Embarking on a British warship he sailed for England, there to become a quiet country gentleman in a land where gauchos and dictators were unhonored.
In the meantime Paraguay, spared from such convulsion as racked its neighbor on the east, dragged on its secluded existence of backwardness and stagnation.

Indians and half-castes vegetated in ignorance and docility, and the handful of whites quaked in terror, while the inexorable Francia tightened the reins of commercial and industrial restriction and erected forts along the frontiers to keep out the pernicious foreigner.

At his death, in 1840, men and women wept at his funeral in fear perchance, as one historian remarks, lest he come back to life; and the priest who officiated at the service likened the departed dictator to Caesar and Augustus! Paraguay was destined, however, to fall under a despot far worse than Francia when in 1862 Francisco Solano Lopez became President.

The new ruler was a man of considerable intelligence and education.

While a traveler in Europe he had seen much of its military organizations, and he had also gained no slight acquaintance with the vices of its capital cities.