Backlands (56 page)

Their plan, however, was just the opposite. The commander in chief had a habit of wavering between two extreme options. His way of overcoming his state of inaction was to leap from inertia to sudden action. He dropped the state of indecision that had paralyzed him on Mount Favela for a wild obsession with charging the enemy. This is reflected in the battle orders issued on the sixteenth. Discarding all precaution, the orders call for violent attacks: More than three thousand bayonets would roll like a tail of steel and flame down the empty bed of the Vaza-Barris.

When the signal to charge is given, no one must avoid enemy fire. Charge without hesitation and with all your strength. After each charge, every soldier will return to his company, each company to its battalion, and so on.

These instructions resonated with the troops. They did not want meticulously drawn battle plans that would prepare them for the unique character of the terrain and the very unusual enemy. They wanted revenge. They had to teach the stupid thugs a lesson and make short work of them. They would club them back with their rifle butts into that hole they called a town. The plan of the day for July 17, ordering the attack for the eighteenth, was greeted with gleeful shouts. The commander in chief held up a vision of victory by editing history:

We should stop to consider this telling “if.” It should have been held for the order of the next day.

. . . if your courage does not fail, if you again prove yourselves to be peerless in bravery, Canudos will be ours tomorrow. We will then rest and the fatherland will thank you for your sacrifice.

Canudos would fall the next day. That was decided. The enemy appeared to sense this resolve because it stopped its harassing rifle fire. He hunkered down, fearful and quiet. The camp was given a respite. The afternoon vibrated with the melodic notes of the bugles, which continued until nightfall.

The plan of attack was now issued in detail. About fifteen hundred men would remain on Mount Favela with General Savaget to guard the troops’ position there. This detachment consisted of Colonel Ignacio Henrique de Gouveia’s Second and Antônino Nery’s Seventh Brigade (a new unit) and the artillery, which was supposed to back up the attack with continuous bombardment. The first column, under General Barbosa, was to march ahead and initiate the battle. It would be followed directly by the cavalry wing and a detachment with the two Krupp 7.5s. The second column would follow.

A total of 3,349 men, in five brigades, were drafted into action. The First Brigade, under Colonel Joaquim Manoel de Medeiros, consisted of just two battalions. These were the Fourteenth and the Thirtieth under the respective commands of Captain João Antunes Leite and Lieutenant Colonel Antônio Tupy Ferreira Caldas. The Third Brigade, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Emydio Dantas Barreto, comprised the Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Twenty-fifth under Captains Antônio Nunes de Salles, Alberto Gavião Pereira Pinto, Carlos Augusto de Souza, and José Xavier dos Anjos. The Fourth Brigade, under Colonel Carlos Maria da Silva Telles, included the Twelfth and Thirty-first battalions, led by Captains José Luiz Bucelle and José Lauriano da Costa. Colonel Julião Augusto de Serra Martins had replaced General Savaget as column commander. This detachment, comprising the Thirty-fourth and Fortieth battalions of Major Olegario Sampaio and Captain J. Villar Coutinho, was thus led by Major Nonato de Seixas. Finally, there was the Sixth Brigade, under Colonel Donaciano de Araújo Pantoja, made up of the Twenty-sixth and Thirty-second battalions, under Captain M. Costa and Major Collatino Goes. The Fifth Bahian Police, led by regular army captain Salvador Pires de Carvalho Aragão, was attached to the second column as an independent unit.

Lieutenant Colonel Siqueira de Menezes was to lead a diversionary movement to the right, along the counterforts near the Old Ranch House, while the expedition launched the attack.

The list of officers indicates that there were some who would consider Canudos a minor field of combat. Carlos Telles was the stouthearted hero of the siege of Bagé. Tupy Caldas, with his irascible, nervous personality, had earned a reputation for courage in the fierce combat with southern federalists at Inhanduhy. Olympio da Silveira, artillery commander—a tall, tanned figure—was a modest soldier, mindless of glory but fearless in the face of the enemy. While his life had been spent in the chaos of battle, he seemed to be guided by a strong sense of direction. Among the junior officers were many ambitious young men wanting to make their reputations and eager for action. They were a boisterous bunch who did not know the meaning of fear. Salvador Pires de Carvalho Aragão, commander of the Fifth Police, had organized the detachment by himself with backcountry recruits from settlements along the São Francisco. Wanderley was fated to die a hero in the last phase of the campaign. The intrepid gaucho Vieira Pacheco led the lancer squadron. Fructuoso Mendes and Duque Estrada had the strength to tear down the stone walls of the church with their bare hands. Carlos de Alencar was left without a command when all the men in the cavalry wing he commanded were shot and killed. There were others.

