page_title: Fortress of Humaitá
section_title: Endgame
hierarchical_section_title: Fortress of Humaitá / Endgame
caption_attribution_description: English: The Allies close round Humaitá.
context_page_description: The Fortress of Humaitá, known metaphorically as the Gibraltar of South America, was a Paraguayan military installation near the mouth of the River Paraguay. A strategic site without equal in the region, "a fortress the likes of which had never been seen in South America", it was "the key to Paraguay and the upper rivers". It played a crucial role in the deadliest conflict in the continent's history – the Paraguayan War – of which it was the principal theatre of operations.
  The site was a sharp horseshoe bend in the river; practically all vessels wishing to enter the Republic of Paraguay – and indeed to steam onwards to the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso – were forced to navigate it. The bend was commanded by a 6,000-foot line of artillery batteries, at the end of which was a chain boom which, when raised, detained the shipping under the guns. The navigable channel was only 200 yards wide and ran in easy reach of the artillery.
context_section_description: On 19 February 1868 when the river was unusually high six Brazilian ironclad vessels were ordered to dash past Humaitá during the hours of darkness, which they did with no great difficulty because by then the chain boom was anyway lying in the river bed.  The Paraguayans stopped resupplying Humaitá by river and it was starved out.  The fortress was finally captured in the Siege of Humaitá, an operation that culminated on 5 August 1868.  It was razed pursuant to the Treaty of the Triple Alliance.  It was the decisive year of the Paraguayan War.
caption: The endgame: the Allies close round Humaitá.  It took the Allies more than two years to go the "seven leagues" from the invasion point at 1 to the fall of the fortress at 2.  Note the scale on the map is only 10 miles.  (Base map sketched by Commander A.J. Kennedy, R.N.)
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