Backlands (57 page)

In the meantime, one by one, disorderly platoons of infantry scrambled up the slope.

The situation was coming to a climax.

There was a relatively flat area near the outlying houses that dotted the opposite slope, about three hundred yards from the churches. It was better suited for maneuvers. They made for this point, in small groups and without any type of order, just barely staying with their brigades. The Fifth marched on the right, the Third and Fourth in the center, and the Sixth, the last to join the action, was on the left along the river.

This was the most critical moment of the battle.

The troops were completely exposed on the hillside, particularly at their right and center. Their position was in target range of the church towers and on a level with the upper shelf of the settlement, which climbed the slope to the north. From this point to the far end of the square to the west, covering the entire quadrant for a distance of a mile and a quarter, issued a huge blast of fire. The brigades continued to advance. Their movements were incoherent and did not benefit their aim or their ability to act decisively. They had no plan to guide them. Suddenly, in all the confusion in the ranks, the men began to run out of ammunition. Each soldier had only brought 150 cartridges in his pouch. They had to stop entire battalions, in the heat of battle and under enemy fire, to break open the munitions cases and distribute the cartridges.

Making things worse, guerrillas were now able to confront their attackers at close range. In addition to the heavy fire coming from the holes in the walls of the settlement, bold guerrillas were moving into the army’s midst, keeping up a scattering fire on the right flank. They put big holes into the ranks. Occasional shots were heard that indicated the presence of sharpshooters. They fired only infrequently but their keen aim brought entire platoons to a halt.

One episode illustrates this.

It happened during the last stage of the attack. The troops were reinforced by the Fourth Brigade, under Colonel Telles, whose entire staff had been lost. They were crossing the last slopes. The farthest detachments on this flank, who had suffered heavy punishment, pressed swiftly to the right to try to repel an enemy they could not see on the empty plain, even though their view was unobstructed for miles. On a guess, they attacked in the direction of a leafy
umbú
tree on their right. It was the only tree around. Shots were being fired quickly, but in single succession, as if from a lone marksman. The bullets hit their mark, felled the soldiers, and depleted the ranks with lethal regularity. Some of the soldiers stopped short in disbelief, unable to comprehend such a barrage from a flat stretch of ground where there was not the slightest mound where a shooter could take cover. Others kept running toward the tree. When they were a few steps away, they finally saw a bronzed, stony face peering over the rim of a pit. Jumping out of the hole without dropping his weapon, the
jagunço
glided down the hill and disappeared into the labyrinth of gullies below. About three hundred cartridges in the trench proved that this fierce man hunter had been there, in that well-placed dugout, for a long time. The earth all around was pockmarked with similar bunkers. Every one had the same pile of cartridge shells. These were the deadly cartridges that had decimated our lines and made it seem that the ground itself was exploding under the soldiers’ feet. Routed out of these hideouts, the
sertanejos
fell back to other trenches, which in turn issued blazes of rifle fire, until they too had to be abandoned. In the meantime the troops were bearing down on the settlement. They reached the outlying huts around ten in the morning.

Assembled to the east, they moved out along a wide expanse of tableland, which was located on a meridian line and on the west dipped gently to the church square beyond. From this dominant position, they began to occupy the area by forming a winding, uneven line that ran to the Vaza-Barris on the left. Some of the soldiers took cover in the empty huts. Most of them, following officers who at this point proved themselves capable of more worthy endeavors, kept moving forward under heavy, encircling fire until they came to the back of the old church. The Sixth Brigade and the Fifth Police advanced along the dry riverbed and completed the line of offense.

This was as far as they could go. They had occupied a small suburb of this barbaric city but they were unable to complete their mission. Their losses were staggering. The rear guard, encumbered with the dead and wounded, gave the impression that it had been defeated. It was a wrenching sight.

