Part One: Francisco Solano Lopez: The Worst Military Leader In Human History

This week Robert sits down with James Stout to weave the story of the worst military leader in human history: Francisco Solano Lopez. Also known as 'El supremo', he nearly annihilated his own country through sheer incompetence. Sources: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26494384?googleloggedin=true&seq=22 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26494384?googleloggedin=true&seq=22 https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/11/22/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-1-francisco-solano-lopezs-earlier-life https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/12/8/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-2-the-start-of-the-war-of-the-triple-alliance#. YcJFwy2cZAY= https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/12/23/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-3-devastating-battles-for-both-sides#. Yd9N0i2cZAY= https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2022/1/12/the-paraguayan-president-who-brought-his-country-to-military-catastrophe-part-4-how-the-war-ended#. Yd9N0i2cZAY= https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/war-of-the-triple-alliance-bloodbath-in-paraguay/ https://www.thecollector.com/francisco-solano-lopez-paraguayan-war/ https://countrystudies.us/paraguay/10.htm https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780742537552 See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Robert Evans?

  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. And we got a real bastard of a bastard for you this week. But before we get into that, let's introduce our guest, someone who's probably not a bastard, as far as I am aware, I legally have to say that, James Stout. Hey, James, how you doing?

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Hi, Robert. I'm great. I feel very welcome after that.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Dr. James Stout.

• 0:31Robert Evans?

  Dr. James Stout.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Dr. James Stout, yeah, I'm using it again. Previously, I only used it for, you know, credit card companies and people who are rude to me.

• 0:38Robert Evans?

  And James.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Bringing it back.

• 0:40Robert Evans?

  Bringing it back. James, you are currently the co-host of one among several that do the It Could Happen Here daily news show, also on Cool Zone that we host. And you have a new podcast coming out, something sexy and exciting. And did I say new? New!

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, new, very exciting. Yeah, coming out on the 17th of August, where every good podcast is given away for free. It's called Natural Causes. And we're going to be talking about going outside, specifically, like, the politics of going outside, I guess, in 2026. That's a big deal.

• 1:15Robert Evans?

  Beyond just touching grass.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just gonna be me walking around.

• 1:19Robert Evans?

  Grass being on fire. Why is, you know?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that'll be a very calming podcast.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  It's just like an ASMR meditation app.

• 1:26Robert Evans?

  James is an animal. Shaming you for being on the internet. You just turn on the podcast, get, turn off your phone now. Go outside.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  James, what are some early episodes folks can look out for?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're gonna start, I think, with looking at a couple of things. I want to look at cyclospora, the cyclospora outbreak, which we've seen across the Midwest now, spreading further west, and what that could tell us about the rights of farm workers, about where our food comes from, and the people who decide if it's safe. We're gonna talk about fire. I am, yesterday, I was in Spokane, Washington, when we record this, covering the fires there, both the Wildland Fires and the fires that came into town. And I spent a lot of time on the Colville Tribes Reservation and Spokane Tribe Reservation. A lot of those folks, I think, maybe got missed out of the big fire story by the time it got into suburban areas. But we're gonna look at what we can learn from indigenous

• 2:21Speaker 01

  people about living with fire. I want to talk about how your raincoat could be putting little bits of plastic inside fish. And javelina, that'll be a fun one. I want to talk about javelina, because they fucking hate golf, and so do I.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  So funny.

• 2:35Robert Evans?

  I like javelina, but I mainly like eating them mixed with other more palatable meats. I'm a redneck meat connoisseur, you know, and I do miss the days of eating javelina. If you know what you're doing, you can make a pretty decent sausage with that as one of the ingredients.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Okay, I can see that. Yeah, it's like, it's not a pig, it's a pecory, but I'm sure it probably has some fat on it. Yeah.

• 2:57Robert Evans?

  It's close enough. Again, you usually mix it.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  You want them golf finished if you're gonna make sausage out of them, you know?

• 3:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  That's the best way.

• 3:06Robert Evans?

  Or you mix it with, you know, some Jimmy Dean. You know, James, it's appropriate that you've got a show about going outside, because our subject for this week is a man who should never have gone outside. He kind of broke a family tradition by going outside, and as a result, destroyed his country. This is a fascinating dude. Have you ever heard of former dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano Lopez? Do you know who this guy is?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  I've heard the name, yeah, but I'm not infinitely familiar with the lore, so this is exciting for me.

• 3:34Robert Evans?

  Well, this is, what's interesting about him is we've had a lot of dictators, and we've had a lot of dictators who've started wars, and we've had a lot of dictators who've started genocides. But we haven't yet had a dictator who accidentally did a genocide against his own people without meaning to while trying to carry out a successful war. And that's, that's the story of Francisco Lopez. It's like, one of the most complete, as like, a percentage of the total population, genocides we've ever covered. And he does it entirely without meaning to, because he is so bad at running a war. It's a fascinating story of a guy who gets very convinced that he's better at running an army than he is. And yeah, that's what we're talking about this week.

• 4:12Speaker 03

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• 4:19Robert Evans?

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• 6:34Robert Evans?

  Our story begins, not with Francisco, but with Simone Bolivar, the liberator, who, as far as I'm aware, is the guy who probably holds the world record for, like, the most independence days he directly generated. I think six countries he helped create, basically, or bring to independence in his wars against the Spanish colonial oppressors. Bolivar is often considered the Napoleon of Latin America. And again, Francisco is the guy who, like, wanted to be considered the Napoleon of Latin America, kind of afterwards, but is just much worse at everything than Bolivar was. So, South America, while kind of this

• 7:16Robert Evans?

  is happening in the early 1800s, you know, this is part of a process of South and Central America becoming, like, decoupled from their former colonial owners, right? South and Central America had been colonized, starting in the 1400s and 1500s, and split between Spain and Portugal during the early part of the Age of Exploration. And most of these overseas possessions started gaining their independence in the early 1800s. Chile declared its own independence in the 1810s, and little old Paraguay does not that long afterwards. Paraguay had been a Spanish colony previously, and from 1776 on, it had been governed by the viceroyality in Buenos Aires, right? So, Paraguay is adjacent to modern-day Argentina,

• 7:58Robert Evans?

  but they're all being, and Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina today, but Paraguay is being governed from Buenos Aires by the viceroy during, like, the Spanish period, right? And this establishes a precedent, in the eyes of Argentinians at least, that Paraguay is basically a client state, right? Once Argentina becomes its own thing, there's going to be, for a very long time, an attitude of, like, well, they shouldn't be their own country, right? They used to be run from our capital. Why are they a different country than us?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Have you brought me on here as a British person to talk about places that Argentina thinks it should be governing?

• 8:29Robert Evans?

  Yes. The British are experts on places Argentina shouldn't be governing.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I made a comment about, like, wars that were fought in, like, the latter part of the 20th century by, like, ailing powers that wanted to get their mojo back. And I mentioned, like, the Falklands and Grenada and Panama. And people did point out that, like, well, Argentina was, like, just really out of pocket. And they were. I'm not saying they weren't. I'm just saying that there was definitely an attitude of, oh, okay, we've still got some, we've still got some pepper in our step, the British Empire, you know?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, those people were, there were a lot of people who were extremely excited for a colonial war.

• 9:08Robert Evans?

  And guys, yes, Argentina was not in the right, but come on, it wasn't that hard a thing. Neither was Panama or fucking Grenada, don't get me wrong, or Desert Storm.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's another one.

