All this while Lopez was sufficiently busy in his own way. His dreams of Empire appear to have died hard, and not until the very end came could he be brought to believe that his armies could effect no more. He permitted his own comforts to be very little affected by the dire hardships which his troops--and, indeed, the entire nation--were undergoing. Although he refrained as much as possible from entering into the neighbourhood of the battles themselves, he took an important share in the direction of the campaign, and it was undoubtedly owing largely to his crass ineptitude in all strategical matters that many of the disasters came about. Although some of his moves were of the nature to render surrender or death inevitable to the actual combatants engaged in the grim struggle, a capitulation on the part of one of his officers was, in the eyes of Lopez, an unpardonable crime, and not only was the offending officer himself wont to be executed on account of the deed, but on several occasions his family was made to share his fate. Seeing that the male members and connections of his own family had suffered tortures and execution at his hands, and that even his sisters had been flogged by his orders, it was not to be expected that the average Paraguayan would meet with mercy from Lopez. Certainly it is no exaggeration to say that none was ever shown unless with some special object in view. There is no doubt that a Paraguayan field-officer had, if anything, rather more to dread from his own Dictator than from his official enemy. The end of the war, unduly protracted, came at last. The capital, Asuncion, had fallen into the hands of the allies, and Lopez, failing any other refuge, had taken his place with the last remaining body of the defenders--a ragged and tragic army, many of whom were practically nude, and very few of whom could boast anything beyond the remnants of a shirt or a hide loin-cloth. Others flaunted a crude poncho or a leather cap, while many possessed no weapons but an old flint-lock rifle or a worn lance. Although nominally an army of a thousand and odd men composed this last hope, they were little more than fugitives. Nevertheless, these last atoms of the once great Paraguayan host turned and resisted grimly each time the pursuing forces came within reach of them and delivered an attack. [Illustration: THOMAS COCHRANE, TENTH EARL OF DUNDONALD, G.C.B., Who reorganized the Chilian and Peruvian navies and destroyed Spanish naval power in the Pacific. _A. Rischgitz._] At last the few remnants of even this remnant found themselves at a spot--Cerro Cora, in the forests of Paraguay--where they were overtaken and brought to bay. There, in the face of an attack on the part of overwhelmingly superior Brazilian forces, the little party finally lost its grim determination and broke up, leaving Lopez, Madame Lynch, and their family to shift for themselves.