Battle of Acosta Ñu

The Battle of Acosta Ñu or Campo Grande was a battle during the War of the Triple Alliance, where, on August 16, 1869, 20,000 men of the Triple Alliance fought Paraguayan forces made up of 6,000 soldiers, many of them children.

Background

In the middle of 1869, the Paraguayan Army was on the run and Asunción was under allied occupation. Francisco Solano López, the Paraguayan president, refused to surrender and fled, vowing to keep fighting to the end. The Brazilian commander Duque de Caxias suggested that the war was militarily over, but Dom Pedro II, the Brazilian Emperor, refused to stop the campaign until López surrendered. Caxias resigned due to illness and was replaced by the Emperor's son-in-law, Luís Filipe Gastão de Orléans, Count d'Eu. Under the new command, the Brazilian Army continued the campaign in Paraguay until finally killing López in 1870.

With most adult Paraguayan males already killed or captured, López started to use children and elderly in the Army to keep the fight against the Alliance. Some children fought with fake beards to conceal their age.

The beginning

Count d'Eu and the main Allied troops advanced and took Caacupé on August 15, where López was supposedly hiding (he had actually fled to Caraguataí some days before). To block the Paraguayan Army from retreating to Caraguataí, D'Eu sent a Brazilian cavalry division to the passage at Campo Grande. The division was reinforced later by the 2nd Brazilian Army Corps, along with...
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