by Lily Tuck
My aim is not to distress you with talk of politics and war, but I wonder whether news has reached you that Paraguay has become involved in a battle against her neighbors who have acted with the utmost lack of candor and disregard for our country’s interests. Franco is quite justified in the actions he has taken—your cousin, the Emperor, gave Franco his blessing, for which we will always remain grateful—and my sincere hope is that the peaceful and equitable state to which we aspire will occur without too much delay or strife. I am convinced of the rightness of our position and am certain justice will be served. I could speak at length about this matter but I fear that the geographical distance that alas separates us must necessarily affect your interest in our affairs. So enough of this.
Your devoted friend who sends her best wishes and much affection,
Ella
P.S. I was especially amused by your description of the bathing machine—how I wish I could watch you pedaling it on the lake at Saint-Gratien. Perhaps, I should try to acquire one for my use in the Paraguay River. I wonder what the crocodiles would make of it?
Eleven
HUMAITÁ
For the first time in his life, Frederick Masterman heard a blacksmith frog. The blacksmith frog was aptly named: it sounded exactly like a hammer hitting an iron plate. In his journal he wrote that the sound of several hundred blacksmith frogs nearly deafened him. Frederick Masterman had been sent from Asunción to Humaitá to inspect the field hospital, and while there he also had the opportunity to examine several kinds of fireflies: the Lampyris occidentalis, which glowed so brightly he could ride home at night by its light; the Pyrophorus luminosus, which gave off an eerie green light (he studied the illuminators under the microscope and noted pear-shaped sacs crossed by several trachealike tubes that determined the amount of light transmitted); but, for him, by far the most beautiful sight was the larva of a beetle. During the day the beetle was an ordinary, ugly gray worm whereas at night, Frederick Masterman wrote, it glowed like a chain of emeralds with a ruby clasp!
Perched on a cliff in a bend of the Paraguay River, Humaitá was a forbidding place. The land was flat and marshy; when it rained the clay soil turned into mud, then into a lake. Narrow roads wound through the esteros, the marshes; the higher ground consisted of untended fields, groves of scraggly, neglected orange trees. The barracks were constructed out of mud and thatched with reeds; only Franco had a house made out of bricks. The other houses in the camp were occupied by Colonel von Wisner; Lieutenant-Major Thompson, the English engineer; Franco’s brother-in-law, General Barrios; Padre Fidel Maiz, whom Franco had finally released from prison; Dr. Stewart, the surgeon general of the army and Franco’s personal physician; and by Ella. (Not knowing how long she would have to stay, Ella brought crates of china, silver, linens to furnish her house, also she had her new Bechstein piano.)
Humaitá boasted more than 300 guns. Frederick Masterman got a good look at nearly all of them: on the land side, he saw 204 guns, 87 of them mounted, which protected three lines of earthworks; another 100 guns defended the center of the fort (among those, a 40-pounder rifled Whitworth recovered from one of the Brazilian steamers at the battle of Riachuelo caught Frederick Masterman’s special attention); on the river side, he counted 46 guns—one 80-pounder, four 68-pounders, eight 32-pounders, the rest of mixed calibers.
As for the hospital, Frederick Masterman noted that it was located far too close to the batteries and under constant threat of fire. Several casualties had already occurred. One time a single cannonball ripped through the wall and killed thirteen men as they lay in their beds. Most of the soldiers who were not wounded were sick with dysentery, cholera or the measles.
