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.