Backlands (52 page)

There could have been two hundred, or two thousand,
jagunços.
Once again the expedition faced the enigma of the campaign. Since their passage was blocked, they had to make a radical choice. They either had to fall back, fighting as they went, or detour around the impenetrable terrain by finding another path, risking a flanking movement that could result in their utter defeat. The final option was to storm the hills and take out the enemy. This alternative was the simplest and the riskiest. Colonel Telles suggested it, and General Savaget approved it. In an official report in which the general admits in disgust that the enemy had brought his men to a stop, he affirms that he could not allow “two or three hundred bandits to bring the second column to a halt.” Only about a third of the men were presently involved in the action. This turned out to be to their advantage. They could not have undertaken the attack if all of his men had been engaged in a mass defense.

The plan unfolded as follows: “The Fifth Brigade, which had been waiting in the
caatingas
, would make a charge on the left, along the river bank, with the purpose of routing the enemy from the hills in the center and lateral slopes. The Fourth Brigade, on the right flank, would assemble in battle formation at the intersection of the highroad and the plain.” The lance squadron would charge through the center of these two detachments. The Sixth Brigade was not going to participate but would remain in the rear as a reserve and to guard the supply train.

The five battalions selected for the attack were arranged in perpendicular formation, reinforced in one of the wings by the columns of Colonel Serra Martins’s advance troops. Back four hundred yards to the right was the Telles brigade, with the lancers on its left. This formation would have looked like a huge hammer if it had been seen from above the plain. The charge up the slopes that marked the climax of the battle was very much like a blow by sixteen hundred bayonets against the mountain.

At the foothills to the left was the mouth of the defile. The cavalry charged through it at breakneck speed. The Fourth Brigade skirted the gap and charged up the slopes. The
jagunços
had not anticipated a bold move of this kind, which was aimed directly at their positions. For the first time they were taken by surprise. They had been there to cut off the two narrow passages, thinking they would be able to crush the entire column. Now they were forced to abandon their positions and fall back. The charge of the Fourth Brigade would decide the outcome of the engagement.

It was impressive. At first they moved forward in perfect military formation. A shining row of bayonets, hundreds of yards long, swept across the foot of the hills. Then they started to climb. Swaying back and forth, the line broke and became fragmented. The
sertanejos
, helped as always by the uneven ground, gave them the brunt of their fire. With the lines broken at all points, the troops came on in platoon formation. They spread out and ran blind up the rugged mountainside.

Colonel Telles led the right flank of the Thirty-first Infantry and had his horse shot out from under him by a bullet that went through the saddle. He jumped onto another mount and pulled the scattered units together even though he could barely make out the two detachments under his command since they were all mixed together. With shouts of encouragement, he led the men on a charge of the nearest trenches. They found these deserted but at the bottom of each one were piles of exploded cartridges that were still hot. The
jagunços
had followed their accustomed practice of sneaking away, while luring the enemy on and shifting the field of combat. In a short time, the Fourth Brigade could be seen scaling the walls of the gorge. It was also possible to see the dead and wounded falling into its depths, where seventy men of the lancer squadron and the artillery had first entered the defile. They were now trapped between the heavily fortified trenches on both sides of the river, where the gorge splits and resembles a floodgate. On the left slopes the Fifth Brigade had also broken formation and was fighting in a disorganized fashion.

The battle had escalated to awesome proportions. Five battalions were struggling on the hills, with no discernable progress after hours of combat. They were losing men and falling back under enemy fire. The wounded staggered and fell to the ground, sometimes leaning on their rifles or wandering in a dazed fashion down the mountain through the dead and wounded.

Below, in the narrow valley, the horses of the lancer squadron were galloping in every direction, without their riders, and neighing in terror. The men of this unit were now making a bold charge at the fortified river trenches.

In the ensuing chaos, a few incredibly brave men of the platoons of the Thirty-first Infantry made their way to the highest trenches on the right slope. The
jagunços
were forced to abandon them and flee. It was not their customary stealthy retreat. As they ran over the heights, clutching their muskets, rolling and sliding down the slopes, the troops caught sight of the enemy for the first time. They gave chase and the attack was resumed with new energy all down the line. A coordinated forward surge spread all the way to the end of the left wing. This meant victory. A few minutes later the two brigades pushed at double-quick time into the last and only passageway of the gorge.

The
jagunços
began to regroup after the confusion and disorder of their flight. They went back to their same enigmatic practice of resistance. Leaving their positions and the dangerous gorge passage unmanned, they began to harass the troops with sporadic gunfire.

General Savaget took a bullet and fell off his horse, along with his adjutant and a part of his staff, just as the column was entering the gorge on the right. They could hear from a distance the triumphant shouts of the advance guard as they pushed through. As always, the
sertanejos
were making sure that the troops did not feel complete success, emerging inexplicably again from the destruction of a lost battle. They had been beaten but they did not allow themselves to be crushed. They had been routed out from all their positions but they found other places to take cover. They were the losers but still the aggressors; they fled and killed on the way, just like the Parthians. It was certain that they had suffered a serious defeat. The battalion that was credited with the feat was later given the name “the elites.” The battle of Cocorobó was indecisive at first, stalled by three hours of ineffective exchange of fire. The daring bayonet charge at the end, however, won the day. Even if it was not a strictly professional military maneuver, it was an appropriate action in the circumstances. The soldier from Rio Grande do Sul stood out in the ranks. The fearless gaucho, while not suited for the challenges of a drawn-out conflict, has no equal in sudden strikes.

The infantry of the South is a shock machine. Others may exhibit better discipline and precision on the firing line or in the performance of complex maneuvers. In hand-to-hand combat, by sword or bayonet, these two-legged centaurs attack the enemy as if they were chasing the wild horses of the pampas. In the case of this enormous undertaking, they were lucky, and they performed brilliantly.