In the midst of this, the soldiers had to make way for the two Krupps, being pulled by hand. Once they were positioned in a battle station overlooking the churches, the cannons started to bombard the city. On top of Mount Favela, which was capped with smoke, Colonel Olympio da Silveira’s batteries thundered fire. In an unforgiving cross fire from the artillery and the battalions on the eastern border, the town returned a volley of bullets aimed at the fragile walls of the huts where the soldiers had taken cover, burying them in the caved walls. The Sixth Brigade took fire from the new church on the riverbank. The Fifth Police, its ranks depleted, made it down to a narrow, twisting canyon, which saved it from a mass shooting. By noon the situation had become grave and precarious. The battle, which had started just a mile away, still continued with even greater intensity on the outskirts of the settlement.

At this juncture, when the Third and Fourth brigades had reached the cemetery adjacent to the old church, their commanders decided to send for General Oscar Guimarães. The general arrived after bravely crossing the slopes on foot, taking cover as best he could along the walls of the houses scattered there. As he approached, he found Colonel Carlos Telles, commander of the Fifth Brigade, and Captain Antônio Salles lying seriously wounded in the hut where they had taken cover. The meeting in the hut was brief. Everything around them was in chaos: the whine of bullets, the sound of running feet, the shrill call of the bugle, shouted commands, screams of fear and anger, groans and curses. Hell had broken loose.

Now every man was fighting for his life. The battalions had broken up. Small groups of men from all the corps were crowded behind the fragile mud and thatch walls, hiding in corners, and holding out as long as they could. Under these circumstances something like natural selection was occurring. With all hope snuffed out, the animal instinct of survival came out. This becomes a primitive kind of courage. Now they no longer could think about the fate of their comrades. The battle had been reduced to the little bit of ground where their own life was at stake. The soldiers piled into huts and imitated the
jagunços’
example of piercing holes in the wall. Running down alleys and dodging around corners, with the
sertanejos
just a few steps behind them, they fought blindly. Starving and parched with thirst, they would enter a hut and, without thinking there might be someone there, immediately grope around for a jug of water or bin of flour. Often they would be struck down by a bullet fired at close range. Soldiers with trained bodies, panting from four hours of fighting, would sometimes be killed by women. Old harpies with wild manes of hair, their ugly, wrinkled faces set with eyes that glinted with anger, would attack the soldiers with their bare hands in a fit of fury. Even after they had been choked and almost strangled by the soldier’s strong hands, after they had been dragged along the ground by their hair and kicked with the soldier’s boots, even then they did not give up. Some died like wild animals, a death rattle in their throats, spitting curses and hexes on their assailants.

In the middle of this disastrous confusion, the commander in chief decided to hold the position they had just won. There was no other alternative. Once more the expedition was in a bind after a violent engagement. Advance and retreat were both impossible.

As the afternoon wore on, the troops took up their position on the narrow eastern border of the settlement, or, rather, on a fifth of it: the long slope of a hill that ran from north to south, a gentle incline that ended in the village square. The houses here were less densely packed than in other places and more recently constructed. Because it had grown so rapidly, Canudos had spread out of the depression in the earth where it had been established and was populating the tops of the surrounding hills. Our forces occupied one of these suburbs. Strictly speaking, they had not yet reached the barbaric citadel, which rose up ominously in front of them. It was a fortress without walls, but still inviolable, displaying to the enemy thousands of entrances and gaps that led to the tangled network of winding alleys that make up the streets of the town.

But the troops could not do more than they had already done. The advance guard had stopped and was trying to fix its position. The Fifth Police was entrenching itself in the deep ravine on the far left, which drained the water off the slopes of Mount Favela. Its lines reached to the right bank of the Vaza-Barris, where the Twenty-sixth was positioned. This detachment would double back to the opposite bank, where it would connect with the Fifth Brigade next to the cemetery. The Twenty-fifth was behind the old church. The Seventh took a position parallel to the east side of the square. The Twenty-fifth, Fortieth, and Thirtieth were somewhere in the labyrinth of huts to the north. From here to the rear of the column, the troops of the Twelfth, Thirty-first, and Thirty-eighth arced away from the central concentration of dwellings, along the right side of the camp. The general headquarters had been set up on the opposite hill, guarded by the Fourteenth, Thirty-second, Thirty-third, and Thirty-fourth battalions and a unit of the cavalry.