• 9:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, so the region, Paraguay, sorry, we're getting back to Paraguay. Argentinians see it as basically a client state. Once Argentina becomes a country, that's how they think things ought to work. And Paraguay, the region, had always been a backwater, even in the days of the Spanish Empire. There are very few people in what becomes Paraguay, and there's basically no industry, and almost no exports worth speaking of, except for, there's some tobacco, they make a bit of money from tobacco, but the big export is yerba, right? Like, you know, yerba mate, like, yeah, that's what fucking Paraguay makes, right? That is like the cash crop down there. And the-

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Tea, like, it's a tea leaf, right?

• 10:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, basically, right? And the people who are indigenous to the region consider yerba a tonic and a cure-all, and everyone else kind of considers it a pretty good alternative to coffee and tea. The Spanish make attempts to bring Paraguay into the modern age, right at the end of their period of control, and these are met with mixed success. So there's some, and Spain does kind of industrialize parts of the capital, right, Asensio, a little bit in this period of time, but it's not, we're not talking, like, very serious efforts, and they are not comprehensive. So, most people in Paraguay are mestizos, but Spanish immigrants dominated in the capital and in the city council, right? So this is primarily a country of people who are, like, mixed race between the indigenous

• 10:42Robert Evans?

  people of the region and the Spanish colonizers. There's some Portuguese thrown in there, too. A lot of Brazilians wind up coming down, you know, into Paraguay. But the people who run things tend to be Spanish, right? Like, in this period of time, and immediately after independence, too. It's still fairly dominated, because those are the folks who'd had money, right? Independence comes partly as a result, because, again, they get their independence in, like, 1811. And part of why is, in 1807, Napoleon invades Iberia, and he winds up forcing the Bourbon Dynasty off the throne, and also forcing the rulers of Portugal to flee to Brazil. And actually, the Portuguese Empire is governed from Brazil for a while, while they're like, okay, we gotta deal with this Napoleon situation.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Work this shit out.

• 11:25Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And so in 1810, citizens in Buenos Aires declare an independent viceroyalty that includes Argentina and Paraguay. And when Paraguayans hear this and hear that like, wait, wait, wait, we're not part of the empire anymore, and you guys are saying you're in charge of us? Nah. And there's a little bit of a revolt. And later that year, the last Spanish governor meets with leaders in the capital to discuss the demands that Buenos Aires was making. And he's like, okay, well, I'll lead an army to like, help fight for Paraguay and independence from these, these breakaways, right? And he wants Paraguay to stay loyal to Spain, obviously.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:58Robert Evans?

  Now, Paraguayan elites initially want to stay loyal to Spain. And so the early stirrings of what's going to become Argentina sends an army in to invade Paraguay. And they get their asses handed to them on two separate occasions in January and March of 1811. One thing that's interesting and true about Paraguay is that pretty consistently in the 1800s, they hit above their weight class as like a military, they're not a military power, because they're not a power. There's a couple hundred thousand people in the entire region. But they tend to fight very well, right? Like, they're better than you'd expect, given like, the discrepancies between sizes and industrial base. Now, the army, the Paraguayan army was meant to be initially led by the Spanish governor. But as soon as he realizes

• 12:40Robert Evans?

  an actual battle's gonna happen, he runs like, fuck. He's like, I don't, that's not what I signed up for.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 12:47Robert Evans?

  So Paraguayan militia commanders wind up taking control. And after they win the battle, they're like, well, we probably shouldn't be part of Spain anymore. Like, what are they doing for us? So they overthrow. And that's, that's how Paraguay becomes independent and all but name. Now, I say all but name, because at this point, no other countries have recognized Paraguay as an independent country yet. That takes a little while. Argentina still thinks Paraguay should be theirs. But since they can't win a fair fight, they decide to lock down the Rio Parana, which is a river that like, it's the big, if you're, Paraguay's landlocked. So if you want to get stuff to Brazil, or to Argentina, and thus to the coasts, and to the rest of the world, you have to travel down this big river, right? And because the river, like, Argentina controls the source of the river, I guess. And they

• 13:30Robert Evans?

  also have a functional navy. So if they want to shut down the river, there's not much that Paraguay can do. You know, they can kind of keep their, the part of the river in their own country clear. But they can't force their way out to the rest of the world, right? Argentina has that on too much lock. So now, the city fathers of Asuncion have a tough decision to make, right? What kind of country should Paraguay be? Now, at this point, they don't have money, and they barely have any people. But they're good enough at fighting that they choked the Rio with Argentine dead, right? So they do get to be a thing. The junta that's governing the region, and that's what, that's just the term they literally call this temporary governing body.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very common.

• 14:12Robert Evans?

  Right, right. Tries to establish a republic. And because most Paraguayans can't read or write, and don't live in the capital, anyone with money and education at that time, which is a small group of people, has a shot at gaining power, right? There's, there's not a lot of people kind of competing for the right to be in charge. Enter Dr. Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, who historian James Sager describes as "the ablest man in Paraguay." The way Sager writes it, this is the guy who's going to become the first dictator of Paraguay. And he becomes the dictator because he's just kind of like the smartest dude in the country, and everybody sort of likes him at first. Like, he just kind of knows what he's doing, has read the most books.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And they're all like, this guy seems fine.

• 14:52Robert Evans?

  This guy seems like he knows what he's doing.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Better than the Spanish, better than the Argentine. So let's go.

• 14:58Robert Evans?

  Right. Now, the good doctor was a lawyer who'd been born in 1766 to a Brazilian father who had immigrated to, to advise Paraguayan tobacco growers. His mother was Paraguayan. And the couple, and so again, he's a mestizo. And the couple sent their son to Cordoba, in now Argentina, to study, where he earned a doctorate in theology. Sager adds that, although he had five siblings, he felt no emotional ties to them, nor to his father, nor to any of his unknown number of illegitimate children.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Okay. He's making a case for appearing on this podcast right there. That's, that's one of the indicators.

• 15:30Robert Evans?

  Fascinating man.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:33Robert Evans?

  And it, I have to really work to not say Dr. Francia, as if he's like, the box wine.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 15:38Robert Evans?

  And it is my headcanon that it's named after this brutal, blood-soaked dictator.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  We can make that happen.

• 15:44Robert Evans?

  As dictators go, he's like, one of the better ones. But he's not great.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:48Robert Evans?

  So, again, after graduation, this guy leaves the priesthood, and he goes home, gets into philosophy, and he starts teaching at the seminary and training in law. Because in those days, Spanish law is pretty much based in the Bible, right? So it's not a huge pivot from like, a theologian to like, a lawyer in these days. Francia would later claim that his firm was dedicated to aiding the poor, but modern scholarship has proven that was a lie. He was a general practitioner who just kind of made that claim later.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Bullshitting.

• 16:18Robert Evans?

  Yeah. As a mature adult, Dr. Francia became a prominent member of the elite in Asuncion, and he was elected to several positions in the city council. He developed a virulent hate for Spanish-born elites who occupied his home and dominated economic and cultural life. As we'll discuss more at length later, Spain was an honor-based society at this point. And honor, it's not supposed to be just a vague term for doing what you should, right? It's supposed to be like, a resource, almost literally like wealth, that you build up over time, and pass on to your family. And you can lose it if you fuck up for your family. As a man, you can kind of lose or gain honor. As a woman, you can only lose it.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, great.

• 16:56Robert Evans?