All of them were impatient for the battle to start, because they were certain it would lead to a decisive victory. Following tradition, the soldiers advised those who stayed behind on Mount Favela to have lunch ready, because they would be tired and hungry when they returned.

The columns set off well after sunrise on the morning of the eighteenth. They headed east down the slopes, toward the Jeremoabo highway, in a countermarch to the right of the camp. After a while they turned left, still descending but heading straight for the banks of the Vaza-Barris. As they continued at a normal pace, they did not encounter a trace of the enemy. It was as if the
jagunços
had been surprised by the wheeling maneuver. The only inconvenience was the two Krupps, which groaned as they pulled them over the rough road. There were a few slight obstacles on the way, but they were quickly resolved. The only sound was the dull, menacing tread of marching feet.

The sad landscape was starting to come alive. The birds had long abandoned the area because for the past month the air had been filled with bullets. The morning was bright and without birdsong. Little by little, the desert, cocooned in silence, came into sight. The bare hills and the gently undulating tablelands, the
caatingas
with their falling leaves, already showing winter’s brown-gray stains in July, betrayed the slow spread of the drought. The plain that rolls away endlessly to the north and extends northeast as far as the Canabrava Range, and on the south to Mount Favela, swelled in a series of gradual elevations to the west until it merged with the faraway peaks of the Cambaio range. Dividing into scattered ganglia, the Vaza-Barris meanders through this plain. At one bend, after flowing due west it abruptly turns south and after a few hundred yards doubles back to the east, totally changing the flow of its current and forming an irregular peninsula with the settlement at its end. All the
sertanejos
had to do to ward off an attack was to spread out in a way to connect the parallel branches of the river at the nearest point, along the chord of the semicircle produced by this natural moat. The offensive would come from a direction perpendicular to that chord. After crossing the lowlands beyond Trabubú, the army would cross the dry bed of the Vaza-Barris. Making one last turn to the left, it would launch a frontal charge. Before it had completed this wheeling movement, the enemy cut it off.

It was seven in the morning. The scouts were the first to feel enemy fire as they reached the left bank of the river. Nearby was a hill that was covered to the top with primitive stone trenches of irregular shape that looked like crumbling walls. The settlement, about fifteen hundred yards ahead, was hidden from sight. They could barely see the church towers over the hilltops. Two tall crosses rose in sharp relief in the morning sun.

The soldiers of the Thirtieth Battalion returned the
jagunço
fire without stopping their march. They stepped up their pace as most of the First Brigade and four battalions of the Third Brigade, marching tightly together, arrived at the riverbed and crossed it. The entire first column was now ready to enter the combat zone.

The small obstacles in front of the two Krupps slowed down the detachments in the rear. This relieved the pressure of having all the battalions arrive together. General Barbosa took advantage of the break to form a line of battle. The First Brigade was to take sharpshooter formation on the right. The Third Brigade made the same formation on the left. The cavalry wing, galloping at breakneck speed, was to ride around the right flank and block the enemy there.

This general maneuver was a bad idea, as was to be expected. In addition to the fact that it had to be accomplished in the enemy’s sight, it was not appropriate for the terrain. The physical conditions for such tactics were lacking here. In this plan, the line would have the brigades spread out over a distance of one and one-quarter miles and divided into vertical planes in accordance with the slope of the hills and depth of the valleys. As the combat units peeled off and assumed new battle positions, they would expose their flanks to the enemy and be forced to take weak and precarious positions. No matter how temporary this situation was, the outcome was uncertain. The plan was not practical.