For the remainder of the day and most of the night they built trenches, reinforced the walls of the huts with boards or stones, and looked for the few locations that would be safe from rifle fire. They had to proceed with extreme caution. As the expeditioners dug in on the side of the settlement, the tenacious enemy was always watching. The constant fire had subsided. Now the enemy went back to using its favorite method of fighting with ambush. From every opening of every wall a musket barrel was trained on the troops. A misstep meant death for the soldiers.

They were beginning to sense the vise of a situation worse than on Mount Favela. There, at least, they could hope and plan for attack and victory. They still hated the enemy, who was barely visible at a distance in his secret hideouts. Now not even this illusion was left. The resilient
jagunço
was daring them to engage in hand-to-hand combat. He was not intimidated by these professional adversaries that the “big country” had sent to invade their town. Here they were, face-to-face with him, just a few steps away. They were rubbing elbows, living in the same mud huts and in the same village. The population of the settlement had instantly grown by three thousand men. But the newcomers had not altered in the least the routine of their primitive lives. At sunset the bell of the old church quietly tolled the Ave Maria. Then from the recesses of the other church came the sad litany of the prayers.

It was as if all the commotion that had occurred that day was a routine and expected event.

The expedition was, to the contrary, experiencing a terrible crisis. About a thousand men had been lost, killed, or wounded in this engagement, and, combined with previous losses, the ranks were greatly reduced. Three brigade commanders were out of combat: Carlos Telles, Serra Martins, and Antônino Nery, who had joined with the Seventh that afternoon. The number of junior officers and privates lost was significant. Lieutenants and sublieutenants had given up their lives all down the line. The names and exploits of these men were later memorialized: Cunha Lima, a student in the Military Academy of Porto Alegre, wounded in a lancer charge, spent his last breath falling on the enemy like a human dart. Wanderley was shot after he had galloped up the last hill; mortally wounded, he and his mount rolled down the hill together and were pinned in the rocks, like a giant Titan with his steed. There were many others who died in combat while shouting praises for the republic. The bravery of these men was like the sick passion of the warriors of the Middle Ages. The analogy is perfect. In backward societies there will be noticeable traces of atavistic regression. In the chaotic days of the republic, our young army men were overtaken with patriotic zeal, which unbalanced them emotionally and filled them with the idealistic fervor of illuminati
.
The fight for the republic and against its imagined foes was a crusade. These contemporary Knights Templars, even though they did not wear mail vests and a cross on their swords, were still driven by the same unshakable faith. The men who fell in the assault on Canudos, without exception, wore a medal of Marshal Floriano Peixoto pinned to their uniforms. They saluted him in death. In short, they were exhibiting the same enthusiasm, dedication, and fanaticism the
jagunços
did when they called upon the merciful and miracle-working Good Jesus.

But in spite of its negative manifestations, this febrile delirium turned out to be their salvation on July 18.

When an army that depends entirely on discipline to maintain order becomes disrupted, it is finished. On the other hand these simple soldiers, beset with hardships and uncertainties, succumb to the hypnotic sway of their leaders’ death-defying courage and prestige. In a way, they were caught between the magnetism of their commanders and the bullets of the
jagunços
.

The night of the eighteenth of July passed without incident, against all expectations. The
sertanejos
were quiet. The commander in chief was fearful of a night attack they could not repel. The fragile defense lines, even if the enemy could not get through them at some point, could be outflanked. If they were caught between two lines of fire and were not able to move forward into the settlement, they would be easily annihilated. The situation, however, was resolved by the inertia of the adversaries. On the next day a line of red banners, made of blankets sewn together, cordoned off a small section of the town, a fifth of its enormous periphery. To the east there were no boundaries. On this side, the extreme right was clear. Also to the left, along the slopes of Favela and the edge of the Providencia valley, where the Police Corps was located, was a large open space. To complete the circle, they needed a line that would run due north, then curve west, follow the river to its bend in the south, scale the heights on the first terrace of the Calumbi and Cambaio ranges, and finally come back east along the Bald Headlands spur. This was a circuit of about four miles. The expedition had been reduced to a little more than three thousand men. Hundreds of them had been assigned to guard Mount Favela. They could not manage such a wide area, even if the enemy had allowed them to do it. Their operations were temporarily paralyzed. They could do nothing but defend their current position until reinforcements arrived.