  That's the way it's usually put. That's cool. Now, there have, there have been some more modern studies that have kind of argued that like, this whole honor culture thing was mainly a way for the elites to kind of message to the poor. And in reality, like, people broke these laws constantly, and obeying them was not in any way, shape, or form the norm. Right? Like, it was largely like, posturing, right? But that's debated. In the Spanish conception of honor, though, the poor and those of inferior race, like Indians and blacked and slave people, have no honor, or at least no honor that a Spaniard is bound to recognize. Whereas, people who are like, wealthy and powerful members of the upper class, have a duty to kind of, you have to display your honor, and you have to see it recognized by others, right? Like, otherwise, they're kind of like, talking shit to you if they're not going out of their way to

• 17:40Robert Evans?

  like, acknowledge your, how much honor you deserve. Paraguay, this is the way that like, leaders, particularly, this is the way that like, some of the leaders in Paraguay are going to come to view honor, right? And Paraguayans wind up, like the natives, the mestizos, are considered during like, the Spanish Empire, one of the honorless classes, right? And Dr. Francia hates that. Because again, he's, he is very angry at like, the white supremacist strain that had run through the Spanish Empire. And that's something he's going to dedicate his time as dictator to destroying. In 1810, he helped argue against accepting Argentina's claims on Paraguay. And after Paraguay's victory over Argentina, he became a Paraguayan nationalist. Over the course of the first couple of years the country existed, he allies

• 18:22Robert Evans?

  himself to the military, and he orchestrates his rise to total power during a short-lived republic that's barely worth the name, right? So here's how an article on History is Now's website describes his reign. Called El Supremo, he was considered a revolutionary fanatic by most international observers. He ruled Paraguay with an iron fist for over 25 years as part of a grand experiment in the implementation of revolutionary and Enlightenment ideals. Francia had enforced isolation and attempted to create economic self-sufficiency. Absolute social equality was decreed between those of Spanish descent and the native Guarani people. The nation had repelled repeated attempts to come under the influence and economic dominance of, or be taken over by Brazil, Argentina, and Great Britain. Foreigners were regularly arrested and expelled. And this is, first off, he's, he's one of the

• 19:07Robert Evans?

  first people, really, the first person I've ever heard of, whose obsession with social equality is so that there are like, restrictions on same-race marriages during his reign. Right?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 19:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Okay, a reverse miscestration.

• 19:21Robert Evans?

  I've never heard of that, actually. Like, I guess that's, that's like, bad, but it is unique. So congratulations.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:29Robert Evans?

  I have not read into that before.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, this, this must never get out on X.com. I'm sure they'll be adding it to the shit they say about the DSA.

• 19:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah. So during Dr. Francia's reign, because again, this guy's like, an arch-isolationist. It's basically impossible for Paraguayans to leave the country, which was still closed to the outside world by Argentina, and in some ways, Brazil. And this is kind of how he liked it, right? He's, he does not want, he thinks the country needs to kind of keep to itself, and it gains a reputation of being like, a hermit state. It's kind of talked about in this period, the way North Korea is a lot in the modern era, right? Francia annihilated the old Spanish colonial elite, although this was mostly nonviolent. He's said to have executed less than 100 of them. But in 1820, when a conspiracy tried to overthrow his regime, his secret police captured and executed 68 conspirators. This wiped

• 20:21Robert Evans?

  out his political opposition. And according to Sager, Paraguay lacked a ruling class other than the doctor. Now, this doesn't mean there weren't rich people. There are. It just means that there aren't a lot of people who are both rich and powerful, other than Dr. Francius, right? Because he would murder anyone who threatened his power. So the successful and wealthy who are smart go into isolation, and they give up any pretense of political activity in order to stay comfortable, right?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:46Robert Evans?

  And one of these rich people who was like, ah, you know what, I don't need to be anywhere near politics, is a brilliant young farmer named Carlos Antonio Lopez. And he is the father of our subject for this week, and going to be the second dictator of Paraguay. But at this point, he's a guy who's like, really good at farming, and builds a very successful business, and is like, I don't, I'm staying the fuck out of politics. Like, I got, I got no opinions at all, doctor. None.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Doesn't want to die. Yeah.

• 21:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Keep cool.

• 21:12Robert Evans?

  Midway, and I said like Brazil also is, is kind of keeping part of Paraguay, you know, locked down effectively. Brazil doesn't declare its independence until partway through Dr. Francius' reign in 1822. And independence is maybe too strong a word for like what initially happens, right? Because the first leader of Brazil is Prince Regent Pedro, who is a member of Portugal's ruling dynasty, the House of Braganza, and he becomes Emperor Pedro I of Brazil. So it's like independence, you know?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like baby's first independence.

• 21:44Robert Evans?

  Right. And a lot of Americans don't know that Brazil was an empire for a while, but they sure were. And they deserve to be called that. Brazil's like the same size as the US pretty much, a continental US, pretty much. It's huge. Like, like 80% of other empires in human history are smaller than the Brazilian one, probably. It's a big fucking, you know, thing. Although it's sparsely populated, I should say, in this period of time. From the beginning of Brazil and Argentina as independent nations, they are at each other's throats. They're like the France and England or France and Germany of South America for a while.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense. That helps me understand. Thank you.

• 22:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah. From 1825 to 1828, they fight a brutal war over the territory that's going to become Uruguay, which immediately collapses into a series of civil wars after its independence that are also proxy wars between Brasilia and Argentina. That's like they're, it's almost like they're Afghanistan or they're Vietnam for a while. Like Brazil and Argentina cannot stop fucking around in Uruguay.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Dr. Francius- Feeding people into Uruguay to go come out and meet Jena. Yeah.

• 22:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Many such cases.

• 22:50Robert Evans?

  This is really bad for Uruguay's population. A lot of guys die in there. Dr. Francius keeps Paraguay the fuck out of all of this. And under him, the country gains, again, it's this very isolated place, but peaceful. Now, as I said earlier, Carlos Lopez is one of the few people smart enough to keep their head down, stay alive, and get rich during the Francius regime. He had been born in the latter days of the Spanish Empire, and he'd grown up learning how to survive in an empire run by people who considered themselves superior to him. This cunning stood him in fine stead when it came time to jockey for power. Francius died in 1840, and Lopez, because he's one of the richest guys left alive, is, becomes a prominent man kind of overnight. And as soon as it's safe, he starts

• 23:32Robert Evans?

  getting involved in politics. Now, again, you have this junta of military officers who form a council to vote on like what to do next. Lopez returns to a sonsion as soon as the dictator's dead. And in February of 1821, there's a kind of coup, and an officer named Mariano Alonso is made dictator. Now, Alonso does not know how to run a country. I don't think he really wants to run a country, but his men had put him in charge. And so he decides to hire the smartest guy still living to do the actual governing. And that's how Carlos Lopez gets his foot in the door. Alonso and Lopez are appointed consuls for three years. And because Alonso doesn't really have any talent for governing, Lopez sort of falls naturally into the rule of leader. And he eventually edges Lopez out and makes

• 24:14Robert Evans?

  himself from consul into the president. Now, notably, and this is, this really says a lot about the kind of dictator Carlos Lopez is, he never has Alonso killed or purged, right? He just kind of takes over and everyone's fine with it, more or less. I mean, everyone's not fine with that. He has a, has a lot of secret police. But he's not one of these guys who feels the need to like murder everybody who might have been a center of power necessarily, right? He's, he's not insecure as a dictator, which is interesting. Like, he's, he's like a healthy ego, and not in like the toxic way necessarily.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's, he's convinced he earned it, I guess. Like, he doesn't, doesn't feel threatened by the others.

• 24:52Robert Evans?

