The Paraguayan Provisional government of 1869 consisted of Colonel Carlos Loizaga, Cirilo Antonio Rivarola and Jose Diaz de Bedoya.

The remaining member Antonio Rivarola was then relieved of his duties by the National Assembly which established a provisional Presidency to which he was elected and assumed post on August 31, 1870.

But only 12 hours after, in a plot planned by Cirilo Antonio Rivarola, Candido Bareiro and with the help of some Allied forces, he was overthrown on September 1, 1870, in the first coup after the war.

[2] In 1876 he negotiated and signed with the Argentine Minister Bernardo de Irigoyen the Machaín-Irigoyen Treaty on February 3, 1876, under which Paraguay officially ceded Misiones Province and part of Gran Chaco territory.

When hearing the first shots he went out to one of the balconies that opened to the Libertad Street (nowadays called Eligio Ayala) shouting: "The President is being killed".

He was imprisoned and placed in the same cell as his defendants, among whom was José Dolores Molas, an army officer who a few years earlier had led a revolt against the government in Asuncion.