[Fiji Hill]

These guys might qualify for an expanded list:

• Francisco Macias, first president of Equatorial Guinea, from 1968-1979. His repressive Third World Socialist policies forced about half the population to flee the country while those who remained barely lived at a subsistence level.

• Francisco Solano López, president of Paraguay. His decision in 1865 to go to war with Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, all at the same time turned Paraguay into a nation of women when the war ended five years later.

• Jan Matthys, a radical Protestant leader who incited a rebellion in Münster, Germany, in 1534 that led to a murderous and repressive regime in the city that ended when the radicals were overthrown in 1535.

• Herod the Great, king of Judea. Although adept at holding on to power--he picked the losing side of a civil war in the Roman Empire won by the ruthless and murderous Octavian, yet survived--he was a tyrant and a mass murderer even though the worst crime attributed to him, the murder of the children of Bethlehem, may not have taken place.

[MuttTheHoople]

Herod the Great, king of Judea. Although adept at holding on to power--he picked the losing side of a civil war in the Roman Empire won by the ruthless and murderous Octavian, yet survived--he was a tyrant and a mass murderer even though the worst crime attributed to him, the murder of the children of Bethlehem, may not have taken place.

If it's in the Bible, it took place. What I will say is that killing some infants in a small village doesn't rank up there in the minds of the contemporaries of that day...especially when you consider that the Romans crucified Spartacus' army and lined them for miles and miles on the Appian Way.

[wardaddy]

Lopez didn’t start the Triple Alliance war by his lonesome

Argentina invaded Uruguay as I recall first and created a sympathetic state there

Brazil and Argentina were feeling their oats and Paraguay was worried and struck first in the Matto Grosso

A hot humid grassland and jungle area suited mostly for cattle

Anyhow Paraguay started with a nice army but was eventually decimated as you said from Brazil Argentina and Uruguay

It was foolish but Lopez was goaded and threatened

You can still feel the effects in Asunción