Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/98



68 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

Their aversion,, however, probably began as the result of mere incompatibility of character, and ended in absolute hatred. At the General Congress which elected his brother President, D. Benigno Lopez, it is said, openly joined those members who were opposed to the military government of the family becoming hereditary. It has also been asserted, and even official documents have been cited in proof, that the elder Lopez appointed a Triumvirate to direct the affairs of the nation, and that his first-born, aided by Padre Maiz, poisoned one of the three, and terrified the Congress into electing him their President. These are mere " bolas," and of a similar nature are reports that he was in 1853 an eleve exterieur of the Ecole Toly technique, that he was a fellow pupil of the Emperor of the Brazil, and that he served on the French staff before Sebastopol. He did, however, attend the naval school at Bio de Janeiro, and there are some doubts whether he did or did not aspire to the hand of the Princess Leopoldina of the Brazil.

From a very early age the actual President Lopez was entrusted by his father with high offices. As has been said, he was made General-in-Chief of the Army and Minister of War when quite a lad. In 1845"^ he began his career by commanding the Paraguayan Expeditionary Army that had been marched upon Corrientes, and in 1849 he pacified the lands between the Bivers Parana and Uruguay as far as Cuais. In 1854 he was sent to Europe in order to make personal acquaintance and treaty of amity with the several Courts. Some say that he acted like a Peter the Great, who studied all things, and who made the best use of his time, whilst others make him live the life of a man of pleasure. He came away with a feeling of aversion towards

Chap. I.).
 * Lieut.-Colonel Thompson says, in 1849 (" The War in Paraguay,'