Backlands (47 page)

This should have been obvious. There should have been plans for a third column dispatched from Juazeiro or Vila Nova to meet up with the other two, thereby cutting off all the roads and creating a secure blockade. There was no consideration given to adding another division. There was no time for such an essential measure. The affront to the army and the country had to be avenged quickly.

What they had to do was to get on with the attack. As the commander in chief made preparations in Queimadas, General Savaget set out for Aracajú in early April.

The expedition did not actually start moving until two months later, at the end of June. The fighters, soldiers, and patriots made it to a remote station on the São Francisco valley railway. There, they helplessly waited around for orders.

The great military maneuvering of the month of March had been an illusion. We did not really have an army in the technical sense of the term. A real army consists not only of thousands of men with rifles but, more important, of an administrative, technical, and tactical organization. This includes managing all branches of the service ranging from the movement of vehicles to higher campaign strategy. To summarize, a real army has the administrative capacity to organize and plan military operations.

Everything was lacking. There was no organized way to move supplies. This meant that it was impossible to move rations from the provisional base of operations, although it was connected by rail line to the coast. There was no transportation system robust enough to move about one hundred tons of war munitions.

Moreover, there were no soldiers. The men who got off the train here did not come from training camps. The battalions were incomplete. Their equipment was in bad shape. The men did not have any training in military tactics. The battalions had to be filled, equipped, clothed, supplied, and trained.

Queimadas therefore turned into a basic-training camp for recruits. The days went by in a dull round of drills and maneuvers. Rifle practice was done on an improvised range in an open area in the closest
caatinga
. It is not surprising that the men’s martial enthusiasm faded. They were becoming lazy and bored. Hundreds of fighters marked time in eyesight of the enemy.

Since they did not have adequate transportation systems set up, the battalions had to be transported one at a time to Monte Santo. There the situation was the same. This went on until the middle of June. More than three thousand men were ready for combat but unable to leave. They were living off the meager resources of municipalities that had already been strained by the burden of the previous expeditions.

The one accomplishment of this period, although with difficulty, was the completion of the Queimadas telegraph line under the military engineering corps, led by Lieutenant Colonel Siqueira de Menezes. It was the only constructive thing that was done during this waste of time. Lacking basic supplies and even wagons for transporting munitions, the commander in chief did not hold any staff meetings. He simply stayed there with his encamped men. Their food supply was inadequate. There were a few starving oxen that they found wandering around the parched weed patches on the plains. The quartermaster general’s deputy, Colonel Manuel Gonçalves Campello França, was not able to organize a reliable supply service from Queimadas that would have given them at least one week of reserves at a time. When July came around, and the second column was moving from Sergipe to Jeremoabo, they did not even have one sack of flour left in Monte Santo. The threat of starvation stalled the division that was with the head commander of the campaign.

This stagnation demoralized the soldiers and alarmed the country. For something to do, and also to relieve the camp of having to feed a thousand or so men for a few days, two brigades were sent on reconnoitering expeditions to Cumbe and Maçacará. This was the only military maneuver that was carried out and it did nothing to help the men’s exasperation.

One of the detachments, improvised from the Fifth and the Ninth artillery battalions and the Third and Seventh infantries (now detached from the First Brigade), was led by a competent officer who excelled on the battlefield but whose restless personality was unable to cope with inaction of this sort. Along the way, this detachment had seized a mule train headed for the rebel town. Instead of returning to base, they were close to continuing on to the war zone on the isolated Rosário road. Colonel Thompson Flores was not only indulging himself but also reflected the poor morale and state of mind of his men. All of them were ready to rebel against the immobility that had snuffed out their enthusiasm for the campaign. It was all the other officers could do to restrain the commander from following through with his plan.

Some were held back by the thought of how the news of an unexpected attack on Canudos would be taken by General Savaget. They also were concerned about the effect of the delay on the public, which was anxious for the situation to be brought under control. They also considered how the three-month delay favored the enemy, which already had the advantage of three consecutive victories.

This was the main consideration.

General Arthur Oscar Guimarães finally decided to act. His order for the day of June 19 announced his decision. It declared that he would “leave to the objectivity of future historians to justify the delay.”

His communication was not as terse as some of its kind are. The general predicted sure victory over the followers of Antônio Conselheiro, whom he described as the “enemy of the republic.” He warned the troops of the dangers they faced when they entered the backlands. “The enemy will attack us from the side and from our rear,” in the thick of those “damned forests,” with their “roadblocks, trenches, ambushes, and everything else that is most hateful about war.”

Even though his statements were alarming, they were true. The engineering corps reported on the rough terrain that dictated three conditions for the campaign to be successful. The forces had to be well provisioned, they would have to be fast, and their formation would have to be flexible and adapt to changing conditions.

These were three essential and complementary requirements, yet not one of them was met. The troops left base on half rations. They were burdened by a siege cannon that weighed tons. They advanced in brigade formation, with battalions marching four abreast, at intervals of only a few yards.

The obsession with classical warfare still persisted. It was evident in the instructions given, just days before, by the commanders of the various corps. These were no more than a summary of the archaic precepts that any layman can find in Vial’s manuals. It reflected the stubborn notion that the
jagunços
and their stealthy guerrilla fighters could be summarized in a plan with graphs and charts on a general’s desk.

