Over his people, Lopez wielded a marvelous power, compounded of persuasive eloquence and brute force. If the Paraguayans had obeyed their earlier masters blindly, they were dumb before this new despot and deaf to other than his word of command. To them he was the "Great Father," who talked to them in their own tongue of Guarani, who was the personification of the nation, the greatest ruler in the world, the invincible champion who inspired them with a loathing and contempt for their enemies. Such were the traits of a man and such the traits of a people who waged for six years a warfare among the most extraordinary in human annals. What prompted Lopez to embark on his career of international madness and prosecute it with the rage of a demon is not entirely clear. A vision of himself as the Napoleon of southern South America, who might cause Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay to cringe before his footstool, while he disposed at will of their territory and fortunes, doubtless stirred his imagination. So, too, the thought of his country, wedged in between two huge neighbors and threatened with suffocation between their overlapping folds, may well have suggested the wisdom of conquering overland a highway to the sea. At all events, he assembled an army of upwards of ninety thousand men, the greatest military array that Hispanic America had ever seen. Though admirably drilled and disciplined, they were poorly armed, mostly with flintlock muskets, and they were also deficient in artillery except that of antiquated pattern. With this mighty force at his back, yet knowing that the neighboring countries could eventually call into the field armies much larger in size equipped with repeating rifles and supplied with modern artillery, the "Jupiter of Paraguay" nevertheless made ready to launch his thunderbolt. The primary object at which he aimed was Uruguay. In this little state the Colorados, upheld openly or secretly by Brazil and Argentina, were conducting a "crusade of liberty" against the Blanco government at Montevideo, which was favored by Paraguay. Neither of the two great powers wished to see an alliance formed between Uruguay and Paraguay, lest when united in this manner the smaller nations might become too strong to tolerate further intervention in their affairs. For her part, Brazil had motives for resentment arising out of boundary disputes with Paraguay and Uruguay, as well as out of the inevitable injury to its nationals inflicted by the commotions in the latter country; whereas Argentina cherished grievances against Lopez for the audacity with which his troops roamed through her provinces and the impudence with which his vessels, plying on the lower Parana, ignored the customs regulations. Thus it happened that obscure civil discords in one little republic exploded into a terrific international struggle which shook South America to its foundations.