Paraguay's soldiers exhibit suicidal bravery, especially considering…

Paraguay's soldiers exhibit suicidal bravery, especially considering that Solano Lopéz shoots or tortures so many of them for the most trivial offenses.

Cavalry units operate on foot for lack of horses.

Naval infantry battalions armed only with machetes attack Brazilian ironclads.

The suicide attacks result in fields of corpses.

Cholera is rampant.

By 1867 Paraguay has lost sixty thousand men to casualties, disease, or capture, and another sixty thousand soldiers are called to duty.

Solano Lopéz conscripts slaves, and infantry units formed entirely of children appear.

Women are forced to perform support work behind the lines.

Matériel shortages are so severe that Paraguayan troops go into battle seminude, and even colonels go barefoot, according to one observer.

The defensive nature of the war, combined with Paraguayan tenacity and ingenuity and the difficulty that Brazilians and Argentinians have cooperating with each other, renders the conflict a war of attrition.

In the end, Paraguay lacks the resources to continue waging war against South America's giants.