  Well, the way, the way Sager puts it is, he understands that he's the most powerful man in Paraguay, and he understands that he has absolutely no power and influence outside of Paraguay. And that's not a problem for him. He does not have an issue with that, right? And so if you're gonna have a dictator, you could do worse than this kind of guy. Carlos Lopez is sort of heavyset by the time he becomes the leader. You know, he's, he's overweight and he's not in great shape. And between that and the fact that foreign travel is very hard to do for Paraguayans, he just never leaves the capital and he has zero interest in war or military. But he's kind of too lazy to be like, to go to war with anybody, which is really good. Again, that's what you want in a dictator.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, it could be worse.

• 25:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And he does reform the military for defensive purposes, but he mostly works on fixing the damage Francius had done. As is always the case with Paraguayan leaders in this period, there are immediately rumors that Carlos Lopez is like part African or descended from like a slave or the wrong kind of Guarani, right? Because there's the, there's the good kind of indigenous people, basically, as Paraguayans in the capital see it. And then there's the bad kind who live out near the Chaco, which is like, they're kind of deserted, very difficult to grow things region. And they're like, oh, I think he's, he's descended from one of those, right? Like, there's rumors with that with his son, too. It's a constant thing in this period of time. And he doesn't, as far as I know, he doesn't seem to like go murder crazy over rumors like this. Now, there's not really

• 26:16Robert Evans?

  much of a press, so he doesn't have, there's no, it's kind of spreading word of mouth.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  No one to murder.

• 26:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah. He does inherit Dr. Francius' well-developed secret police force. And Francius had formed his, had based his secret police force on the Inquisition. And so when we're talking about these dictators of Paraguay having secret police, they're all descendants of the Spanish Inquisition, right?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  That's great. So he really picked up a lot when he was in theological college.

• 26:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he really did.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  The nuts and bolts.

• 26:44Robert Evans?

  A couple of lessons.

• 26:47Robert Evans?

  And he, he does use, again, he has secret police. He's not never brutal, but he does kind of have a, he seems mildly allergic to brutality. And he's a fairly intelligent, careful leader. I would say his main flaw, pretty much everyone agrees, is that he fucking loves nepotism. He is so dedicated to nepotism. That is, that is this motherfucker's favorite thing, is giving his kids and relatives power. He loves doing that. You know who else loves nepotism, James?

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Oh, I couldn't imagine.

• 27:18Robert Evans?

  It's the products and services that support this podcast. That's right.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Of course they do. Yeah.

• 27:22Robert Evans?

  That's why they support creating a new feudal monarchy that's based entirely on blood inheritance, you know?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, run by your cousins.

• 27:30Robert Evans?

  That always works in the past.

• 27:34Speaker 06

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• 28:04Speaker 04

  I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her, I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide. She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival.

• 28:25Speaker 06

  The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck, because by all rights, I should be dead.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Cases that everyone else called closed.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  They can't convict her, right? Like, she has so much evidence.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  And we were babies. She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it, and he got a year.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  Listen to What Happened to Her on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:09Speaker 06

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• 29:13Speaker 07

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• 30:03Speaker 06

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

• 30:07Speaker 07

  or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:14Robert Evans?

  And we're back. God, I love a government where it just matters who your dad was and then you're in charge forever. That thing never goes bad. It never leads to like most of the country dying.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  It's a great principle for human organizing, isn't it?

• 30:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Who is your dad? You're in charge now.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Perfect. That seems like the best way to choose. I don't think we've ever done a better one.

• 30:36Robert Evans?

  So the dictator Carlos Lopez's son, Francisco Solano Lopez Carrillo, was born on July 24th, 1826, in the capital. He grows up under the dictatorship until his adolescent, under Dr. Francia's dictatorship, until he's like an adolescent and then his dad winds up in charge. But he's ice during like the days of Dr. Francia's dictatorship, he's completely isolated, not just from any danger, but from like society. He lives in opulence on his father's farm with slaves, literal slaves, waiting on him hand and foot. That's his entire early life. And he just never leaves this big farm where his dad is basically God. Now, Carlos, you know, part of his child rearing tactic is that he wants his kids to compete for his affection. But what's interesting is there doesn't ever seem to

• 31:21Robert Evans?

  be competition to have been like the kid who's going to follow in his footsteps. He only ever raises Francisco to be the new dictator, right? And so Francisco grows up, attended to by a series of tutors, and until age 14, he never leaves his father's lands. Per his biography, Francisco Solano Lopez and the Ruination of Paraguay, Sager writes, "He expected that all persons except his father treat him with deference, preferably with servility. Employees were reverent to all the Lopez boys. The young men led scandalous and dissolute lives without adverse consequences, except for Venancio, who acquired a wasting disease. Confronted with no higher authority than his indulgent father, Francisco was never in a position to learn the interpersonal skills that most other boys needed just to survive."

• 32:05Robert Evans?

  And so this is where we get to one of the downsides of a hereditary monarchy.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of them, yeah. That it's a setup for being not a great person. It's surrounded by people who are deferent to you and never going out.

• 32:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, except for your dick dad. Everyone else can never argue with you. You can't have a single honest relationship, right?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:24Robert Evans?

  And his dad has the op, he grows up surviving in like first the Spanish empire and then a dictatorship and learning how to, and learning that like you have to be able to work with other people and rely on them and you have to be like careful and you're not all powerful and you need to have caution. And his son is never gonna learn any of these things. His son grows up being turned like you're going to inherit the country and you literally can't do anything wrong, right?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  This is a really bad way to raise a kid. This is not great. This is a full on like European monarchy shit.

• 32:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And so despite being groomed for power by his father, and I would say actually as a result of being groomed for power by his father, Francisco never learns how to read people or how to convince others of his opinions. He never has to. He just gives orders and people obey. And that's a bad way to teach leadership. The only trait Francisco inherits from his father is an excellent work ethic. He is not lazy. Neither of these dictators are lazy men. They both work very hard. But as Sager writes, he never learns empathy. Quote, "Whether he was born without empathy or just never needed to develop it is unknowable. The fact remains, though, that of all the things in life that he lacked, and those were few in the material sense, the inability to empathize eventually contributed most to his destiny." You should hear like a dun dun dun there because he's gonna get a lot of people killed.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, that is like, you know, when you're writing a relatively academic tone history, that is, that is a burn. That's about as unkind as you can be to someone, I think.

• 33:50Robert Evans?

  That's about as mean as an academic is allowed to go.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:54Robert Evans?

  So Francisco is surrounded by slaves and employees from the day of his birth and he never has a friend his entire life. He also grows up certain of his own brilliance and destiny, and this is for sure his dad's fault. Carlos sends his son off to Buenos Aires to study the capital of their greatest geopolitical foe. And when he returns home, Francisco is appointed to several cabinet positions in succession. His father calls this hands-on training for the future, and Francisco takes the work seriously if he doesn't show any particular aptitude for it. Carlos does some similar stuff with his other kids. He hands each of his kids and his closer relatives profitable farms and like real estate packages, as well as large numbers of Afro-Paraguayan enslaved people to see

• 34:36Robert Evans?

  like what he can make with them. And it becomes by kind of the midpoint in Carlos's regime, there's no major industry or business in Paraguay that one of his direct relatives is not in charge of, you know, and directly taking a cut from, which is the primary reason why they're put in there is to take a cut.

• 34:54Robert Evans?

  So the Lopez family is, is like skimming like 25% off the top of the whole economy, pretty much, right?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, every, every dollar you spend, half of it goes to them straight away in various forms.