6 FEBRUARY 1866
I could leave Paraguay tomorrow, I could leave Paraguay today. I could go back to France if I wanted to. I admit I am tempted. (What would I not give for a single day in Paris! To walk down rue du Bac again, to see the chestnut trees around the Tuileries in bloom, to go to a concert and listen to music, to have a proper fitting with Monsieur Worth!) There is a French ship, the Decidé, that sets sail tomorrow that would take me and the children—except for Pancho, who would never leave his father. I have already spoken to the captain. All of last night I stayed awake, I could not decide. In the end, I tossed the dice: an even number and I stay, an odd one and I go—it was an odd number!—but already I knew the answer, I cannot leave Franco. My duty lies with Franco—more than my duty, my heart! [Ella underlined the word “heart.”] Nevertheless, the captain of the Decidé has agreed to take a trunk with some valuables, which he will deposit for me with Monsieur Gelot in Paris. Who knows? I may go back to France one day and I must provide for the future. For now, I certainly have no need for jewelry, nor for dresses. Every day I wear the same clothes: riding breeches and a gray cloak. I brought Mathilde to Humaitá—how could I leave her behind?—but more often than not I ride another horse to spare her having to go through the swamps and marshes where the footing is so treacherous. I could not bear it if anything happened to my darling!
“I swear I will swallow it rather than let her get her hands on it. My marriage present from Saturnino.” Rafaela sighed and turned the ring around so that the large red stone faced inside her palm. She was dressed in one of Baron de Villa Maria’s wife’s peach-colored silk bedroom curtains. The bodice fit so tightly Rafaela had had to undo the hooks before she started to eat her meal.
The sisters had refused to comply with the announcement in El Semanario, which said that all Paraguayan women, rich and poor alike, had to contribute their jewelry to the State as a means of carrying on the war and protecting the Paraguayan people from the enemy.
Fingering the gold chain and heavy diamond-studded cross that dangled from her fat throat, Inocencia said, “My first-communion present from our dear departed father when I was nine years old. I’ve never taken it off, not even when I fell off my pony and broke my collarbone—do you remember, Rafaela?” Inocencia was dressed in Baron de Villa Maria’s yellow damask drawing room curtains. “I would rather die a thousand deaths than part with it.”
“Or be torn limb from limb. Pass the meat, please,” Rafaela answered her.
“Doesn’t she have enough jewels of her own?” Before passing her sister the dish, Inocencia helped herself to more beef. As she did, the full pagoda sleeve of her yellow damask dress fell into the platter but oblivious of the mess made as her sauce-covered sleeve trailed across the table, Inocencia continued, “Every time I see her she is wearing a new ring, a new bracelet, a new necklace—do you remember the aquamarines Franco gave her? The stones are the size of eggs—parrot eggs.”
“As for me, I am sick of always eating beef, beef, beef—why can’t the cook buy a different sort of meat for a change? Chicken or pork?” Rafaela took the dish from Inocencia. “And why, pray tell me, are there never enough vegetables?”
“What next?” Inocencia asked. “We will be made to join the army.”
Their mouths full of food, the sisters laughed.
One Sunday afternoon after attending mass, their only day off, Gaspar and Fulgencio were fishing, fishing more from habit than from pleasure, in the Paraguay River just south of Humaitá, when they spotted a man swimming across the river. The man was struggling so hard in the water that, as the two brothers stood on the bank and watched, it seemed certain the man would be dragged under by the current and drown. And Gaspar and Fulgencio did not know what to do—was the man swimming toward them an enemy or a friend? They had left their bayonets behind in the barracks and they were ready to turn and run.
At last the man dragged himself on to the shore. He lay face-down on his stomach not moving; his wet clothes clinging to his emaciated body. Plucking up their courage, Gaspar and Fulgencio approached him.
“Hola!” Gaspar called out to the man.
When he did not answer Fulgencio poked him with his foot. “Hola!” he repeated.
“Cómo se llama usted?”
The man lifted his head; slowly, painfull
y, he got to his knees and vomited.
Gaspar and Fulgencio half carried the man to the hospital and arrived just as Dr. Stewart was finishing his rounds and leaving. The surgeon general was late—he and his wife were due to play whist with Ella that evening—but something about how the man looked made him go back in and examine him. Although the symptoms were not yet severe, Dr. Stewart diagnosed smallpox; he also learned that the man, an Argentine, had deserted the Allied army. Dr. Stewart informed General Barrios, but the general neglected to interrogate or send the man away. By then it was probably too late anyway.