As the troops set up camp beyond the gorge that afternoon, they tallied their losses. The casualties totaled 178 men, 27 killed and the others wounded. This included the officers: 2 dead and 10 wounded. The Sixth Brigade, which had not participated in the combat, was tasked with burying the dead. This detachment was at the rear of the other two, on a wide tableland overlooking the highway.

From here on the march turned into a continuous skirmish. It was slow. The entire day of the twenty-sixth was spent on the short journey to the confluence of the Macambira, just a mile or so beyond Cocorobó.

General Savaget then told the men that the next day, the twenty-seventh, on orders from high command, they were to assemble at the outskirts of Canudos. Here the six brigades would come together to attack the settlement. The village should be very close now. They could already see the thatched huts spread over the hillsides in the special manner we have described. There they were, amidst the concealed pits and trenches, camouflaged by bromeliad stalks. They were fortresses that were also homes. The second column was on the last stretch of the long march. The Sixth Brigade led the van, followed by the Thirty-third Infantry. They entered the outskirts of the huge citadel and had barely gone a mile and a half—most of the column was still in the camp at the rear—when Colonel Pantoja’s battalions were attacked from all sides.

The measure that had worked so well the previous day was quickly adopted. The Twenty-sixth, Thirty-third, and Thirty-ninth battalions formed a line with bayonets in position and made a scrambling dash up the hillsides. From there all they could see were countless other hills, with the same rugged profiles, stretching out for miles and miles.

From all of those hills, from the huts scattered all around them, came lethal rifle fire. The huge battlefield was ideal for the enemy’s style of fighting. Once they had taken one of these hilltops there were hundreds of others still left. To go back to the lowlands was to fall into a net of gullies. The battle was going to be an exhausting process of spiraling up and down the sinuous pathways along the slopes. A few miles ahead, Canudos was a mournful sight. From a distance it looked like a deserted open mine.

A battle broke out near the settlement and it was a fierce contest. After a short time, the three advance battalions realized they could not hold out. Accurate fire from the huts and trenches crowded with
jagunços
was depleting their ranks. A company from the Thirty-ninth was literally crushed when it tried to assault one of the crude fortresses. When they arrived at the hilltop the men saw they were on the brink of a wide trench that circled the hut that stood there. A barrage of fire came from the cracks in the wall of the hut and from the trench. It mowed them down at close range. The commander went down, and immediately after that two subalterns were killed. They finally secured the position under the direction of a sergeant, but it was at a great loss of life.

The single brigade was incapable of handling the resistance, and so it was reinforced by two others. These were followed successively by the Twelfth, Thirty-first, Thirty-fifth, and Fortieth battalions. Now over a thousand bayonets were in action, almost the entire corps. The
jagunços
now fell back, slowly, retreating from hill to hill. If they were routed from one spot, they would pop up at another, forcing their attackers to continuously run up and down the slopes. The intention seemed to be to lure them to the settlement while exhausting them under the tortuous stream of fire. The
sertanejos
were falling back on their usual tactics. The battlefield started to recede under the very feet of the attackers. The bayonet charges here were not as brilliant as at Cocorobó—their effect was diminished by the agility of the enemy’s retreat. After a bold rush up a hill, the platoons would find no one. There, on top of the hill, they would be met by fire from opposite hills. Then they would tear down the hill to find cover in the lowlands, only to have to repeat the process over and over again. They would make the same exhausting climb and once more find themselves dangerously exposed to enemy bullets.

Now their losses were heavy. A significant number of privates and several high-ranking officers had been killed or wounded. The commander of the Twelfth Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Tristão de Alencar Sucupira, was mortally wounded as he tried to join the advance guard. The commander of the Thirty-third, Lieutenant Colonel Virginio Napoleão Ramos, was also wounded in action and had to be carried to the rear with Captain Joaquim de Aguiar, detachment commissary. Many others were sacrificed to this bloody battle of Macambira, which got its name from the nearby farm. The terrain did not allow any maneuvers, which would have blocked the purposeful dizzying retreat of the
jagunços.
The only guarantee of success was in a display of personal courage. Some officers, like the captain of the Thirty-second, who had more than one serious wound, refused to stop fighting and ignored orders to leave the firing line. The line stretched over two miles. The hills were on fire and the boom of the artillery echoed through the lowlands rolling toward Canudos.

Night put a stop to the fighting. The expedition was now about three-fifths of a mile away from the settlement. They could see the tall white towers of the new church gleaming in the growing shadows of dusk.

They were finally reaching the destination of their long march from Jeremoabo. The second column had paid a terrible price. Its losses on this day alone totaled 148 men, with 40 deaths; 6 officers were killed and 8 wounded. The total losses came to 327, the price of traversing less than eight miles from Cocorobó to their present location.

But the prospects for success looked good. General Savaget’s troops had punctually kept to their preestablished schedule. Minutes after they had set up camp, the silence of the
sertão
night was interrupted by the long booming of cannon fire echoing in the cliffs of Mount Favela. The advance guard of the first column had begun to shell the settlement.

On the twenty-eighth, they moved quickly and took a position on a small plateau about a mile from the village. They now took their turn bombarding it as two battalions of the Carlos Telles brigade went ahead to do some quick reconnoitering. A cavalry detail, led by a valiant officer who would soon meet his death, Sublieutenant Wanderley, explored the terrain on the left flank as far as Mount Favela. At eight o’clock in the morning intense cannon fire resumed.

At headquarters, just a few steps away, the second column was ready for the attack. They had gotten to this point after crossing 175 miles of the backlands and engaging in a three-day battle at the end of the march.