• 35:05Robert Evans?

  Americans are increasingly familiar with this kind of government, aren't we?

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, we could learn a lot from this, couldn't we?

• 35:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah, some people in the country could. While Francisco learns the ropes, his father expands the surveillance system that Dr. Francias had built, allowing him to monitor all foreign entry to the country and watch such visitors as a hawk now that foreigners were allowed to enter the country. Despite some nativist preclusions, yeah, Carlos opens Paraguay to the rest of the world during his second decade in power, right? He starts letting foreigners in. He starts inviting foreign investment and industry. Part of what inspires this is there's a change of regime in Argentina. And so the leadership in Argentina is no longer saying eternal war against Paraguay, right? Which makes it a lot easier to open things up. Carlos Lopez knows that Paraguay is not a powerful country

• 35:52Robert Evans?

  and that outside its borders, he is not an important man. His son will utterly lack any sense of this humility. But Francisco benefits from his father's foresightedness. See, one thing Carlos becomes big on is sending those promising young men in Paraguay overseas on scholarships so they can learn how other countries do things and bring that knowledge back. It's a pretty good idea if you're in the kind of situation Paraguay's in, in this point in time. So, but the 1850s, Paraguay is trading with the rest of the world and Carlos and his son Francisco are basically co-rulers. The Lopez family gets to have a hand in every major business in the country and Francisco and his brother buy and sell land and enslaved people from the state without paying because other people, like for one

• 36:35Robert Evans?

  thing, one of the laws basically is that for certain kinds of transactions, only a member of the Lopez family can be there to approve it. And so if you're like selling to Francisco or his brother Benigno, a bunch of slaves that the government owns, like there's no one to take the money from them, right? Even if they agree to like a payment. And also other, when there's like auctions for goods, if, if one of them shows up, if a Lopez family member shows up, everyone else knows that you can't bid anymore.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  What a fucking life, yeah.

• 37:06Robert Evans?

  Great situation to be in if you're a Lopez.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  We got one dollar and everyone's just like, yep.

• 37:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 37:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it sounds like a fair price, boss. Please don't have the Inquisition get me.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:19Robert Evans?

  So the looting of the economy was married to a vigorous expansion of the military and police, which Francisco personally oversaw. His father appointed him a brigadier general of the army when he turned 18. And in a couple of years, he's running the army, basically.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  I'm sure they appreciate that.

• 37:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm sure the army loved that.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:38Robert Evans?

  Francisco does read obsessively about modern European military strategy, theory and weaponry. And he becomes deeply interested in Napoleon and equally interested in making Paraguay a great nation, one the European powers would have to look at with respect. And the only way he sees to do that is like, well, you have to have a big fancy army that's like a European style army. Otherwise, you can't be respected as a nation. You won't have any kind of like honor that other people are forced to, you know, acknowledge. And his dad is not interested in any of this shit, but his dad also can't say no to his son. And so in 1853, when diplomats from the United States and several other nations come to the capital to recognize Paraguay and independence, he gives his son, 27-year-old

• 38:18Robert Evans?

  Francisco Lopez, the job of handling the negotiations. Now, Carlos still has to sign everything, but it was agreed that like, you know, his kid would be the face of this whole thing. And after this, foreigners are now able to enter and leave the former hermit kingdom at will, so long as they bring money with them. There were so many treaties to be signed in this period of time that Francisco has an excuse to be asked to be sent overseas, where he would conclude both diplomatic work and purchase a bunch of modern weaponry from Europe. So he's basically like, hey, this, this thing with the Americans worked so well, we have all these other countries now that we're opening up that we need to make friendship trees with and trade agreements with. Why don't you let me go to Europe? I can pick, I can also hang out around some armies, maybe watch some armies, do army stuff,

• 39:01Robert Evans?

  buy some guns. So this is gonna be like the big thrill of Francisco Lopez's life is getting to like go overseas in his late twenties and hang out in Europe. He's not bugging around it because he's basically the prince of Paraguay. But, you know, here's a, yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  He's taking his gap year.

• 39:17Robert Evans?

  He's taken his gap couple of years in Europe to also like buy a bunch of guns.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:23Robert Evans?

  God, who, who wouldn't want to do that?

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, what a, what a dream.

• 39:26Robert Evans?

  What a dream. To quote from another, to, I'm gonna read from another quote from that article on historyisnow.com. "He traveled to several nations in Europe as minister, the most important of which for him was France. While there, he became fascinated with the French Second Empire and everything Napoleonic. He would purchase French military equipment, especially uniforms that were copied from the Napoleonic style." So he's, he's really doing like Napoleon cosplay. And because this is the period of Napoleon III, the French are also doing Napoleon cosplay now.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's kind of doing like a cargo cult version of Napoleonism. That's great.

• 39:59Robert Evans?

  This is the cosplay of a cosplay.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  And I love that, like, he's like, I've studied military technology. I've traveled abroad. I've worked it all out. What we need is different uniforms. Like it's the outfits. It's just really gonna sell them.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Everyone's got one of these Napoleon hats.

• 40:15Robert Evans?

  It's also really funny. If you go back to episodes on Napoleon III, he was not great. He had some success for a while, but it's, it's really funny. Almost a lot of other people like realized, oh, this, this is a fucking idiot at the time. But all of his shtick, Napoleon III's bullshit works perfectly on Francisco Lopez. He is, he falls for this dude. He could not be more in love. And it's even funnier. Napoleon III does not care for him at all. Not interested in this little two-bit fucking dictator shit.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  That's even better. Yeah. He's just like a Napoleon superfan at this point, just following him around, asking for his autograph.

• 40:50Robert Evans?

  We just did our episodes on like Alex Karp and talked about his, his like wannabe mentor, Jürgen Habermas, was just not that interested in working with Alex Karp when he was a young man. And Lopez, Francisco Lopez has kind of the same relationship with Napoleon III, where he comes back with like a treaty and he's like, look, this proves that we're best friends. Like read this letter that Napoleon sent along with the treaty. And it's like a form letter where he's like, was great to have you at the capital.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, this is like Taylor Swift, right back to her fans.

• 41:20Robert Evans?

  We're brothers.

• 41:23Robert Evans?

  It's really sad.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got like a little, uh, fill in the blank where he put his name in there.

• 41:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, the name of Botan Tate here.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  He's also got his letters from Santa right next to it.

• 41:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, he's got an identical letter from Santa. Napoleon used the same shop as the Santa people.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they both came from the North Pole, weirdly.

• 41:43Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 41:45Robert Evans?

  So Lopez also hires a bunch of technical experts while he's over in Europe to help with everything. And he, these guys are gonna move to Paraguay because that's kind of how that shit works at the time. And in part, he wants to build railways, which is a good idea. And he is, he does like build railways across Paraguay. Great idea. Trains really work. And it's good to bring in Europeans to help you with your trains in this period of time. He also has guys bring in and build a telegraph network. Again, a good idea. And he brings in, he brings in British, I think it's mostly British soldiers to train his artillery and Austrians to train his infantry, which is also pretty much who you want doing those jobs, right? In this period of time, it's about as good as you could get. He orders a steam warship, this like big, kind of modern at the times. By the time it gets to Paraguay, it's gonna be horribly outdated because it's not like an ironclad.

• 42:30Robert Evans?

