Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/243



UP THE URUGUAY RIVER. 213

E/io Negro he contented himself with observing the out- posts of Colonel Caraballo^ and he retired whenever General Flores went out to meet him. D. Leandro Gomez^ nothing daunted, threw up battery and barricade, loopholed houses, placed arms in the hands of all the adults, and more than once thought of compelling the foreigners to fight. And he kept his ]900 men at work till only 500 or 600 of them were left alive. D. Lucas Piris, a sturdy, broad-faced old man also fell, and a similar fate awaited the third in com- mand.

The twenty-eight days^ siege ended with fifty-two hours of tremendous fire, and Paysandu fell at 7 a.m. on Jan. 2, 1865. Lieut.- Colonel Thompson asserts (Chap. II.) that the Brazilians treacherously entered the town under a flag of truce, and it is generally understood that all was not fair and above board. But the author of the "War in Paraguay" is not justified in throwing the blame of Leandro Gomezes murder upon the Brazilian officers ; he has been misin- formed about the " indiscriminate massacre of the women and children of the place -/' and he cannot correctly assert that " the taking of Paysandu, with the atrocities com- mitted there, form a revolting page in the history of Brazil.^' On the other hand the Brazil had as little reason to boast about having conquered a place " so strongly gar- risoned and guarded by secure trenches.^" (Relatorio of the Minister of War, p. 3, 1865.)

The truth is this. D. Leandro Gomez and his sur- viving officers were being marched down the street by Brazilian soldiers, who were taking him to their Chief. Admiral Tamandare had been waited upon by an English resident, Mr. Richard Hughes, and that officer in reply to a request that the gallant defender's life might be spared, replied that he had orders from his government so to do. Meanwhile Gomez was demanded by the Colorados, his