safekeeping.
On the morning of March 1, the Brazilians stormed his camp. López fled alone on horseback. When he got stuck in a river he waded back to shore into the arms of the Brazilian commander and tried to shoot his way out. A Brazilian soldier speared the dictator and he fell. But like a movie villain, he proved hard to kill. López pulled himself up to his knees and tried to escape. But the Brazilians shot him down. He uttered his long-rehearsed words, “I die with my country,” before he expired. Little did he understand that his country was already dead.