  But he orders like this modern steam warship and he grows obsessed with the idea of like, Paraguay is a modern industrial country with its own rail system and a modern navy and a big army with modern steel cannons and some brass cannons because he doesn't have that much money. And yeah, this is, you know, kind of his, his dream, right? Is, is this sort of modern militarized Paraguayan state, right? And from an early stage, Lopez is planning out not just how to like update the military for defense. He wants to reform the military into a force that can offensively prove Paraguayan greatness and thus his own greatness, right? I don't think he has like plans for the war he's going to start yet, but he clearly wants the option to start a war.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Right. He's just, he's waiting for the war to present itself.

• 43:16Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's always a good way to be, I feel like. That's a good way to go about your life.

• 43:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Oh, great idea. So if you wanted a great army in the mid 1800s, again, you're gonna need to go like get some Prussians, get some Brits, maybe get some Frenchmen. And Francisco tries to, like when he's talking to the Prussians to like get some of theirs dudes, he tries to win favor with Prussia by creating a trade imbalance so that like Prussia feels like they kind of owe him. And to do this, he brings 5,000 pounds of Yerba to Prussia to try to get German soldiers addicted to this stuff. It's like their caffeine. So that like once they're hooked, they'll need to keep coming back to Paraguay.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Those British soldiers really showed him the ropes, didn't they?

• 43:58Robert Evans?

  It's really funny. You should have, you should have just had to try, try to fucking import some cocaine, man. That would have gone off like a bang in Prussia.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Go hard if you're gonna, if you're gonna go for it, baby. Your first Yerba's on him.

• 44:09Robert Evans?

  I don't think the Yerba's gonna really do it. I mean, nothing against Yerba, but it's just not this, it's not that addictive.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  I've got some friends who really hit the Yerba, uh, the canned Yerba pretty hard.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  I like the canned Yerba every once in a while.

• 44:22Robert Evans?

  It's fine.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  It's not bad. I like it when you get it in the, in the traditional fashion from the gourd.

• 44:27Robert Evans?

  I just, his, his, his brilliant scheme is to like get the Prussian army addicted to Yerba. It's really funny.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Of all the things that you can grow in that, in South America, right? He's gone with tea.

• 44:43Robert Evans?

  He's gone with tea. It's also really funny. He, he tries to bribe like a British industrial leader by giving him a tiger cub, which is really cool. I mean, it's probably pretty bad for the tiger, but it's funny.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, also the tiger is just gonna grow up and fuck up that guy's house.

• 44:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Like, like it's kind of a ticking time bomb situation.

• 45:02Robert Evans?

  So bad. Yeah. Congratulations. I've given you a problem for the future.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be very funny if that was his goal. Like, look at this cute cat.

• 45:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Now, his prized moment is in his career was meeting former subject of the show, Emperor Napoleon III, as I said, who he saw as a brilliant man and military leader for reasons that are, cannot be explained. The two have a very formal meeting, but again, he's gonna claim they're like best friends. In general, Francisco Lopez leaves a really bad impression wherever he goes. If he hadn't been the dictator's son, he'd have been laughed out of every fine home on the continent for his rudeness and poor personal hygiene. As his biographer notes in Ruination of Paraguay, quote, "Non-Paraguayans noted his atrocious breath. The residue of his habitual cigar smoking increased his halitosis. He learned to dress like a military dandy. The generous funds from his father and Francisco's willingness to spend the money on himself made him attractive to certain women."

• 45:55Speaker 01

  So he's kind of slitting his way through Europe. Master of like the passive aggression, isn't he? Like in his, in his little burns every, every sentence we get.

• 46:04Robert Evans?

  Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know who else uses money to appear attractive to certain women? The sponsors of our podcast.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna say the guys that include their credit score on their dating app profiles.

• 46:20Robert Evans?

  Is that a thing people do?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Honey, yes.

• 46:23Robert Evans?

  I don't even know my credit score.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  You fucking shitting me?

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Uh, no.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  That's fucked up. That's really weird and off.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  It's wild out there, guys.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  That's incredibly gross. If you're doing that, if you're doing that, you're listening to a show. I wanna know what happens inside your head.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  You gotta stop that because my credit, because my credit score is just fine. I don't need your help.

• 46:42Robert Evans?

  Honestly, go back to a fish. You know what? Go back to a picture of you with a fish.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it would be great.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  A lot of times, there's the, the fish credit score combo. And that's like an instant, it really helps. It really helps weed out the, weed out the weirdos.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  That would be an emotional roller coaster because the fish person seems happy, secure. Hopefully they put the fish back.

• 47:04Robert Evans?

  What we're hearing is that the fish pictures would work on you.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  The fish, yeah, if you're coming after me, you show me a fish.

• 47:11Robert Evans?

  Just gonna be fish pictures being exchanged back and forth.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Not like a lung fish or something hideous, you know, but like a nice looking fish. That'd be all about it. Yeah. Not, I don't fucking care about your credit scores. Don't know what a good credit score is.

• 47:25Robert Evans?

  But I know what a good fish is. I know what a good fish is.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I see a good fish. I know what you're talking about. I said, Sophie, a good video of a shark.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't need your fish pics or your fish videos. I have James Stout.

• 47:36Robert Evans?

  All right. We're going to ads. This is done.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  I'm like a fucking sea lion, you know, that's the only thing I want in life is, is fish. I don't care about your credit score.

• 47:48Speaker 04

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amount subject to lender approval. I'm Melissa Jelton, and in my new podcast, What Happened to Her? I'm bringing you new stories and conversations every week. Stories about women whose deaths were too quickly ruled a suicide.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  She was starting to get worried and get scared for her safety. Stories of survival.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  The only difference between me and her, frankly, was a little bit of luck because by all rights, I should be dead.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  Cases that everyone else called closed. They can't convict her, right? Like she has so much evidence. These stories all start in the same place, with a woman failed by a system that didn't believe her, that didn't protect her, that didn't see her. No child should ever experience that. And we were babies.

• 49:05Speaker 05

  She did all of these brave things and came out and spoke about it and he got a year. You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Listen to What Happened to Her on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 49:24Speaker 06

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 49:27Speaker 07

  Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power.

• 49:36Speaker 06

  It's real.

• 49:37Speaker 07

  Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complain about the very thing they're receiving. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin Unfiltered. I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't wanna see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. 12 seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the South now.

• 50:17Speaker 06

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 50:28Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So, uh, one of the women that he meets during his time in Europe is a beautiful Irish lady, probably Irish lady. We don't know a lot about her because she's a con woman named Eliza Lynch. Eliza told him that she was 18 when they met. This is definitely a lie. Her son would later say she was more likely 22. Other evidence says she was probably like 28 or 29.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Okay. I'm glad it went that direction.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:54Robert Evans?

  I'm glad it's older than she, she said, yes, of course.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. I was, I was worried. I'm not gonna lie.

• 50:59Robert Evans?

  The main point of this is that we, we don't really know where she came from or what she did. Like this is a lady who has like a shady ass background. She was at one point married to a French surgeon in the army and the two, when, when she meets Francisco Lopez, she divorces this guy, although it's possible she divorced him right before. It's kind of unclear to me, but at least one version of the story is as soon as she realized she has a chance to like get with a world leader, she just dumps her husband. She's like, fuck this.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  She saw his credit score and she was all over it. She was the rare credit score appreciator.

• 51:29Robert Evans?

  Dictators have a great credit score because they own the credit bureaus.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Or he had a fish or we didn't, we didn't know about that hasn't been recorded by historians.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Guys.

• 51:38Robert Evans?

