Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/45

 the triple line seems the invention of Ercilla's Lautaro. If a point be carried by the enemy, the Paraguayan officers are, it is said, "passed under arms," and their wives and children flogged, outraged, and put to death; the men are merely decimated. As will presently appear, the discipline of Marshal President Lopez allows no mezzo termine; with him it is fight or die, either bravely in the field, or if a coward, by the executioners, shot in the back.

The Paraguayan soldier has certainly fought, in his hatred of the sterile anarchy of the purer race, and in resisting the usurpations of his neighbours, with a tenacity of purpose, with a fierce intrepidity, and with an impassible contempt of death which do him the highest honour. On the other hand, he is a savage who willingly mutilates the corpse of his enemy, and hangs strings of ears to the shrouds of his ship. The secret of his success is, that he holds himself single-handed a match for any half-dozen of his enemies. The secret of his failure is, that his enemies have divined him. Thus, when he attacks in bodies of 7000, he is opposed by 20,000. In one notable point is the Paraguayan soldier deficient, and that is in intelligence. He wants initiative: his arm is better than his head. This is the inevitable result of the "Indian" being mixed with European blood; and the same may be seen in the Chilian and the Peruviaan—good soldiers, but lacking brains. He despises pain, to which he is probably little sensitive, and he has not that peculiar ferocity which characterizes the people of the Pampas, as it does all the shepherd races of mankind. M. Alberdi said well, "Le désert est le grand ennemi de l'Amérique, et dans un désert, gouverner c'est peupler." Man who lives with beasts rapidly brutalizes himself. A single day in the Guacho's hut suffices to show how his cruelty is born and bred. The babies begin to "ball" and lasso the dogs, cats, and poultry, and the little boy saws at the lamb's neck with a blunt