# Chapter Six — Two Tries For Freedom

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## Paraguay and the Triple Alliance

The Civil War had just ended in North America. But in South America, an equally bloody war was about to begin.

In 1865, Francisco Solano López had just come to power in Paraguay. Paraguay was a little country in the center of South America, sandwiched between the much larger countries of Argentina and Brazil. López had inherited his power from his father, Carlos Antonio López. Carlos Antonio had worked hard to make Paraguay a strong country; he had built up the army and prepared his oldest son, Francisco Solano, to inherit his power. But he spoiled Francisco, treating him like a hero when he was still a teenager, and even making him a general when he was only eighteen years old.

In 1853, when Francisco was twenty-seven, his father sent him to France to buy weapons for Paraguay’s army. Francisco looked around him at the sprawling French Empire and thought, “This is the kind of empire I, too, would like to rule!”

Carlos Antonio López warned his son, “We have a strong army now. But when you become ruler, try not to fight. Instead, try to negotiate with the countries around you. Be diplomatic!” But when his father died in 1862, Francisco Solano López set out to make Paraguay one of the most influential countries in Latin America—even if that meant taking on the armies of Argentina and Brazil.

López had a difficult task. He had to fight not only with Argentina and Brazil, but also with those who disagreed with him within his own country. Like most of the countries of Latin America, Paraguay was populated by three different groups of people: descendents of slaves, native South American Indians, and *creoles*. Creoles were Spanish colonists who had been born *in* South America, rather than in Spain. Fifty years before López came to power in Paraguay, the creoles of South America had helped lead their colonies to independence, freeing them from Spanish and Portuguese rule. By 1830, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies had become independent countries: Brazil, in the center, was one of the largest. Argentina stretched down almost to the tip of the continent. To the west lay Chile and Peru, and to the north a handful of smaller states.

Once the colonies had become countries, the creoles took power. The other people of Latin America—the native South Americans, and descendents of African slaves who had been brought to South America by the Europeans—were poor and often badly treated. They resented their creole overlords. Among themselves, the creoles fought with each other to become dictators of their own countries. And the South American countries fought with each other as well. As a matter of fact, the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi had helped the little country of Uruguay, sandwiched between Brazil and Argentina, to fight against an Argentinian dictator who wanted to control it.

Only two years after Francisco Solano López came to power in Paraguay, Uruguay was once again the center of trouble. Two politicians were vying for control of Uruguay. Brazil wanted one of the politicians, a soldier named General Flores, to win the struggle, because he would then become an ally and friend of Brazil. So the Brazilian army helped Flores gain power in Uruguay.

At this, López grew indignant. Like Uruguay, Paraguay was sandwiched between the larger countries of Brazil and Argentina. López didn’t want Brazil to decide the fate of the smaller countries of South America! He asked Argentina to join with him in a fight against Brazil. When Argentina refused, López turned to his army. In 1865, he marched fifty thousand soldiers down the Paraguay River into Argentina.

War had begun. Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay—now under the control of General Flores, who owed both his power and his loyalty to Brazil—united against Paraguay. This war became known as the War of the Triple Alliance.

López, outnumbered by the three hostile armies, intended to get control of the rivers that led into Argentina and Brazil so that he could sail down and attack these countries. So he began to plan a sea battle to take control of an important river port held by Brazil. This was a bold move. Brazil had thirty-three steamships and twelve sailing ships. López had only two gunboats and fifteen other small boats. But he knew that Brazil’s navy had been designed to sail on the ocean off Brazil’s coast, not on the river. The steamships ran on propellers and needed deep water. López hoped to surprise Brazil’s army at low tide, when the water would be shallow and the huge Brazilian fleet would be less able to maneuver.

He collected his little fleet together, along with six barges loaded with cannon that he planned to tow into the battle. At nine o’clock, on the morning of June 11, 1865, the Paraguayan navy attacked. The little Paraguayan ships zipped in and out of the narrow river channels, avoiding the guns of the larger, slower Brazilian ships.

But as the battle wore on, the Brazilian cannon began to find their mark. A Paraguayan ship sank into the river mud. Cannonballs smashed the boilers of one of the steamships. Another boat was rammed by an iron-clad Brazilian ship.

