Battle of Tuyutí (1866)

First battle at Tuyutí

Part of: Triple Alliance War

Attack of Paraguayan cavalry in the battle of Tuyutí. Detail of a painting by Cándido López

date	May 24, 1866
place	Tuyutí, Paso de Patria district in the Ñeembucú department , Paraguay
output	Allied troops victory

Parties to the conflict
Paraguay	Brazil Argentina Uruguay
Commander
Vicente Barrios José Eduvigis Díaz Hilario Marco Francisco Isidoro Resquin	Manuel Luís Osório Bartolomé Miter Venancio Flores
Troop strength
20,000 to 27,000 men	around 35,000 men
losses
• 4,000 to 7,000 dead • 7,000 to 8,000 wounded • 350 prisoners	• around 1,000 dead • around 3,000 wounded

The First Battle of Tuyutí was fought on May 24, 1866 as part of the Triple Alliance War between the army of Paraguay and the united army of the Triple Alliance states Argentina , Brazil and Uruguay . It ended with a heavy defeat for the Paraguayan armed forces, whose leadership had tried with this battle to drive the Allies away from their territory with a massive and surprising blow.

Starting position

In June 1865, a little more than six months after the start of hostilities with Brazil and just under three months after the declaration of war on Argentina, Paraguay had lost its maritime clout due to the defeat in the battle of the Riachuelo . Only a few months later the country suffered another debacle when one of the two separate army units operating in what is now the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul was destroyed in the battle of the Río Yatay and the other was forced to surrender near Uruguayana .

With these defeats, the Paraguayan invasions in Argentina and Brazil ended and the strategic initiative finally passed to the Allies. These started a counter-offensive and in turn prepared an invasion of Paraguay. In order to be able to counter the foreseeable counterattack, Francisco Solano López (1827-1870), the president and commander in chief of the armed forces of Paraguay, ordered the retreat of all units of his army still on enemy territory to their homeland.

At first, however, supply problems, the disagreement in the Allied High Command and the summer climatic conditions in the jungle and in the swamps along the Rio Paraná , which the Allies had to cross, delayed their counter-offensive until April 1866. In the period from the end of 1865, when the last Paraguayan troops had reached their homeland again by spring 1866, a guerrilla war took place in which Paraguay in particular tried by repeated raids to inflict losses on the allies preparing on the south bank of the Rio Paraná and thus to shake their morale.

After the Allied troops had crossed the Rio Paraná on April 26, 1866 and marched into Paraguay, López tried to remove the bridgehead they had formed . When this attempt failed with heavy losses in the Battle of the Estero Bellaco , López's forces withdrew to a heavily fortified defense line that had been built along the Rio Estero Bellaco del Norte. From here López planned his next steps.

procedure

Plan of the positions of the Allied forces in the battle of Tuyutí

López finally decided to destroy the slowly advancing allied troops by a massive and large-scale surprise attack, or at least to weaken them so that they would be forced to vacate Paraguay's territory again. For this decisive battle, four Paraguayan attack columns were formed, which - depending on the source - comprised between 20,000 and 27,000 men. This meant that they were clearly inferior to the Allied army camped near Tuyutí, which was around 35,000 strong and, thanks to its modern armament, had considerable firepower.

The plan stipulated that the four Paraguayan attack formations should simultaneously break out of the thick undergrowth of the area of operations and penetrate the front of the Allied army. Then its center should be encircled and destroyed. On the day of the battle, however, the difficult to traverse terrain delayed the approach of the Paraguayan attack columns considerably, which is why the necessary coordination of the attacks was not successful. In addition, the Paraguayan officers and their soldiers also lacked the experience to carry out such a complex operation.

The problems caused by the terrain, coupled with the wrong decisions of the Paraguayan commanders, ultimately led to the element of surprise, which had represented an essential factor in the planning, being completely lost. The attack by the Paraguayans turned into a series of frontal assaults by their gradually arriving detachments. The attack division commanded by Vicente Barrios (1825–1868), for example, only reached its area of ​​operations hours after the division that arrived first had started its attack. With the support of their artillery, the Allied infantry units were therefore able to prevent decisive Paraguayan intrusions on all fronts. The Paraguayans suffered devastating losses , mainly due to the shrapnel firing enemy artillery pieces, and finally gave up the fight around 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon. Their own artillery had not been able to intervene in the fighting at all because the distance to the battlefield was too great, and so could not provide any support to the attacking troops.

losses

The Paraguayans, who fought fanatically to the point of self-sacrifice, had an estimated 15,000 dead and wounded in the battle and thus lost a good half to two thirds of the troops deployed. Her suicidal fighting spirit was also evident in the physical condition of her prisoners, all of whom were wounded. In contrast, the losses of the Allies with around 4,000 men, including around 3,000 Brazilians, were still minor. It should also be emphasized that the chances of survival of the wounded on the Allied side were significantly better than those on the Paraguayan side, where the paramedics soon lacked the bare essentials due to the Allied sea blockade. In addition, the more lightly wounded soldiers on the Paraguayan side who were able to march were mostly unable to receive any support from the field medic, but had to go back to work immediately after the battle. If the climatic conditions of Paraguay are taken into account, infections and other complications, especially among them, are likely to have caused a not entirely insignificant number of further deaths in the period that followed.

consequences

For Paraguay, the outcome of the battle was a catastrophe in that the dead were among the best soldiers his army had left after the loss-making initial offensives in Brazil and Argentina. This qualitative loss dimension was exacerbated by the fact that among the dead there were particularly many members of families belonging to the Paraguayan elite, which were generally well educated and qualified and for whom service in the army was a patriotic duty. The associated loss of expertise and know-how was also irreplaceable for Paraguay. Equally heavy was the fact that the country did not have the demographic reservoir to make up for such horrific losses. After the Battle of Tuyutí, López lacked the capacity to decisively defeat the Allies in a single major operation. Nevertheless, in the further course of the war he made another attempt, which led to the Second Battle of Tuyutí . It ended with another defeat for Paraguay. In the period that followed, López focused primarily on influencing public opinion in Argentina and Brazil through as active a defense as possible so that the Allies would lose the will to continue the war. In this way a negotiated solution to end the war that was acceptable to him was to be reached.

literature

• Thomas L. Whigham: The Road to Armageddon. Paraguay Versus the Triple Alliance, 1866-70 (= Latin American & Caribbean Studies 14). University of Calgary Press, Calgary 2017, ISBN 978-1-55238-809-9 .
• John Hoyt Williams: 'A Swamp of Blood'. The Battle of Tuyuti. Military History, Vol. 17, No. 1/2000, pp. 58-64.

Web links

Commons : Battle of Tuyutí  - collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

1. ↑ Whigham 2017, p. 63.
2. ↑ Whigham 2017, pp. 64f.