The commander of the expedition focused exclusively on the distribution of detachments. He did not concern himself with the tactical aspect of the campaign. This would be to use the terrain to the best possible advantage and to keep the troops as mobile as possible. His badly distributed troops were going into the unknown, without the support of supply lines. They had to rely on the minimal reconnoitering that had been done and the little information that had been made available by officers of the previous expeditions. There were no practical instructions on how to secure the vanguard and the flanks. The commander was preoccupied with the traditional European order of battle. All the corps were supposed to fall out at the distance prescribed in the manuals. Each brigade, assuming a traditional open battlefield, would be able to move in geometric formations: cordons of infantry, followed by the supporting lines, reinforcements, and reserves. This would give the troops a mechanical precision that was valued by the experts in the art of traditional warfare. The commander cited Ther Brun. He did not want to innovate. He did not have the imagination to suppose that the cold strategist he had invoked might have changed his strategy if he had to face the realities of a backlands war. This European genius would have been no match for the wiles of the colonial captain who roamed the forests in search of runaway slaves. Here he would have faced a moving war, with no rules or rigid plans. It was a guerrilla war
,
marked by sudden assaults at every turn in the road and continuous ambushes.

He was copying instructions that were useless because they were too exact. He was trying to chart what was impossible to foresee. An insurgence that required only an innovative leader and half a dozen courageous and well-trained sergeants was being handed over to the cumbersome bureaucracy of an Old World hierarchical structure. A prescribed number of battalions would become trapped in the narrow, twisting backland trails by terrible adversaries who would fight them on the run. To make matters worse, they were lugging a massive steel Whitworth 32 that weighed almost two tons. This massive weapon, meant for a seaside fortress, only blocked the road, slowed the march, and interfered with the supply trains. The commanders, however, thought they needed this big steel scarecrow to scare the backlands fighters. In the meantime they did not pay attention to what was really important.

For example, the men set out under impossible conditions—on half rations. Their marching formation gave them no protection from attack. They did not have the guarantee of an efficient front guard or scouts along their flanks who could head off ambushes. The scouts they did have were ineffective. They had to march beside the troops and this was impossible to do in the brush. Soldiers wearing cloth uniforms had to make their way through tangled thickets full of thorns and razor-sharp leaves. The result was that their clothing was torn to shreds. They should have been prepared for this situation and issued appropriate clothing, such as the cowmen wore. The leather armor of the
sertanejo
, the sturdy sandals, shin guards, and leggings through which the thorns of the
xique-xiques
could not penetrate, as well as chest protectors and leather hats anchored firmly with chin straps, might have allowed them to travel safely through this vegetation. One or two properly equipped and trained units would have been able to mimic the amazing mobility of the
jagunços
. This especially made sense since there were men in the ranks who were from the North and would have been accustomed to wearing this type of clothing.

This would not have been excessive. The European striped dolmans and highly polished boots were much more out of place in the
caatingas
. Moreover, the attire worn by our worthy fellow citizens who come from these backland regions actually improves the outlines of the human shape, giving it an appearance of athletic strength. It is the best protection from the harsh weather. It reduces the heat of summer and affords protection from the winter cold. The wearer is protected from sudden fluctuations of temperature. In short, it aids in normalizing physiological functions and enhances the performance of the wearer. It is adequate for the harsh conditions of war. It does not tear or fall apart. After a long battle, the exhausted soldier can still wear his uniform intact and can even lie down on a bed of thorns. At the sound of the bugle he can jump up without a wrinkle in his garment. He can walk through the worst rainstorm and not get wet. There may be a raging fire ahead of him but he can walk through it without being harmed. A river with fast-flowing waters might appear in front of him, but he can cross it easily in his waterproof outfit.

The men who planned this expedition would have thought it too strange to innovate in this fashion. They were afraid to protect the soldier’s skin with the tough hides worn by the
jagunço
. Everything had to be right for this expedition. It was correct and also very vulnerable.

The first to leave on the fourteenth was the engineering corps, escorted by a brigade. They had a very difficult task—to prepare the backland trails for the advance of the troops. They had to widen, straighten, level, or cover them with bridgework so the heavy artillery could be brought along paths that were interrupted by pits and caverns and overshadowed by the surrounding hills. They were supposed to make it possible for the Krupp batteries to pass through, along with the rapid-fire cannons and the terrifying 32, which could only be transported on a solid roadway. The road was built. It was opened because of the noble efforts and tenacity of this engineering corps. It ran all the way to the top of Mount Favela, for a distance of about thirty-six miles.

This noteworthy mission was in the hands of Lieutenant Colonel Siqueira de Menezes.

No one had until then understood the task as well or was better suited to it. His sound theoretical training and keen powers of observation made him the only leader for those thousands of men who had to feel their way through an unfamiliar and barbaric region. He surveyed the area carefully in every direction, alone except for one or two assistants. He learned everything he could about the country. This tireless and fearless warrior, who had learned his profession outside of the barracks, surprised even the crudest of backlands fighters. He went off on exploratory treks through the wide highlands or deep into the desert, taking notes, studying the terrain, and often fighting the enemy as he went. Riding limping steeds incapable of even a mild canter, he would dive into the canyons, sweeping through them and up the steep hills on his dangerous reconnoitering ventures. He would show up in Caipã, Calumbi, and Cambaio, everywhere more concerned with his notebook than with his own life.

The unique landscape attracted him. Strange flora and tortured topography, a geognostic structure that was still not studied, lay before him. It was a tumultuous chapter in the history of the earth that no one had read. Often the fearless military man became a deep thinker. A shard of rock, the bloom of a flower, or an interesting feature of the soil would lift him out of the preoccupations of war and into the serene world of science.