Four hours after it began, the battle ended. The Paraguayan fleet had been all but destroyed. The commander of the Paraguayan fleet had been wounded, and died a few days later. Brazil blocked up the rivers that led into Paraguay. Now, López could not get out of his country by water. He was landlocked.

In the next year of fighting, Francisco Solano López lost almost twenty thousand of his men. A deadly disease called cholera was spreading among them, killing more. He was starting to run out of guns, food, and medicine. And the Triple Alliance was better armed than the Paraguayan soldiers; López’s army only had old-fashioned flintlock muskets, which didn’t always fire, but the Triple Alliance army was using the new Enfield rifles, just like the British army in India.

Soon, López had been pushed back into his own country. Then, the Triple Alliance invaded. Now, López was fighting to defend his own land! His army made a stand at Humaitá, a fortress on the southern tip of Paraguay. For three years, the Paraguayan army resisted the besieging Triple Alliance. But in 1868, they were finally forced to surrender the fortress. They retreated back north, towards the capital city of Asunción. The Brazilian and Argentinian forces marched into Paraguay. Asunción fell to the Triple Alliance in 1869.

Still, López refused to give up. He collected a new army and went on fighting. Many people thought that he had now grown insane. He suspected his officers, his army, and even his family of treason. He ordered thousands of Paraguayans arrested and put to death—including many of his bravest officers, his own sisters’ husbands, and even both of his brothers!

A year later, on March 1, 1870, López led the ragged remnants of his army out to face a Brazilian attack in Cerro Corá, far up in the north of his country. He was killed in the attack. Finally, the war was over. Brazil and Argentina each took a piece of Paraguay’s land; Brazilian soldiers occupied the rest of Paraguay.

Hundreds of thousands of men had died. Brazil alone had lost one hundred thousand soldiers, with another sixty-five thousand injured. Half of the population of Paraguay had died: killed in battle, executed by López, or wiped out by hunger and disease. Farmland had been destroyed as the armies had stormed through Paraguay. Starvation loomed. Paraguay, once strong, had become powerless.

Even today, Paraguayans disagree about López. Was he a patriot, fighting for the freedom of his country against the schemes of Argentina and Brazil? Or was he an insane dictator—as one of his own officers called him, a “monster without parallel”?

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## The Dominion of Canada

Far to the north of South America, another country reached for independence.

Canada became free in 1867, just two years after the end of the American Civil War. But the story of Canada’s independence actually begins three hundred years earlier, when French and English colonists both settled in the northern reaches of North America. As the settlements grew, France and Britain struggled over who would control them. In 1763, after bitter fighting, the French surrendered their colonies to British rule.

The British divided their new Canadian colony into two parts. The French-speaking colonists were in Lower Canada, today called Quebec; the English-speaking colonists lived in Upper Canada, later known as Ontario. Both parts of Canada were governed by English-speaking officials of Great Britain. But the French Canadians kept their language and their French customs, even under British rule.

When war between Great Britain and the United States broke out in 1812, neither Upper nor Lower Canada joined in the fight. Most Canadians *wanted* to remain part of Great Britain.

But after the War of 1812 ended, more and more Canadians began to complain that Great Britain was not giving them the chance to govern themselves.

These complaints were the loudest in Lower Canada. French Canadians had their own elected group of leaders, the Assembly of Lower Canada. But by law, the English governor of Lower Canada had the final word in all matters of law. And he ignored all of the Assembly’s suggestions! A tall, handsome, dark-haired Frenchman named Louis Joseph Papineau believed that the governor should be forced, by law, to pay attention to the elected Assembly. The French Canadians who agreed with him formed into a group called the Patriotes.

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Papineau travelled through Lower Canada, exhorting French Canadians to protest the power of the English governor. His speeches worked a little too well. By 1837 the Patriotes had whipped up so much indignation that masses of French Canadians were planning on arming themselves and rebelling, just as the Americans had done. Papineau went through the countryside again—but this time, he was pleading with French Canadians to stop and think before they began to fight.

His pleas didn’t work. French Canadians under the leadership of the Patriotes set up their headquarters in a stone-walled village called St. Denis, on the banks of the Richelieu River. On November 23, 1837, British soldiers marched down from Montreal, intending to invade St. Denis and arrest the Patriote leaders. But after less than a day of fighting, the Patriotes had driven the attackers away.

