Backlands (62 page)

These reinforcements totaled 2,914 men and almost 300 officers. They were divided into two brigades: one line brigade under Colonel Sampaio, and the Police Corps. This formed a division under Brigadier General Carlos Eugenio de Andrade Guimarães, with the exception of the São Paulo police force, which marched ahead of the troops with Colonel Sotero de Menezes,

It took the entire month of August to mobilize these troops. They arrived one detachment at a time in Bahia. After they were equipped, they moved to Queimadas and then to Monte Santo, where all the forces were to be assembled by September.

The line battalions were undermanned, as the numbers indicate. They were reduced to two companies each and lacked military equipment of any kind, unless one counts their outdated muskets and their old gray uniforms, which they had worn in the federalist campaign in the South.

Marshal Carlos Machado de Bittencourt was the man in charge of the situation, and he began to become very active. He was the right man for the job.

He was a cold man given to a calm and inoffensive skepticism. His common simplicity was not compatible with expansiveness or impulsive actions. To be fair, he was capable of taking risks, as he would later prove by tragically ending his life. But he did so dispassionately, in a balanced way, within the lines of duty as he saw it. He was not a man given to rash acts of bravery, nor was he a coward.

No one could imagine him performing an extraordinary feat of heroism. Likewise, they could not imagine him extracting himself with stealth and cunning from a dangerous situation. He was not a model military man but he was fond of the military machine of muscle and nerve that was trained to react mechanically to orders.

This was due not as much to the discipline of a fine education as to his passive temperament. He moved comfortably as a cog in the wheel of military regulations. Outside of this environment he was insignificant. He was a slave to written orders. He did not interpret or criticize them; he carried them out. They might be good or bad, absurd, extravagant, out of date, stupid or useful, detailed, noble, or credible—they were all the same to him if they were in writing. This is why every time there was political unrest, he cautiously withdrew.

Marshal Floriano Peixoto, a keen judge of men, would always sideline Bittencourt at critical times when the personal character of his aides or opponents was important. He did not send for him and did not send him away. He did not touch him. Peixoto knew that this man, whose career had been so dull and predictable, would never move for or against the establishment of states of siege, which Peixoto made use of to rule by decree in the early days of the republic.

For Bittencourt, the republic was an unexpected accident that happened at the end of his life. He never cared for it, as those who fought with him understood. For him it was an irritating distraction, not because it changed the future of a country, but because it altered ordinances and decrees, the formulas and precepts that he knew by heart.

When he arrived in Bahia, he repressed the enthusiasm of anyone who came into contact with him. Whoever went to him for encouragement or guidance, some decisive action in the face of a difficult situation, was surprised to find just mundane ideas and long, rambling speeches about insignificant topics. He would go on with endless trivia about the distribution of rations and remounting of cavalry, as if the world were a huge barracks and history was made by a sergeant’s reports. He arrived in the city when patriotism was at fever pitch and he found a way to deflate it. He could witness political demonstrations or hear patriotic poetry; he could be barraged with political oratory or shouting crowds. He took it all in with barely concealed indifference. He did not know how to react. He spoke little; it was hard for him to get the words out. Anything out of his routine annoyed and confused him. The wounded returning from the battle front, in want of a transfer or leave pass, would approach him with their bullet wounds, their bloody gashes, or their feverish faces. It made no difference to him. These were banal matters, all in a day’s work.

On a visit to one of the military hospitals, Bittencourt’s regrettable lack of sensitivity deeply affected those around him.

The scene in the big hospital room was impressive. There were two long rows of white cots. Four hundred wounded men, in every possible position, were lying stiffly under sheets covering them like shrouds, lying facedown or crouched against bolsters in mute paroxysms of pain, seated or bending over in agony. Their heads were bound in bloody bandages. Their arms were either missing or in slings. Their legs were stiffly extended in splints. Feet pierced with thorns were swollen out of shape. Chests were torn by bullet holes and bayonet wounds. There was every kind of injury and suffering imaginable.

