EMPRESS OF
PARAGUAY BY JOHN HAGAN
How Irishwoman ELIZA LYNCH became the world’s largest female landowner, helped destroy Latin America’s wealthiest country, and later became its national heroine.
It was an overcast May night in 1961, when Teofilo Chammas scaled the walls of Paris’ Pere Lachaise cemetery and made for the Martin family tomb. Chammas, new to the grave robbing business, had already bribed some of the cemetery staff to ensure that the crypt would be open. The tomb contained five coffins, one of which belonged to Dona Eliza Alicia Lynch-Lopez. Carefully, Chammas removed her skeletal remains and hastily made his escape. Eliza Lynch was going ‘home’ to Paraguay. Despite previously bankrupting the nation and being responsible for the slaughter of half of the male population, Eliza was about to be acclaimed its national heroine. Eliza Alicia Lynch was born in Charleville, County Cork, to affluent parents. On the death of her father (June 1835), Eliza was sent to live with her maternal uncle, the venerable Archbishop of Dublin. During her childhood years, Ireland was in the grip of the devastating potato famine, and in order to flee its ravages, the Lynch family decamped to Paris, where Eliza’s older sister, Corinne, was already living. But Paris too harboured its own dangers, including high unemployment, expensive food and violent street demonstrations. For Eliza, there arose a way out. On 3 June 1850, her fifteenth birthday, she married forty year old, Xavier Quatrefages, a French army vet. It was a union which saved Eliza from the grinding poverty into which the rest of her family had been plunged. Soon, Quatrefages was posted to Algiers, but despite the charm and delight of the Arabian nights, Eliza tired of it, and her husband, whom she referred to as ‘a minor pest’. After three years of marriage, she left him to elope with an aristocratic young Russian cavalry officer. Later, both returned to Paris where they set up home in the fashionable Saint Germain district. Unfortunately, the relationship was fleeting and the teenage Eliza soon found herself alone and without support. She resorted to the only lucrative career open to her – prostitution. Blessed with a Junoesque figure, flowing blonde hair and ready smile, she soon made a reputation for herself as a noted courtesan, attracting many rich and generous lovers. Eventually, Eliza found herself in the salon of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, and, it was here in 1854, she met the man whom she described as ‘the love of my life’. Francisco Solano Lopez, son of the President of Paraguay, was in Paris on a diplomatic mission recruiting engineers to construct South America’s first railroad. Francisco, who scandalized the French with his garish wardrobe and bad breath, is overwhelmed by Eliza’s beauty and charm, while she is attracted to him because of his wealth, status, and the security he seemed to offer. Despite Eliza becoming pregnant, Lopez returned home, but left his mistress enough money to to join THE IRISH SCENE | 86
