Even at this period in no other country of South America, perhaps, would such a state of affairs have continued. Paraguay, however, as has been explained, differed in its ethics from any of the neighbouring States. The population was largely composed of civilized Guaraní Indians, and the section of this great family in these latitudes had from the earliest days of the Continent been noted for its easy-going and somewhat indolent qualities.
The result of the intercourse between the Spaniards and Indians had produced a small minority of mestizos, whose enterprise scarcely exceeded that of the natives. The soft and enervating climate was, of course, largely responsible for this; indeed, it was inevitable that a beautiful and lotus-eating land of the kind should have produced inhabitants to match. A few only of the Paraguayans had had the advantage of travelling in Europe, and on their return to their native land its atmosphere very seldom permitted them to remain for long without the local and somewhat demoralizing influences.
Had Lopez been content to continue to act as supreme and all-powerful lord of every man and thing within his own frontiers, the affairs of Paraguay, enlivened at intervals by those salutary orgies of executions, might have drowsed on indefinitely. For a man of the temperament of Francisco Solano Lopez such comparative repression was impossible. He had dreamed himself Emperor of South America, and this he was determined to be.
Of all the neighbouring countries, Brazil was the first to be alarmed. She had the most reason, since her frontiers ran to the greatest length side by side with those of the land which held the ambitious Dictator. Ere Francisco Solano Lopez had reigned two years the inevitable had occurred. Arrogance and threats of aggression on the part of the inland State, resentment and profound mistrust on the part of the Brazilian Empire, led to open breach. The pretext lay in the joint interference on the part of Brazil and Paraguay in the internal affairs of Uruguay, which troubled Republic was just then in a more than usually violent state of revolution.
Lopez, in a moment of somewhat artificial exaltation, protested solemnly against the Brazilian policy as directed against Uruguay. Since this protest was ignored, Lopez resolved on war. He commenced hostilities by the capture of the Marques de Olinda, a Brazilian steamer which conveniently found itself at the moment at Asuncion, on its way up the great river system to the Imperial territory of Matto Grosso.
The crew and the passengers of the Marques de Olinda were taken ashore as prisoners. These included the Brazilian Governor of Matto Grosso, who, together with the great majority of his fellow-passengers, was destined never to see his native land again. This decisive act lit up the flames of war, and the most important struggle between the races of its own soil which the Continent had ever seen now commenced; for in the end, not only were Brazil and Paraguay involved, but the neighbouring States of Argentina and Uruguay as well.