People

Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil

The emperor who would accept no peace short of López’s fall.

Name: Pedro de Alcântara, Pedro II
Life: 2 December 1825, Rio de Janeiro; 5 December 1891, Paris
Reign: Emperor from 1831; declared of age in 1840 and crowned in 1841; deposed by the Republic on 15 November 1889
In the war: Present at the surrender of Uruguaiana, 18 September 1865

He inherited the throne at five, when his father abdicated, and ruled the Empire of Brazil for almost half a century. When the war began he wanted to go to the front; faced with objections, he said he would go as a “volunteer of the fatherland”, and the people called him “volunteer number one”. In September 1865 he reached Uruguaiana, where Estigarribia’s Paraguayan column was besieged, and was present at its surrender alongside Mitre and Flores.

From then on he rejected any negotiated peace with Solano López. In November 1866 he wrote that the war should end “as honor demands, cost what it may”. It ended only with López’s death at Cerro Corá on 1 March 1870.

† Interpretation.Historians debate how much his refusal to negotiate weighed on the length of the war.

Sources: “Pedro II of Brazil” and “Siege of Uruguaiana”, English Wikipedia.

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