The War of the Triple Alliance is a huge event it turns out, and one I don’t remember knowing about. It was Paraguay versus Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.
Paraguay did not prevail. From wiki “According to some estimates, Paraguay’s pre-war population of 525,000 was reduced to 221,000, of which only 28,000 were men.”
“The war ended with the total defeat of Paraguay. After it lost in conventional warfare, Paraguay conducted a drawn-out guerrilla resistance, a disastrous strategy that resulted in the further destruction of the Paraguayan military and much of the civilian population through battle casualties, hunger and diseases.”
There was a changing of the guard here and I was chatting with their supervisor who told me about all his insignias.