by John Keene
Despite the fact that his captives were all found mortally wounded, as soon as the Dutch retreated he was duly commended and promoted. His sense of superiority and bellicosity, however, caused problems in the context of the general state of peace. Continued battles with his superiors led him to abruptly resign his commission. A star does not orbit its moons. He returned to Salvador, and in a moment of even greater rashness, married the sickly daughter of an immigrant physician. He found the situation of his marriage and his estrangement from the army intolerable, and headed south, his goal the distant coastal city of Paranaguá, essentially abandoning his ill wife, who was, unknown to him, with child.
Fortunately for heroes fate’s hand is surest. In 1630 a fleet led by the Dutchman Corneliszoon Loncq seized Pernambuco. Londônia, who had gotten no further than the town of Vila Velha, north of Rio de Janeiro, was located and recalled. His commission involved his resuming leadership of the remnants of his former regiment—Souza, Antunes, de Mello, Madeira—which was now under the general command of Fonte da Ré. The Portuguese forces were intent on retaining their patrimony, so adequate plans were being drawn up. Lázaro Inocêncio, however, pressed to participate in the first battles in Olinda. A farsighted man, Fonte da Ré recognized the looming catastrophe and ignored Londônia’s agitation to take the field.
But Londônia did have a reputation for bravery, so Fonte da Ré, after receiving word that an official fleet was already bound toward the seized northern capital, ordered his commander to head west, up the Rio São Francisco, moving in a pincer movement into the rear flank of Pernambuco. He was to press into the leaner, bottom portion of that colony, then head back southeastwards, tracking the southern rim of the unforgiving sertão, then moving north again towards Olinda, which was under Dutch control. Rivercraft awaited him on the Sergipe d’El Rei side, provisions at the post west of the thriving town of Penedo in Pernambuco. He was not to attack any Portuguese colonials unless they declared allegiance to Nassau. In order to preserve manpower, he was not to engage in any other combat unless absolutely necessary. This course of action would keep him out of the main campaign, Fonte da Ré hoped, until Londônia’s enthusiasm could be put to direct use in a clean-up operation. Two other batallions were added to his command.
After a journey by horse along the coastline to the mouth of the São Francisco, Londônia and his men set off on pettiaugers up the deep and refractory river. On the northern shores, past the sandy banks and the falls, settlements and plantations periodically appeared. The aroma of cane and the sight, from his boat, of engenhos and mills, goaded him like a spur. There was no genius comparable to that of his people; the greedy Dutch must pay. Within a day he and his men had passed Penedo and reached a small Portuguese outpost from which they would proceed into the interior.
As they moved inland on foot, Londônia’s men realized he was as unfamiliar as they with the difficult, nearly impassably dense forest terrain. Unlike them, however, he was indefatigable. He wanted to drive forward, forward. A few of his men, however, began to fall by the wayside, to fevers and periodic attacks by Indians, who had been living somewhat undisturbed in the vicinity. Londônia demanded that his soldiers not flag: here we see history repeating itself, though in a guise bearing professional validation. One mutineer he shot outright, another he threatened with similar summary judgment. On they proceeded, through forest to clearings of scrub-land and then to forest again: soon, hunger, thirst and questions about the validity of the mission enjoined the men. Though they marched, there were no Dutch to be found anywhere.
One night, at camp, as the Colonel paced a brook in the distance, several of his men whispered among themselves the unspeakable word: desertion. The plan became moot at dawn, however, when yet another band of Indians launched an assault. Arrows and stones swarmed their armor like locusts. The Colonel’s men had no choice; how quickly we forget the repellent aspects of personality in moments of crisis, which permit the illusion of unity against more dangerous foes. The clergy had one method for dealing with the Indians, soldiers another. The Colonel, no Jesuit, urged his men to pursue the last of the savages until they were incapable of staging even the memory of a surprise.
There were therefore no natives who could be pressed into serving as guides. As far as anyone could tell, they were well beyond the region of Portuguese settlements. As a result, the Colonel was unsure about the land on which he now stood. Sheer, green walls of trees that smothered the sunlight rose before them. An interminable carnival of beasts and birds crisscrossed the canopies above, while insects spawned in the pens of Satan swarmed the ground beneath their feet. The regiment had lost the curves of the river, but an impromptu compass devised by one of the men seemed as if it might guide them toward their goal; even the Colonel knew they could and should avoid the sertão, the graveyard of mortals, and trek back southeast along the river’s line to reach Penedo, which he was sure was a staging ground for other units. This would ensure their participation in the expulsion of the heathen Netherlanders.