It was also very dangerous. This was clear from the rugged nature of the terrain to the strength of the enemy, which had immediately attacked the entire front with vicious fire. The plan was inadequate from the beginning. As they broke away from the loosely configured lines, rows of bayonets charged up the hills and scaled them with great effort. But they did not have the impetus and speed that was needed for this maneuver to succeed. Since they could not perform the maneuver the way it should have been done, they began to change details, which caused confusion in the ranks. The Third Brigade began to fight on the right wing of the Thirteenth Battalion, contrary to plan. The Ninth Battalion on the far left descended into the bed of the Vaza-Barris and began to move forward under heavy fire from both sides of the river. The Twenty-fifth, the Fifth, and the right wing of the Seventh were somewhere in the middle.

It was not possible to complete a scattering formation while under fire in this landscape. As the detachments, companies, and battalions split off to the right, which was the only side possible for military formations, they ended up in a maze of twisting gullies, and before long they were lost and flailing about with no sense of direction. They could not see the rest of their comrades or even hear the bugles. Attempting to fall back, thinking they were making progress in this labyrinthine line of march, they often had advanced just a few paces when they would suddenly run into other detachments that were heading at double-quick pace in the other direction.

As a result, they went completely afoul of their plans. The general who had led them into these narrow troughs was later confounded about what had happened here. He was at a loss for words. In his plan of the day he employed a crass expression from the language of the gauchos by saying that the troops got “all balled up.”

By the time the second column appeared, a half hour later, their losses were heavy. They had only two more brigades, and just one in reserve, the Sixth, under General Arthur Oscar de Andrade Guimarães. Again, these detachments should have fanned out to the right, the only feasible option under these conditions. This would have cut off the enemy along the entire front, preventing any flanking action, and would have assisted the final push. The battlefield suggested this, since it was a broad area with all points leading to the church square. But obvious as they were, these tactics were not employed. As the support brigades came up under terrible fire, throwing their men into disarray, they could not form any line at all. They should have tried to join the brigades ahead of them to reinforce them and round out their movement. Or they could have taken up positions on either wing, broadening the formation in a way that would push back at these rough opponents with a band of steel.

Colonel Carlos Telles, in his report on the battle, later asserted that the troops did not keep to the correct formation. “Nevertheless their orders were to advance and charge.”

They advanced and they charged.

It was eight on a beautiful backlands morning. It was glowing with the reflecting light of the naked earth and its quartzite folds. If the troops had been able to add to all this sparkling beauty the steel glint of three thousand bayonets, it would have been a singularly magnificent sight.

Instead it was devastating. Ten mixed battalions headed down the hillsides. Pushing through the lowlands they scaled the opposite slopes. When they reached the top, they would go down the other side with a great noise, only to have to repeat the motion once again. The hills stretched out endlessly on all sides. A sea of screaming men rolled up their flanks, overflowed into the plains below, frothed down the inclines, and then was caught in the deep ravines below.

The invisible
jagunços
in the meantime continued their deadly fire, sometimes falling back, sometimes jabbing at the army’s flanks, and sometimes surrounding it completely.

It was impossible to predict the outcome. The soldiers began to gain ground gradually as they captured hill after hill. They would stop for a moment at the edge of a trench, and below they would find the hot exploded cartridges that indicated the abrupt flight of the enemy. After a while they were not sure which direction of attack they should follow. The enemy return fire, coming from all different directions, was meant to confuse them. After a while longer there was a more consistent and sustained fire from the extreme right, where it would not be expected. This made them think the
sertanejos
were planning a vigorous attack on their right flank, which would bring the exultant enemy directly into their disordered midst. But then they realized this had been just a sideshow, and that the enemy had lost their opening for a focused attack. This was discovered by the lancer squadron on a daring reconnoitering mission. Riding at top speed into the fire, down the slope of a hill, they found themselves facing about eighty
jagunços.
They were shooting from a corral. They were routed out by lance point and horse hoof in a vicious charge. The lancers chased them up a slope that was not as steep as the others until they came to the summit where a wide plateau unfolded before them, stretching to the northeast. The settlement appeared unexpectedly before their eyes, less than three hundred yards away.