LOPEZ, FRANCISCO SOLANO dictator of Paraguay, eldest son of Carlos Antonio Lopez, was born near Asuncion on July 24, 1827. With very little education he was made commander-in-chief of the Paraguayan army in his 18th year. In 1854 he was sent as Paraguayan minister to Europe, where he spent nearly two years, imbibed much of the militaristic spirit which marked his career, and placed orders for munitions and supplies. On his father's death in 1862 he assumed the gov ernment as vice-president and called a congress on Oct. 16 which elected him president, virtually dictator, for ten years. In he demanded that Brazil abandon her armed interference in a revolution in Uruguay. No attention being paid to his demand, he seized a Brazilian merchant steamer in the harbour of Asuncion, and threw into prison the Brazilian governor of the province of Matto Grosso who was on board. In the following month (Dec. 1864) he sent a force to invade Matto Grosso. He next sought to send an army to the relief of the Uruguayan Government against the revolutionary aspirant Flores, who was supported by Brazilian troops. The refusal of the Argentine president, Mitre, to allow this force to cross the intervening province of Corrientes, was seized upon by Lopez as an occasion for war with the Argen tine Republic. A congress bestowed upon Lopez the title of marshal, with extraordinary war powers, and on April 13, 1865, he declared war on Argentina and summarily announced the an nexation of the provinces of Corrientes and Entre Rios. Flores,
meantime, had been successful in Uruguay, and now Brazil and Uruguay joined Argentina in declaring war on Paraguay on May 1, 1865. The war, known as the War of the Triple Alliance, which lasted until April 1, 1870, was carried on with a swelling tide of disasters to Lopez. (See PARAGUAY.) In 1868, conceiving that a conspiracy had been formed against his life in Asuncion, he ordered several hundred of the leading citizens to be seized and executed. He suffered defeat after defeat until he was at last driven with a mere handful of troops to the northern frontier of Paraguay where he was killed on April 1, 1870, at the Aquidaban river. Lopez's attempt to make himself arbiter of the La Plata region so nearly destroyed Paraguay that the country has not yet recovered from the shock.
See R. F. Burton, Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay (London, 1870) ; C. A. Washburn, History of Paraguay (Boston, 1871) ; Cecilio Baez, "La guerra y la tirania de Lopez," Revista Chilena, vol. xvi. (1923) ; A. Rebaudi, Un tirano de Sudamerica (Buenos Aires, 1925) ; A. Zinny, Historia de governantes del Paraguay, 1535-1887 (Buenos Aires, 1887) . (W. B. P.)