When Franco was finally informed, he had the deserter flogged until the man, more dead than alive from both smallpox and the lashes of the whip, confessed to having been sent by President Mitre to introduce and spread the disease among the Paraguayan Army. Dr. Stewart, who was known for his easy and sanguine disposition, no longer felt so sanguine. Despite the fact that he had organized several hospitals in Paraguay that were more efficient and better equipped than those of the Brazilian and Argentine armies, and despite the fact that he had persuaded Franco to hire British physicians, thousands of soldiers in Humaitá had already died of dysentery, measles and cholera, and thousands more, Dr. Stewart knew, would soon die of smallpox.
The following week, Gaspar and Fulgencio, already weak from dysentery and malnutrition, came down with it. Their skin turned black, their throats swelled from the pocks and they could not breathe. After three days filled with agony, when the pain was so severe that the brothers often lost consciousness, Gaspar died. Lying in the hospital bed next to him, Fulgencio was not immediately aware that his brother had died. In his delirium, he kept calling out to Gaspar, a few times he reached out to touch his hand, and it was only a few days later, after his fever had subsided, that Fulgencio suddenly realized that the man lying in the next bed whose hand he had touched was not his brother. His brother was gone.
The state of most of the horses was wretched. There were no pastures—only swamps—and only enough corn and hay to feed the officers’ horses. The rest were nothing but skin and bones, and incapable of moving faster than a walk. The soldiers could go faster on foot, except they needed the horses to cross the marshes. Ella made sure there was plenty of grain and hay for Mathilde but Mathilde was getting older and Ella could do nothing about that—the way she could do nothing about the frown lines and the tiny crow’s-feet she noticed when she looked closely at her face in the dressing room mirror. Mathilde’s withers had sunk and her hipbones had begun to jut out a little; her dappled gray coat was losing its bright sheen. After a day’s hard ride, Mathilde’s body was covered with flecks of white foam and she stumbled a bit on the way home. According to Ella’s calculations, Mathilde was at least fifteen years old.
General Venancio Flores, the leader of the Banda Oriental forces, barely escaped capture when his tent was overrun by the Paraguayan soldiers. The next day, he wrote a letter to his wife describing the situation.
PASO LA PATRIA
3 May 1866
My dear wife,
Good news as well as bad should always be calmly received. Yesterday the vanguard, under my orders, sustained a considerable defeat, the Oriental Division being almost completely lost. Between twelve and one o’clock my camp was surprised by a powerful column of Paraguayans. It was impossible to resist forces triple the number of ours, and the Oriental Division succumbed, doing honor to its country’s flag.
I comprehend the bad position of our encampment. Some days before the event, I went in person to the General in Chief to show him the advantage of removing the camp, but Mitre answered me thus: “Don’t alarm yourself, General Flores; the aggression of the barbarians is nil, for the hour of their extermination has sounded.” If, therefore, anyone is responsible for the occurrence of May 2, General Mitre is the man.
What is passing here does not suit my temper at all…. Meanwhile some of the troops have had nothing to eat for three days. I don’t know what will become of us; and if to the critical situation we are in, you add the constant apathy of General Mitre, it may very well happen that going to seek for wool we ourselves may be shorn.
Everything is left for tomorrow, and the most important movements are postponed.
There are no horses or mules for the trains, and no oxen to eat.
I hardly think it worth while to tell you that the Brazilians turned tail in a swinish manner, and there was a battalion that would not charge. My tent was sacked by the Paraguayans. Send me a portmanteau with a few clothes, a large cloth poncho, a straw hat and two pairs of boots.
My beloved Maria, receive the whole heart of your impassioned old
VENANCIO FLORES
P.S. I recommend you, Maria, to send me nothing but camp clothes—no finery, or dress coats. Curious to say, they have lately been even wanting to order me how to dress.