  So Eliza said that she was born in County Cork. Uh, we know the year she says was a lie. Maybe she was born in County Cork. Uh, she would initially claim that her family were like very tied to British occupation forces and had made a bunch of money through that. One of her uncles, she said was an admiral who fought under Nelson at Trafalgar, but no one can really pick, figure out who this guy could have been, right? So it's probably a lie.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Tons of admirals, like you could draw some lines.

• 52:02Robert Evans?

  Not a lot of guys who fought under Nelson at Trafalgar and were admirals. Um, my take is that she was kind of a con woman, although an understandable one, fleeing probably a series of bad marriages and seeking her fortune and power, the only way a woman could in like the 1850s in Europe, right?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm not gonna hold it against her.

• 52:19Robert Evans?

  I think she's kind of like an understandable figure. Yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I think that's heroic to be honest. She's, she's grifting of bad people.

• 52:25Robert Evans?

  She's grifting a guy who needs to be grifted, right?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:28Robert Evans?

  It would be a sin if this man hadn't been grifted to some extent.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Right. That is a, yeah. Open goal for someone.

• 52:35Robert Evans?

  Exactly. You gotta try. By the time she met Lopez, she was said to have been working in Paris as a prostitute or courtesan, which I think is a much more likely than some of the stories she told. The two get together in 1854. Sager describes her as, quote, "beautiful, blonde, blue eyed, young woman with a gorgeous complexion, as well as a skilled linguist who spoke perfect French and English and soon learned Spanish and Guarani with equal faculty." So when she moves to Paraguay, she learns both the indigenous language and Spanish to like eat, like fluent level. So this is a smart lady, right?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  It's just like a prestige language situation where like Spanish is the language of like government and.

• 53:11Robert Evans?

  Not, not by the, I mean, somewhat, I think it's kind of hard because there are also times where it's like, no, like for, because for patriot, patriotic reasons, you need to speak some Guarani, right?

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:22Robert Evans?

  I don't have a great sense of all that. I'm not going to try to delve too deep into Paraguayan racial politics. That's way outside of my level of, of education here. Um, she knows European manners. She knows good wine though, and because he has terrible manners, she's able to really help him out at a lot of these like functions he's going to, and she gets him addicted to wine. He becomes quite a heavy drinker as a result of their relationship. Um, and she helps him, you know, I want to show you, Sophie's going to show you a picture of her from 1864. So you're, you're seeing this lady. She's very like classically attractive woman, right? She's got like bangles on her arms. Her hair is done up in all crazy form. And now.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Any fish?

• 53:58Robert Evans?

  I, I'm not seeing any fish, but next, Sophie's, Sophie's going to show you a picture of Francisco Lopez. And the kindest thing I can say about him is his neck beard is very full.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's got a full beard.

• 54:10Robert Evans?

  A full face.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  It's a full neck beard to, to be specific.

• 54:14Robert Evans?

  Cause that beard is right on the neck and nowhere else.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  Side part situation.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Side part's rough. Yeah. He's gone below the bum chin, like has a bum chin haver.

• 54:24Robert Evans?

  It's a fascinating looking hairdo, man.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. What, it's a hell of a choice.

• 54:27Robert Evans?

  It's a lot of choices at once.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:30Robert Evans?

  And then the triangle stash.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  And she looks cool as shit.

• 54:33Robert Evans?

  And she looks cool as shit.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  What's, what's she got in her hair?

• 54:37Robert Evans?

  She looks cool as shit and he looks like, uh, Jack, he looks like, um, what's his name? Galifianakis, his character from The Hangover. Is that Galifianakis from The Hangover? That's, he looks like him in a Napoleonic uniform.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Cosplaying Napoleon. If you're listening, that'll get you there.

• 54:51Robert Evans?

  That'll get you right there. And by the way, he has a bunch of big medals. He invented all those medals for himself.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  And she kind of, she kind of looks like a Stevie Nicks berry.

• 55:02Robert Evans?

  She looks a little like Stevie Nicks. Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:05Robert Evans?

  And he looks like if Lindsey Buckingham did Napoleon cosplay and was worse looking.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. It looks like she's doing like the rock on sign with her hand.

• 55:13Robert Evans?

  It does a little bit. Yeah. She's pretty cool.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  She's a certified baddie. Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. She's got one of those like 90's, uh, choker necklaces.

• 55:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Pretty cool.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Progenitor of that.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  And, um, you said she's a con woman. Does she con this man?

• 55:27Robert Evans?

  She cons kind of the country of Paraguay.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  You know what? And she's Irish. I'm on board. Let's go.

• 55:33Robert Evans?

  Harmless conning. Okay. Yeah.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Say more.

• 55:35Robert Evans?

  She probably was Irish. I don't think we really know for sure. Um, so the two are never married. Uh, they do conceive a child, at least one child together. And based on the math, this probably occurs during the latter stages of his 18 month tour of Europe. During their time traveling together, he also starts drinking heavily. After France, they visit Italy where he's supposed to visit the Pope, but the Pope's like, oh, you know, ah, man, so much going on. Why don't you hang out with this other guy?

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Gets snubbed.

• 56:05Robert Evans?

  He gets snubbed a lot. And then he goes to Spain where he gets snubbed again because his former colonial masters refused to sign a treaty of recognition unless Paraguay allows children of Spanish citizens in the country to choose which citizenship they want. Per his biographer, quote, "Lopez opposed granting anyone such a right since he was not a supporter of legal rights anyway."

• 56:26Speaker 01

  This guy, he's just not, people shouldn't have rights. This is a great biography.

• 56:34Robert Evans?

  He's a really fun guy. It's a really good biography. Sager's a great writer.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Logically consistent there. It's not that I don't just want to give you guys rights. I just don't believe in them full stop.

• 56:44Robert Evans?

  Sager, it has my favorite kind of biography where it's incredibly, he read every word this man ever wrote to anyone that we still have access to basically, and he hates him. He hates him so much.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  The hate fuel biography is fascinating to me.

• 56:57Robert Evans?

  It's one of my favorite kinds of writing. Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's the most powerful kind of hatred to, to dominate the historical scholarship of someone's life because you hate them so fucking much.

• 57:06Robert Evans?

  As, as a hater, I gotta take my hat off if I was wearing one to Sager because you're, you, you get our hater of the week award if we were to have such an award. Um, during his time in Europe, Lopez's time in Europe, the Crimean war, you know, is happening and Lopez takes the opportunity to observe parts of this modern conflict. He sees some early modern trench warfare and he considers this a crucial part of his military education. Per the website history is now, "The experience would prove invaluable to him and it gave him knowledge of the handling, on the handling of large armies, especially siege craft. The Crimean war was defined by the siege of Sebastopol, which saw the allies of Britain, France, the Ottomans and Sardinia besiege a Russian army that held out far longer than anyone thought possible." And so at least that's something a lot of people will say

• 57:49Robert Evans?

  is that like this, this gives him this understanding. He's going to rely heavily on fortifications during the war that he starts that ends badly. And people kind of suspect part of why is that he learns how powerful they can be. I think that people also tend to give him too much credit for how much he learns from his very limited experience with the Crimean war, because I don't think he ever is very good at war. I think he gets lucky a couple of times in this, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Um, that said, he does, this is, the Crimean war influences his thinkings on how war should be carried out, certainly. And that is really important. Um, again, Eliza and he never marry, but he does knock her up and decides to take her back to Paraguay with him when he leaves. Now his brother Benignio, who's with him on his tour of Europe, fights him over this and warns him back home that

• 58:34Robert Evans?

  like, no one will accept her. She's been married before. And this is probably the start because there's going to be, he's going to have his brother sent to a camp, right? And some people will say this is where like their disagreements started. Um, but as a partial sop to his brother and public feeling, Lopez makes his mistress travel to Paraguay on a separate ship. Francisco returns home. Yeah. It's, ah, poor Eliza. I think she gets a pretty nice boat though. And maybe she wanted a break from the dude.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  To be, yeah, maybe that's a bit more of a win for her than I'm imagining.

