Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/337



FROM CORRIENTES TO HUMAITA. 307

" I want/' said Napoleon, " men behind walls, but soldiers in the field/' The Paraguayans could hardly be called soldiers, but they stood manfully to their guns, and proved themselves behind cover better artillerists than their invaders. They avoided the " necessary evil '^ of embrasures by the rough and ready expedient of placing all their guns â‚¬11 barbette. Thus they secured freedom of lateral range ; but the gunners had no cover ; every third shell ought to have swept them away. The casemates of the protected system would have been to them, as has been proved in modern warfare, mere slaughterhouses.

The great strategical error committed by the Paraguayans was that of the Confederate States — an attempt to fight long extended lines. Instead of holding along the stream a succession of outposts, which were all lost by direct attack or by evacuation, they should have concentrated themselves at fewer places, and should have rendered them doubly and trebly strong. To defend only a few points, and to defend them well, is the recognised general principle in these days of short sharp wars.

The Brazilian attack was necessarily as monotonous as the Paraguayan defence. The assailants, after occupying the enemy's front in force, also ensconced themselves behind lines of earthwork. The next step was to run the ironclad squadron past the position, and to land a corps d'armee in the Gran Chaco. A " picada,"" or rough path, was cut with immense trouble and loss of life, through the tangled vege- tation of the low marshy soil, and thus the flank was turned both by land and water. Seeing this, the Paraguayans, fearing to be surrounded, retreated leisurely northwards, and, after a few miles, they readily found another line of defence, fronted perhaps by a bog or a stream, and resting upon the river and a swamp.

This is a brief history of the second part of the campaign. 20—2