By the end of the month, General Flores had recovered and gathered 45,000 men and 150 guns. From Matto Grosso province, the Brazilians had brought in 2,000 more cavalrymen whose horses were fresh and well fed. The foot soldiers were armed with new rifled carbines and sword-bayonets. Instead of taking advantage of the fresh troops, however, the leaders vacillated; instead of advancing, they entrenched themselves. Worse, the Argentine and Banda Oriental leaders argued; General Mitre and General Flores could never agree or see eye-to-eye on any one thing.
“My dear sir, you should take better care of your person,” General Mitre told General Flores on more than one occasion.
“My person? How so, sir?” General Flores answered.
“You should provide yourself with a proper uniform to keep up the dignity of your position.”
Turning away, General Flores shook his head and mumbled to himself, “Did I not tell you so, Maria?”
The Paraguayans numbered only 25,000 men but they had the one advantage: the advantage of placement—the impenetrable Bellaco marshes. The Bellaco marshes extended as far as the eye could see. The water was choked with rushes—cut and dried, the rushes were used for thatch—that grew nine feet tall and so close they made the marshes impassable. In places the water was six feet deep and the bottom was mud, which made progress still more difficult—even if the horses and riders got through the rushes, the holes made by the horses’ feet made them sink deeper and get stuck. The only means of crossing the marshes were a few concealed passes where the rushes had been torn out by the roots and the mud had been replaced with sand.
But, instead of waiting, Franco struck first and lost his advantage.
The battalion made up of the Paraguayan aristocracy, the men of Spanish descent, rode their expensive imported thoroughbred horses into battle and got them hopelessly stuck in the mud and tangled in the rushes; the horses and the riders became easy targets and nearly all of them were shot down. Another battalion composed of new recruits tried to wade across as a group and were picked off like a bunch of sheep; the same thing happened to older, more experienced battalions. Nonetheless, the Paraguayan soldiers fought bravely and to the death. Lieutenant-Colonel Ximenez was shot through both feet but continued to fight on his knees; Colonel Roa, another Paraguayan officer, cut off and alone with a broken sword, escaped by throwing handfuls of dirt in the enemies’ eyes and blinding them. One mortally wounded sergeant refused to give up the Paraguayan flag he was carrying to the enemy; he used his last dying breaths to shred the flag with his teeth. But by four o’clock in the afternoon the firing was over and the Bellaco marshes were heaped with Paraguayan dead—six thousand men in all.
“How do I know the bastard is mine?” Franco shouted at Ella.
Ella was pregnant again.
“How do I know he isn’t a little Teuton? A little Fischer-Truenfeld?”
“I have never lied to you. I am not going to begin now.” Ella’s mouth was set, her gray eyes looked black and for once, afraid, Franco stopped shouting.
Miguel Marcial was born two months premature; he weighed less than four pounds. Instead of trying to feed him, Rosaria put the
baby in a tub of lukewarm chicken broth. The chicken broth, she claimed, would serve as amniotic fluid and seep through the baby’s skin to nourish him. Franco made Padre Fidel Maiz hold a special mass for Miguel Marcial; he prayed and lit a number of candles, in addition he went to visit the baby every day. Taking off his hat and getting down on his knees on the floor next to the tub filled with broth, Franco leaned over and gently kissed Miguel Marcial’s tiny head—a head already covered with thick black hair.
When Miguel Marcial died two weeks later, Franco, grief-stricken and guilt-ridden both, accused Rosaria of being a witch and of drowning him. As punishment, he threatened to have her flogged to death.
Her face white with anger, sorrow and lack of sleep, Ella screamed back at Franco: “If you so much as touch a hair on Rosaria’s head, I will never share your bed again!” Already she had decided that she would never let herself get pregnant again.
After the enormous losses at Bellaco, Franco ordered that every single able-bodied male be recruited into the army. He would make no exceptions (not even for the son of the farmer, Julio Ignacio, who coughed up blood and was now thirteen years old); he also recruited women to work in the fields and build trenches. He recruited the Payaguá Indians, who spoke neither Spanish nor Guaraní but a totally different language made up of guttural sounds and who ate crocodile meat, and the Guaycurú Indians, who lived in the Chaco and were cannibals.
