The Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, was the largest and most important military conflict in the history of South America, after the Wars of Independence, and its only true 'continental' war. It involved 4 countries and lasted for more than 5 years, during which Paraguay fought alone against a powerful alliance formed by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. This conflict was remarkable in its huge scale and its terrible cost in lives, with the human price paid by Paraguay amounting to more than 300,000 men, a loss of some 70% of the country's total population. This book covers the whole span of the war, from the early days when the conflict primarily involved small columns of a few thousand men seeking each other out in sparsely inhabited territory, through to the later Napoleonic-style positional battles fought at points of strategic importance.