With the power once in his hands, Francisco Solano Lopez changed his tactics as completely and as abruptly as had Francia in his day.  Tyranny once more became the accepted order of things.  Lopez had brought with him from France his mistress, Madame Lynch, a Parisian of Irish descent, and it was this latter alone who possessed the slightest influence over the new autocrat.  Indeed, once firmly established on his throne—­for his Dictator’s seat was in reality nothing less—­Lopez II. showed a most callous disregard for the lives of any of his subjects, whether great or small.  Ever since his visit to France Napoleon had constituted his ideal of manhood, and it was upon the conduct of the great Corsican that he loved to think he modelled his own.

Certainly Lopez was utterly free from any dread of holocaust.  In a very short while the prisons had been filled to overflowing, and the red soil of Paraguay grew redder with the blood of hundreds of executions.  Once again the barriers began to be set up between Paraguay and the outer world, and once again it became almost impossible for one who had crossed its frontiers to return to his native land.  But, since it was the fate of Lopez to have lived in a later age than Francia, the ambitions of this third Dictator were correspondingly enlarged.  It was not his design ultimately to shut off Paraguay from the rest of the Continent; it was his plan rather to cause the frontiers of his country to spread until they had enveloped all the other lands.  Thus he considered he was acting in conformity with the true Napoleonic tradition, and also, incidentally, with his own desires and dreams.

In order to be prepared for the great day which was to come to Paraguay, the army was increased, trained, and drilled until it became one of the most important and efficient military organizations in the Continent.  This army was completely and entirely the toy of Lopez.  The men were his to be shot or promoted at his slightest whim, and the officers were subjected to precisely the same irresponsible but merciless discipline.

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 Guarani 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.