George Thompson (engineer)
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George Thompson (1839-1876) was an English engineer and military officer who was in charge of the Paraguayan military engineering during the
Paraguayan War The Paraguayan War, also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, was a South American war that lasted from 1864 to 1870. It was fought between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, the Empire of Brazil, and Uruguay. It was the deadlies ...
. He later wrote a history of this conflict that became one of the main sources on the subject.


Early life

Thompson was born in
Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...
on 26 March 1839. In 1849 he was sent to a school near
Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...
, which he left in 1852, continuing his studies near
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
until 1854. From 1855 to 1857 he served an apprenticeship at the government works in
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
, and was put on the engineering staff of the gasworks in that island. He returned to England in 1857 and soon afterwards was engaged for one year as a draughtsman at a locomotive works. That was the total sum of his engineering experience when he left for South America in 1858, aged 19.


Paraguay

In the middle of the nineteenth century the government of
Carlos Antonio López Carlos Antonio López Ynsfrán (November 4, 1792 – September 10, 1862) served as leader of Paraguay from 1841 to 1862. Early life López was born at Manorá (Asunción) on November 4, 1792, as one of eight children. He graduated from Real C ...
, determined to open up Paraguay to modern technology, hired for that purpose a considerable number of technicians, mainly British. In September 1858 Thompson joined the staff of the Asunción–Villarica railway in Paraguay, working under the British engineers George Paddison, Burrell and Valpy. Although a young man, he was soon considered to be one of the best
Guaraní Guarani, Guaraní or Guarany may refer to Ethnography * Guaraní people, an indigenous people from South America's interior (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia) * Guaraní language, or Paraguayan Guarani, an official language of Paraguay * ...
scholars amongst the English, besides speaking fluently five or six other languages.


The Paraguayan War

After the war between Paraguay and the allied forces of Brazil and the Argentine and Uruguayan Republics broke out, Thompson offered his services as a military engineer to the Paraguayan President,
Francisco Solano López Francisco Solano López Carrillo (24 July 1827 – 1 March 1870) was President of Paraguay from 1862 until his death in 1870. He was the eldest son of Juana Pabla Carrillo and of President Carlos Antonio López, Francisco's predecessor. ...
, in 1865. The offer was accepted and he joined the army in June of that year, taking a prominent role in the war until the end of 1868. At the war's outbreak Thompson was a railway engineer and had no military experience at all. Furthermore, throughout the war, Paraguay's nominal chief military engineer, Hungarian colonel Wisner de Morgenstern (who had designed the
Fortress of Humaitá The Fortress of Humaitá (1854–68), 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 o ...
) was seriously ill, and so the work fell on Thompson's shoulders. Thus an untried 26-year-old man became the ''de facto'' chief military engineer of the Paraguayan army: Improvising, he used the material and human resources of the country and made earthworks, fortifications and artillery emplacements. His most notable works were the fortifications of Angostura and the trenches – constructed, surreptitiously, overnight, in daring proximity to the Allies' positions – of the Boquerón del Sauce and Curupaity; Angostura held the allied fleet at bay for several weeks, and the Curupaity trenches led to the Allies' worst defeat of the war. Thompson was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Paraguayan army and received from President López the decoration of ''Caballero del órden del mérito'' (Knight of the Order of Merit). Although forced to capitulate at Angostura, the allies allowed him the honours of war, as he refused to surrender at discretion.


After the war

Thompson spent a few months in England in 1869, during which he wrote ''The War in Paraguay: With a Historical Sketch of the Country and Its People and Notes Upon the Military Engineering of the War''. Since Thompson had been the foreigner with best access to President López – from whom he took his orders in GuaraníThompson, 327. – and privy to many military matters, the book is an important source on the history of the war, one of the earliest of its kind and widely used by later historians. Thompson then returned to South America and married a Paraguayan woman by whom he had three children. After some topographical work in Córdoba, Argentina, he returned to Paraguay in 1870 and became the engineer and manager of the Asunción–Villarica railway. He died in Asunción in March 1876, aged 37.


Notes


References

* * * * (Note: Not all bound copies of this important source book have a complete set of maps. A scanned version of a relatively good copy at the Boston Public Library was accessed at the Internet Archiv

on 29 April 2015. However, the Boston copy lacks pages 71-74 which describe the
Battle of Riachuelo The Battle of Riachuelo was a large and decisive naval battle of the Paraguayan War between Paraguay and the Empire of Brazil. By late 1864, Paraguay had scored a series of victories in the war, but on 11 June 1865, its naval defeat by the Brazi ...
. These pages may be accessed from e.g. the Cornell University copy, also uploaded to the Internet Archiv

accessed 9 May 2016.) * * *''Batería paraguaya en Angostura dirigida por los comandantes Carrillo y Thompson'': watercolour (21 x 30.3 cm), Museo Histórico de Buenos Aires "Brigadier General Cornelio de Saavedra" {{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, George 1839 births 1876 deaths People from Greenwich British civil engineers British military engineers 19th-century British engineers Paraguayan Army officers Paraguayan military personnel of the Paraguayan War Military history of Paraguay