Our first map today is a general overview of the theater of operations throughout the war. This is where all the main campaigns will take place from 1865 to 1869. The only critical areas not shown are northern Paraguay and Brazil's Mato Grosso province. In Part 1, Paraguay invaded Mato Grosso, and those maps are in the previous blog post.
This next map shows the initial Paraguayan offensive, including the western attack down the Parana and the eastern attack down the Uruguay.
This map...very simple...does a much better job of showing the relative positions of Corrientes, Humaita, and how the naval battle of the Riachuelo took place. See that triangle of land between the Paraguay and Parana Rivers, south of Humaita? Oh boy. Oh we're spending the next two episodes in THAT hellhole of swamps, rivers, marshes and blood.
This map shows the ultimate defeat of Estigarribia's column at Yatay and Uruguaiana, and the movement of both armies towards the Parana River to prepare for the next phase of the war - the Allied invasion of Paraguay.