The British weren’t about to give up so easily. More soldiers came flooding down from Montreal, poured over the walls of St. Denis, and burned the village down.

Immediately, a short, red-headed Canadian in Upper Canada saw his chance.

William Lyon Mackenzie, the son of a Scottish family, had been loudly complaining for years that the governor of Upper Canada didn’t listen to the Assembly of Upper Canada—any more than the Lower Canada governor listened to the Assembly of *Lower* Canada. Now, Mackenzie realized that all of the soldiers stationed in Upper Canada had gone down to fight in Lower Canada. It was the perfect time for Upper Canadians to rebel!

Mackenzie managed to gather a little crowd of discontented Upper Canadians around him. The tiny army set off to attack Toronto. But most Upper Canadians didn’t want to fight a war against the British. As Mackenzie’s group of rebels approached Toronto, thousands of Upper Canadians loyal to Great Britain gathered against them.

The “army” fell apart immediately. William Mackenzie ran away. He knew that he would be arrested as soon as the British could find him, so he dressed his short body in skirts and women’s shawls and sneaked across the border into the United States. Down in Lower Canada, the tall, aristocratic Papineau also fled across the border into the United States.

Britain had kept hold of its Canadian colonies. But the rebellion had frightened British officials. They sent a nobleman named the Earl of Durham to go to Canada and find out how to prevent another revolt. When the Earl of Durham returned from Canada, he reported that the Canadians would probably never rebel again—as long as the Assemblies were given the power to govern their own country.

So the British decided to rearrange the government of Canada. Lower and Upper Canada would become one colony with one British governor. Each one of the separate areas, or “provinces,” in Canada would also have its own leader—a “lieutenant-governor” who would help the British governor. Each province would also have its own elected Assembly. All of the provinces together would send elected representatives to a bigger Assembly—the Assembly of the United Canadas.

The British had given the Canadians plenty of elected Assemblies. But none of the Assemblies had the power to overrule either the governor of all Canada, or the lieutenant-governors of the provinces. So Canadians kept on writing, speaking, and arguing about their right to govern themselves.

Finally, the lieutenant-governor of the province of Nova Scotia agreed to let the Assembly of Nova Scotia choose all of his advisors. These advisors would tell him how to govern. Now the Assembly of Nova Scotia, not the governor, held the greatest power in the province.

Before too long, the governor of Canada and the Assembly of the United Canadas followed the same procedure. Over time, the elected Assemblies had managed to gain the power to govern Canada.

By the 1860s, the Canadian provinces were talking about joining together into a “federation.” This federation would still be loyal to Great Britain, but it would have its own constitution, its own Canadian House of Commons, and its own Canadian Senate.

Canadians had good reasons for wanting a federation. Many Canadians were afraid that the western territories of Canada—the areas not yet formed into provinces—would be taken by the United States, unless Canadians could join together and claim those territories for a strong, united Canada. Most Canadians didn’t want to belong to the United States, especially since the horrible Civil War had just ended. One nineteenth-century poster, urging Canadians to join together in a federation, had a British flag on one side with the words, “Loyalty to Great Britain. Protection … !” On the other side, these words were written across a faded American flag: “Yankee Grit … Annexation! Ruin!” (*Annexation* meant that the United States would take Canadian territories for its own.)

The provinces argued and argued about forming a federation. Smaller provinces, like Prince Edward Island, were afraid that a federation would give the larger provinces too much power. But finally Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick decided to join together. A new law, called the British North America Act, formed these four provinces into a new country called the Dominion of Canada. The British North American Act also explained how the western territories of Canada could be formed into provinces, and then drawn into the Dominion of Canada.

The Act took effect on Monday, July 1, 1867. Cannons and fireworks were shot off. Canadians threw parties all over the new Dominion of Canada. Parades and speeches celebrated the birth of this new country.

In the next three years, three more provinces decided to join the Dominion of Canada: Manitoba, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island. By 1900, the Dominion of Canada stretched all the way to the west coast of North America. The western territories of Canada would never belong to the United States.

Victoria, the Queen of England, was still the queen of Canada. But just as England was really governed not by Victoria but by the British Parliament, so Canada would now be governed by its own House of Commons and Senate. Canada wasn’t free from Great Britain—but it was independent.

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