The committee following the minister comprised state and military authorities, journalists and men from all walks of life. They entered quietly into the room, awed at what they were seeing.

The solemn visit proceeded. The marshal went to the cots and began to read the charts at the head of each bed. He went from one to the other.

He paused in front of one bed where the war-ravaged face of an old corporal greeted him. This was a veteran with thirty-five years of service. His face had been beaten by rifle butts from the swamps of Paraguay to the
caatingas
of Canudos. The unfortunate man’s tired face was shining with a broad, good-humored smile. He recognized the minister since he had served as his orderly as a young boy. In former days he had followed him in battle on long, tiring marches. Overcome with emotion, he told him this in a hoarse voice, which shook with pain and joy. His eyes shone feverishly. He forced himself to sit upright, and with his thin, shaking hands, he bared his emaciated chest, revealing the scar of an old wound on his collarbone.

It was an emotional scene. Those standing around him caught their breath and their eyes filled with tears. But Marshal Bittencourt did not stop. He moved on to the next cot, continuing to read the charts. Emotion was not on his agenda. He would not be distracted by it.

He was just the man for this emergency. The government could not have picked a better administrator for the campaign. He had no limits and was able to follow a straight course through the disorder of the crisis.

In renouncing its own priorities, the government took the position of quartermaster general and made a low-level bureaucrat the commander in chief.

The fact is that the marshal’s solid common sense and cool head, which freed him from emotional distractions, allowed him to assess the real needs of the campaign. The least of these, he realized, was more fighting men. Fresh troops would only make the situation worse. They would be entering a war-torn region still consumed by the flames of guerrilla combat. They would have to share the hardships and the scarce provisions of their comrades. It was imperative to fight the desert, not the
jagunço.
The campaign needed a line and a strong base of operations. It was ending where it should have started. This is the mission that the minister carried through to completion. During his assignment in Bahia he was confronted with endless details—the equipment of arriving battalions, housing for the ceaseless caravan of wounded returning from the front. In his mind these were of lesser importance to his primary objective, which was the only serious problem he had to solve. And this he did, in the end, by overcoming many obstacles.

In late August a regular corps of supply trains had been organized and was running continuously along the roads at intervals of a few days. It efficiently connected the army in the field with Monte Santo.

This result was the beginning of the end of the conflict. From the very beginning, the experience of previous expeditions had proven that their failure was due in large part to having isolated the troops in a desert region in sight of the enemy while engaging in spectacular police chases without any semblance of military strategy.

Marshal Bittencourt at least did this much: He shaped a huge, unorganized conflict into a formal campaign. Until then there had been a flamboyant but useless show of bravery. Heroism and self-sacrifice had no currency here. The campaign had been reduced to a partial siege, and the outcome was still uncertain. The endless fire accomplished nothing but to stupidly waste lives. This would go on indefinitely until the cursed settlement would finish off its attackers, one by one. Under these conditions, just replacing the eight or ten daily casualties would perpetuate a vicious cycle. Moreover, a large number of troops would be a liability. They could surround the village and cut off the exits, but after a few days, they would discover that they were surrounded by another enemy, the dry desert of the
caatingas
. Unbearable hunger would rise up to confront them. Marshal Bittencourt understood all of this.

A more sophisticated strategist with technical expertise would have come up with plans but would not have solved the problem. A brilliant infantryman might have found innovative ways to attack but would have exhausted his men with nothing to show for it, as his troops marched aimlessly through the
caatingas
at double-quick time. Marshal Bittencourt was completely oblivious to the public’s impatience. He organized supply trains and bought mules.

