During
the two years of his reign Lopez had steadily continued to prepare his
forces for this event. At the time the Paraguayan army was, numerically,
the most formidable in South America. It had, moreover, been brought to
an unusual degree of efficiency.
The condition of the Brazilian forces was very different. In the first
place, little heed had been taken to make ready for anything of the
kind, and another factor which proved greatly to the disadvantage of the
fighting material involved lay in the difficulty of communication
between Rio de Janeiro and those portions of the great Empire which
bordered on Paraguay. Thus Lopez's invading army, when it swept through
the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso, met with practically no
resistance worthy of the name, and, in the absence of defending troops,
it might, undoubtedly, have taken possession of vast tracts of country,
and have continued to hold these indefinitely.
It was Lopez's bizarre and wild ambition which frustrated his own
schemes. A single tide of invasion was not sufficient to satisfy a mind
such as his. Gathering together a second powerful army, he determined to
strike at the south-eastern portion of Brazil in addition to its
province of Matto Grosso.
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