• 59:03Robert Evans?

  Wouldn't be shocked if she wanted a break from the dude. Yeah. She's like, oh no, oh no, a separate ship, you say. Woe is me. Yeah. I'm going to just put like 30 hot dudes on this boat with me that aren't you. Thank you.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Okay. I'll see you soon.

• 59:17Robert Evans?

  Bye.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Boat gets lost, circumnavigates the globe.

• 59:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Francisco returns home triumphant with an armful of treaties and hundreds of foreign workers and advisors who start flooding into Paraguay, laying down train tracks and reforming the military. An article I found on the Warfare History Network by Robert Heeg notes that Francisco also returned with, quote, "several steamships to fill up the embryonic Paraguayan fleet, along with all the guns, ammunition and gold braid that his deep pockets could purchase."

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Now, yeah, again, tactical, uh, tactical genius.

• 59:45Robert Evans?

  Break. Braiding is critical. Critical. Can't fight a war without.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  He's just like gold braid. Nope. He needs as much bling as possible. That's what he learned from the French.

• 59:53Robert Evans?

  We all remember after the expanded Russian invasion into Ukraine, when, when Zelensky was asked, hey, do you, do you need evac by like NATO and said, I don't need a ride. I need more gold braid. As much gold braid as you can get in here.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  I had dropped me uniforms.

• 1:00:06Robert Evans?

  Fill this country with braid.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  I've invented several new medals and I need you to stamp them. Yeah. Famously, Robert, when you and I were in Myanmar, they were, uh, 3D printing little, little gold braids for their uniforms. Yeah. And that's worked out well for it.

• 1:00:19Robert Evans?

  As Napoleon said, "An army marches on gold braid."

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  They do call it scrambled egg, I guess. Maybe that's.

• 1:00:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah. What's that? What's that famous line? Amateurs discuss strategy, professionals discuss gold braid.

• 1:00:33Robert Evans?

  So all of this gear is part of a plan Francisco has made to expand and modernize the Paraguayan army. And he is, this is, whenever I read this, I can't think, he's just playing Warhammer 40,000 with real life dudes, right? And the arms merchants of Europe are his games workshop and he's buying all these cool new models, right? Like, oh, this is me. This gun's cool. I want one of these. We gotta take these.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah, he's, yeah, many such cases, actually, in history. This is what happens when you have hereditary power and awful lot.

• 1:01:00Robert Evans?

  Oh, it had, because this is the Kaiser Wilhelm story, but Kaiser Wilhelm has a lot bigger budget and way smarter guys building his military.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Also a lot more humans to pour into the meat.

• 1:01:11Robert Evans?

  He's got Germany, right? Francisco does not just want an army that looks like Napoleon's, though. He wants conquest. Some sources will claim that from the moment they met, Eliza helped encourage her lover's delusions of grandeur. Perheja's article, Eliza Lynch, like many a gold digger before her, catered to her meal tickets outsized ego, recklessly encouraging his delusions of grandeur and dreams of imperial glory. I think this is probably a little too harsh on Eliza. I think it may just be that, like, she understood that with a kind of guy like this, you only ever tell him his ideas are good because otherwise he's done with you. And that's just like how she survives, you know?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  That's how, yeah, this is trying to start this war, right? Like, maybe. Yeah, he just isn't really holding it back, is he? He's not quite so subtle with his criticism.

• 1:01:52Robert Evans?

  I'm not really, really to blame her about this guy's ego.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  A little, little uninvestigated misogyny on Heath's part there.

• 1:01:59Robert Evans?

  Maybe, maybe. It's not, he's not inventing that. People at the time accused her of this, but people at the time accused her of this, probably not for totally great reasons.

• 1:02:09Robert Evans?

  So as soon as he's back in a sense, Francisco takes on new powers. His father is old and ailing and happy to delegate to a son who seems to have proven himself fit for the job. For his part, Lopez tells everyone who will listen back home about his experiences befriending Napoleon. He was also known to say bravery and nothing more than bravery made Bonaparte great, which sows a massive understanding of the man that, like, Napoleon was great purely for his physical courage. And it's like, no. I mean, like, Napoleon, among other things, Napoleon's approach to warfare was only really possible because he came to govern a massive nation that had pioneered conscripting its entire people, right? And Lopez is going to try to follow in his footsteps while governing a country that at its most, when he was in charge, its top population would have been like around 450,000 people.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, well, he's really, he's behind, behind the times on that one.

• 1:02:59Robert Evans?

  Napoleon burns that many dudes just in France.

• 1:03:05Robert Evans?

  So the results of trying to apply Napoleonic tactics to a country that is smaller than Portland, Oregon are going to be catastrophic. This does not go well for fucking anybody.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, geez, yeah, that is, yeah. Yeah, he doesn't realize he's not playing with the same deck here.

• 1:03:21Robert Evans?

  He sure is not. And we'll talk about what happens next in part two. But first, James, you want to go out, given your pluggables?

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So I have a new podcast that you can listen to from the 17th of August on the iHeart Media app or wherever else you get your podcasts. It's called Natural Causes. It's about going outside. We're going to talk about the politics of going outside. It comes out once a week. And yeah, I'd love to see you over there.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Has a great theme song and.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Has a great theme song. My friends made the theme song in my living room. Yes, and another friend of mine made the art. We're doing this very, we're doing this very DIY, which is, I've never looked at a thing and thought, could I not take longer and spend more money doing that myself? So it's very beautiful for me to have all my friends doing this.

• 1:04:08Robert Evans?

  Excellent. Well, please listen to Natural Causes and please keep listening to Behind the Bastards because in next episode, we're going to tell you how Francisco Lopez does when he finally gets to take his cool new army out on the tabletop. Start playing real life Warhammer with hundreds of thousands of human beings, hundreds of thousands.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Eventually. It's gonna be great.

• 1:04:28Robert Evans?

  It'll go, it would go about as well as it would have I got to do that, honestly.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Hundreds of thousands. It's an impressive percentage he's working with.

• 1:04:36Robert Evans?

  James, wait until you hear how many people he gets fucking killed. It is crazy.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  Very exciting for this.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

• 1:05:20Speaker 06

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• 1:05:50Speaker 04

  I'm Melissa Jelton, host of the What Happened to Her podcast. We're kicking off the season with the Sandra Birchmore story, a case the police wrote off as a suicide in a snowstorm. Her family never bought it and the man they suspected wore a badge.

• 1:06:06Speaker 05

  You never know who that devil is because he's wearing a disguise. Sometimes it's a police uniform.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  And you can get access to all episodes 100% ad free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription exclusively on Apple Podcasts, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search for iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today.

• 1:06:29Speaker 06

  Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast?

• 1:06:32Speaker 07

  Here's what you missed. People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait, hold up. They changed all of that? Yes.

• 1:06:38Speaker 06

  It's real.

• 1:06:39Speaker 07

  This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's raw. White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

• 1:06:52Speaker 06

  And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:07:01Speaker 06

  If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But soon they'll find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  He sounded friendly. They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff and they said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him, violent. Backhand there, pow.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  Listen to The Devil's Quarry, season two, in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeart

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