The fact of the matter was that this campaign was going to be won in an unexpected and humorous fashion. A thousand tame burros were worth ten thousand heroes. The bloody backlands battle had to be domesticated. Heroism and military genius were dispensable. Attacking brigades were not needed. Pack mules and their drivers, on the other hand, were very important. This simple solution was not compatible with the patriotic protocol of the day but it was the only practical way out. It was not elegant to use such common collaborators to save our country, but we had to do it. The most ordinary beast was now king and he would crush the rebellion with his sharp hoofs.

Only mules could accelerate the operations of the campaign. Speed was of the essence. The war could be prolonged for two more months at the most. Three more months would mean certain defeat and the loss of all that had been accomplished—the government troops would be paralyzed. The rainy season would begin in November and the effect on the terrain would create insurmountable obstacles. The dry streambeds would be churning with muddy waters; the Vaza-Barris would swell into an enormous floodplain, overflowing its banks and spreading over the backlands. It would not be possible to ford the river and communications would be cut.

When the waters suddenly subsided—because the torrents that flow from the São Francisco to the sea drain as fast as they are formed—even more serious complications would arise. In the wet heat of this season, every stream, every seasonal lake, and every well becomes a hellish laboratory incubating the germs of swamp fever and spreading them everywhere the sun’s rays strike. Disease would attack the troops, whose bodies were already weak with fatigue and prone to infection. It was therefore essential to terminate the war before the start of this deadly season. An effective siege had to be mounted that would provoke immediate surrender. Once they had subdued the enemy that could be conquered, they would immediately have to face that eternal and invincible enemy, the sterile, desolate earth. In order to do this, they had to guarantee the provisioning of the troops, which with the recent reinforcements now numbered around eight thousand men.

The minister of war accomplished exactly that.

As a result, by the time he left for Queimadas in early September, everything was in place to quickly end the conflict. The brigades of the Auxiliary Division were waiting at their mustering point in Monte Santo and the first of what would become regular supply trains now left for Canudos.

They arrived just in time to revive the expedition, which had spent more than forty days in dangerous and futile action, held hostage in a suburb of the settlement. We have already reproduced brief excerpts of a diary that recorded the events of these days. We kept this brief to avoid the tedious enumeration of episodes that were very similar. There were sudden, violent eruptions of fire at odd hours followed by deceptive lulls; the strident call of battle alarms would break spells of apathy; strange periods of oppressive calm were shattered by rifle shots. The daily skirmishes were decimating their ranks and killing their most valuable men. Sometimes these encounters would involve hours of noisy rifle fire and not result in a single casualty, like the innocuous scuffles between mercenaries in the Middle Ages. But most difficult was the subsistence that they were forced to live on, one-third rations, when they were available: an ox to a battalion and a quart of flour for a squadron. As they did during the worst days at Mount Favela, they had to risk daily hunting forays in which whole detachments participated to round up stray cattle.

The supply trains came infrequently and their schedule was irregular. By the time they arrived part of their cargo would have been stolen. The expeditioners were again faced with the single most devastating threat: hunger. When they were under cover in the huts, in tents on the hillsides, or in the trenches, they had little to fear from the
jagunços.
The danger was from sniper fire when they had to step out of their shelters on hunting forays. The church towers rose over them like large-scale hunting platforms similar to those backlands
mutans
erected of leaves and branches in trees. No one could escape the accurate aim of the marksmen who manned the towers. Their posts were never abandoned, even under the heaviest cannon fire. The journey to Favela continued to be perilous for this reason. A guard was stationed on the riverbank where the road crosses it to prevent careless soldiers from taking this route. It was here that the reinforcements got their baptism of fire. The Girard Brigade, now down to 56 officers and 892 men, arrived here on August 15; the battalion, with 21 officers and 424 men, reached this spot on August 23; the Thirty-seventh Infantry, coming ahead of the Auxiliary Division, had 16 officers and 205 men, under Lieutenant Colonel Firmino Lopes Rego. The enemy waited until they had come down the last of the slopes and reached the riverbed. There they gave them a booming and theatrical reception with gunshots interspersed with strident jeers and catcalls.