It's been a few years now. The Paraguayan fleet was destroyed by the Imperial Brazilian Navy and their ships patrol the Parana and Uruguay rivers, usually facing heavy oposition from Paraguayan-AC batteries. Regular artillery, however, isn't effective against heavly armored Brazilian monitors, although primitive sea mines are setup from time to time in the rivers, sucessfully stopping the ships. Urquiza leads a contingent of AC's forces into Uruguay, but their supply situation is dire due Brazilian naval superiority in the Uruguay river. Paraguayan forces engange the Brazilian east of the Uruguay river, into Brazilian territory but the Imperial Army have managed to stop their advance and are slowly pushing them west. The AC is weakened and suffering internal rebelions, witch are put down by the armies that should be fighting the Brazilian-Uruguayan alliance and sometimes by their Paraguayan allies.
BA's army OTOH is taking a hard time trying to conquer Mapuche's land. This isn't a time of Remington rifles and smokeless gunpowder and Indians, heavly backed by Chile are putting a heavy fight. The campaign is bloody, costly and so far has shielded little benefit. Mitre is also worried about an inminent AC's collapse and a military defeat witch will lead to a Brazilian-Uruguayan invasion. While he sees the oportunity to unify the country, he attempts to play it carefully, and the BA's ambassador in Rio de Janeiro is trying to negotiate a peace treaty. However, as elections draw near a young and obscure politician attracts crowds with a distintc jingoistic speech. His name is Carlos Tejedor and he demands that the "powerful BA's army" stops chasing indians in the desert and uses it's power to march into AC and restore BA's to "its proper place". With all the rigging, fraud and everything Mitre can do to have his dolphin win the election, Tejedor wins the elections. Within months an informal truce takes place between BA and the Mapuches and the army begins to assemble for an offensive against AC's southern flank.
Seeing the danger for AC, Domingo Sarmiento, AC's ambassador in Chile, decides to do one of the things he used to make while in exile: try to use Chile to give trouble to BA, and quickly encourages Chilenean leadership to ocuppy the "unclaimed and rich lands" of Patagonia. While Chile has it's own issues with the Mapuches and doesn't want to mess with them, they decide to use their modern navy to dissembark in the unclaimed Patagonic Atlantic Coast and Tierra del Fuego. In the meantime BA has declared war against AC and Paraguay. In Uruguay Urquiza can't decide who to curse first: Tejedor, Sarmiento, the Brazilian Navy, the gunpowder manufacturer he's buying to or the shelf he just hit with his head while receiving the news. He decides to curse the shelf first and writes to the Entre Rios' senators to clear the mess they've got themselves into even if that means unifying under BA's hegemony.
In the South Atlantic, though, Chilenean marines disembark in a Welsh settlement in Patagonia. They pass the night there and some of them, drunk, began fighting and stealing around. Other marines join up those guys and by the morning the settlement has been looted, women raped and men killed. They leave by noon and later that same day a couple of Welsh fishing boats mourn in the town they discover the looting and after realizing their wives were raped two different sailboats set sail: one towards Buenos Aires, the other one towards the Falklands. Tejedor can't commit it's small navy nor troops to fight the veterans Chileneans and Brazil is too commited in pushing the Paraguayan forces out of their territory and their navy to keep them unsupplied to help. The British forces in the Falklands, however, quickly dispatch marines to the Patagonia and begin to patrol the area while asking for reinforcements. A British warship challenges a Chilenean ironclad in one of those first patrols but the Chilenean ship, although wounded, manages to sink the British one. Notified of it, the British ambassador demands Tejedor to declare war on Chile as the British ship was actually protecting British citizens in a land BA claims as it own but can't control. Otherwise, Britain will protect its citizens by stationing her forces where she wants. Feeling his about to loose all Patagonia if he doesn't, the BA Congress declare war on Chile. Their allies, Brazil and Uruguay, doesn't follow and AC is now in an anckward position, as they are cobelligerant with Chile against BA, but Chile claims a territory AC wants to make it's own and can't occupy at the moment. Word also arrives at Madrid that Chile has involved herself in a war with the UK, and the Spanish government begins to think in the rematch of the war they've just fought, lost, and isn't officially over.
