Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/506



476 CONCLUDING LETTER.

No. 3, for the reason above stated, I had this done to-day according to command, and I caused to be chastised with fifty blows the sergeant Faustino Sanabria, and the corporals Jose Jiqueredo and Bias Jimenes, and the soldiers Baltazar Medina, Mathilde Piro, Tomas Duarste, Cecilio Maciel, and Canuto Galeano, who had given ear to the provoking words of the said Ayala ; and as the soldier Canuto Galeano was chastised by some mistake of the corporal with forty-nine blows, I ordered the fifty to be completed, upon which he turned to me as if offended, and asked me to chastise him still more if necessary. For which insolence I had him chastised with twenty-five more blows, and left him in the stocks.

All which I respectfully report to your Lordship (V. Senoria).

"Encampment at S. Fernando, April 4, 1868.

Signed, " Julian Nicanor Godoy."^

In almost all cases the men were shot for leaving camp to visit their families or relatives. On April 20, 1868, private Pedro Guanto was charged by two boys, respectively aged twelve and fifteen years, with having asserted some months before that Paraguay was not strong enough to support the war — " parece que vamos a perder " He was "passed under arms.'^ Amongst the orders was one dated August 15, 1868, by the Secretary of War and Marine, degrading General the Citizen Vicente Barrios, married to D. Ynocencia, the President's elder sister, and transferring his rank to the honorary Colonel Luis Caminos, officer of the National Order of Merit. Another, dated December, 1868, acquits and releases D. Venancio Lopez, whom all at Buenos Aires had " put to death by that species ol" torture known as the Cepo Uruguayana.^' After September 10, 1868, nothing transpired concerning the fate of D. Benigno