Titans of History

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ & ELIZA LYNCH

1827–70 & 1835–1886

A monster without parallel.

George Thompson, an English engineer who was commissioned as an officer in the army of Francisco Solano López

Francisco Solano López was the vainglorious dictator of Paraguay who, in the name of honor and national prestige, led his country to almost total destruction at the hands of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. López was a deluded popinjay, an inept psychopath and a mass-murdering megalomaniac who was obsessed with dreams of grandeur and believed that he could become the Napoleon of South America.

He was the eldest son of President Carlos Antonio López, a merciless tyrant who ruled Paraguay from 1844 until his death in 1862. The younger López had been groomed to succeed his father, and was promoted to brigadier general at just eighteen. He became an increasingly proud and preposterous young man, and liked to have himself pictured on horseback or in military uniform, with a profusion of ribbons and insignia, his thick black beard covering a somewhat portly face. From his teenage years he was an avid womanizer, capable of oleaginous charm and eloquence, but likely to become forceful if his advances were rejected.

In 1853 young López traveled to France on a diplomatic mission on behalf of his father. In Paris he became intoxicated with the political pomp, imperial ceremony and military showmanship of Emperor Napoleon III. He studied the campaigns of the first Napoleon and believed that he himself had a talent for strategy. While in Paris he also met Eliza Lynch, a beautiful Irish girl whom he took back to Paraguay and who was to become his mistress for the rest of his life.

To this day Paraguayans are divided over the figure of Eliza Lynch. Those who see Francisco López’s presidency as a noble episode in Paraguayan history have placed his Irish moll on a pedestal as Paraguay’s version of Evita Perón—a captivating visionary and a regenerator of the country. On the other hand, for the many who regard López’s presidency as a disaster, brought about by sadism and hubris, Lynch was a gorgeous, profane, blood-spattered seductress, the Latin-Celtic Jezebel who stoked her lover’s ego, encouraging him to embark on his disastrous military adventures, who turned him against his own family and encouraged him to kill.

Eliza Alicia Lynch was born on June 30, 1835 in County Cork in Ireland, to a Protestant physician, John Lynch, and his wife, Adelaide Schnock. In 1847 the family moved to Paris, and in 1850, when she was just fifteen, Eliza married a French military surgeon.

The marriage ended in divorce, and Eliza was already working as a courtesan when she was introduced to López in 1853. To the thickset, chubby-faced López she must have seemed an exotic beauty, with her tall, voluptuous figure, her long red hair, her blue eyes and her porcelain skin. Their love affair developed quickly and by the time that López had to return to Paraguay, Lynch was pregnant. Besotted, López left her funds to follow him to South America. She gave birth to the first of five sons in October 1855, not long after she arrived in Buenos Aires.

Soon settled in Asunción in palatial splendor, Eliza simultaneously delighted and horrified Paraguayan high society with her charm, Parisian affectations and impish behavior—not to mention her importation of French cuisine, music, perfume, fashions and art.

On his father’s death in 1862, López inherited his power, imprisoned potential rivals and was duly elected president by the Paraguayan congress. While on his deathbed, his father was reported to have warned him of the dangers of foreign aggression. But despite growing up so close to the center of Paraguayan politics, López showed little sensitivity to the precarious nature of the balance of power in the region, determined to become the Napoleon III of South America. Foolishly, in 1863, just one year into his reign, he allowed Paraguay to become embroiled in the civil war that was taking place in nearby Uruguay, in which both Brazil and Argentina—the most powerful nations in South America—had a stake.

Puffed up with his own sense of self-importance, López believed that he could act as the arbiter between these contending powers and thereby establish himself as the dominant warlord of South America. Accordingly, in November 1864 he declared war on Brazil, and sent his troops over the border. By December they had taken the province of Mato Grosso, known for its valuable diamond mines, but instead of consolidating his position López then demanded the right to station troops in Corrientes, a province of Argentina that was strategically important in his campaign against Brazil. In April 1865, after Argentina refused, López launched a disastrous invasion.

On May 1, 1865 Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay set aside their differences and united together against Paraguay. A foolish incursion into Uruguay in 1865 stretched López’s forces to breaking point, and in May 1866 his army suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the allies at Tuyuti. By July 1867 López was in full retreat, and his enemies chased and harried him back into Paraguay.

As Paraguay’s fortunes in the War of the Triple Alliance rapidly began to decline, López turned his rage on his fellow Paraguayans. By the middle of 1868 he had become convinced that his own family were plotting against him, and ordered the execution of his brothers and brother-in-law, and even had his own mother and sisters flogged. In what became known as the San Fernando massacres, López tortured and slaughtered men and their entire families—many thousands of them—including ministers, judges, senior civil servants and even foreign diplomats. All were executed without trial on suspicion of being deserters or traitors.

Such actions were the signs of a desperate man. As his enemies closed in, López was driven northward with the ragged remnant of his army toward the frontier of Paraguay and Brazil. Here, on March 1, 1870, he was killed by Brazilian troops as he tried to escape by swimming a river.

During the war López made his mistress the largest landowner in Paraguay by handing her huge swathes of land, including a number of profitable ranches and over twenty homes for her personal use. But her fortune was tied in with his, and within days of his death she had all her lands confiscated. She fled to back to Paris—but not entirely empty-handed, as she took with her thousands of pounds’ worth of jewels and cash. When she later returned to Paraguay to reclaim her land, she was swiftly deported back to Paris, where she died in 1886.