After a day of marching, they appeared to have returned to their initial spot. They were obviously lost. The men sat in frustration, enraging the Colonel. He ordered his adjutant, Pereira, to devise a new compass as quickly as possible. Wasn’t there a man among them with Tupi or Xororó or other indigenous blood or experience who knew this region? A mulatto scout, dos Santos, meanwhile set out with a dowser, marking trees with twigs and hacks to guide his return. After a while, he heard an unusual noise. An infinity of unusual noises surrounded them, but he recognized this one: a berimbau. Having grown up on a sugar plantation, he knew instantly what he was dealing with. Africans. Were they allied with the Dutch? Were they escaped slaves living under Indian protection?
Dos Santos spotted a clearing, just on the other side of the creek at the bottom of the low hill on which he stood. Lying prone in the brush, he could see beyond a fringe of mahogany trees a tiny settlement. Further observation showed that though the community was no larger than a cane field, it hummed with considerable industry. Small buildings, in the thatched style, formed a circle; several handfuls of men, women and children moved back and forth among tethered animals at its center. It was, he realized soon enough, a quilombo. Perhaps the residents, whom he figured to be independent in their allegiance, might lead his regiment back towards the river, or even provide a few warriors for the coming battle. He tried to recall the phrases he had learned from his mother: she had secretly practiced the Mina rites.
Dos Santos followed his markers back to where the Colonel and the regiment had begun to bivouac. He reported to his commander what he had seen; immediately the men, though thirsty and exhausted, were ordered to decamp. When the scout inquired about the Colonel’s plans, he was thrown to the soil. The regiment beat such a quick path using his guideposts that it took dos Santos several minutes to catch up.
As a child, the Colonel had witnessed the Africans’ failed attempt to raze his father’s plantation, and more than once he had been told that their plans had included slaughtering every Londônia or Figueiras they found. So he tended to regard all blacks not in bondage or under the protection of the cloth as renegades. In any case, a mocambo might provide an ideal haven for any enemies of the Crown. Did the Dutch, who were heathens anyways, even sanction slavery? Who could be sure? At the hill, the Colonel told his men to slow their advance and follow the direction of the lilting music. He paused, all the men paused. He ordered them to draw their weapons. Dos Santos noted, this time aloud, there was no sign or seal of Dutch influence. This was evidently a free colony, he was willing to bear a message of conciliation, if so ordered. Th
e Colonel told the scout not to mock him again; not only canestalks should fear the scythe.
As they crouched in the bushes, a phalanx of a half-dozen males, ranging from adolescents to adults, emerged from the trees. Maroons, they wore simple shifts; except for the one at the very head of the line, carrying what appeared to be a sacramental spear, they were unarmed. At their rear strode a tall, gray-haired African, of influential bearing. He carried a large shield made of braided and colored palms, a cross within a circle woven into its face, and a carved mahogany pike. A bright ochre sash fell across his bare, scarred but still muscled chest, at the center of which hung a small, leather amulet.
The train of black men began to mount the hill. As they approached the summit, Dos Santos, the regiment’s assigned emissary, rose reflexively from his haunches to approach the group. But the Colonel also sprang from his lee into the clearing. The group of free men halted, the shield-bearing leader extending his hand palm upwards, fingers spread, in a gesture of friendship. One of the other maroons announced in broken Portuguese that they were not subjects of the crown, and that they sought no hostilities. Perhaps they assumed the mulatto scout and the commander with his nappy mane, though clad in military gear, certainly would not harm them.
What the Colonel saw, however, was Cesarão. The big man, though he did not recognize his enemy, did realize immediately the danger he was facing. The Colonel yelled out a forward charge, in successive lines, and his men began dropping their adversaries by sword and pike as rapidly as they could reach them. The man the Colonel sought fled back down the hill into the compound; his cries, in a language unintelligible even to dos Santos, sent women, children and animals scattering in all directions. The Portuguese company hurried down to the perimeter of the settlement, where the first wave met poisoned arrows, knives, a long, spear-lined pit, which opened suddenly, like a lamprey’s mouth. A few men toppled over each other into death: Souza, Madeira. The others dropped whomever they could.
The Colonel, from a position in behind a tree, reloaded his gun, felling one of the rebels. As his men subdued most of their opponents, he hunted down that Cesarão. The big man, running to grab his sword, had stumbled into another pit, this one filled with waste, on the periphery of the settlement, and was clambering like a crab to get out of it. The Colonel had one goal: the chief rebel’s head. With one swing of his sword, he got it.
When the regiment was done, flames shrieked up from what had been the settlement like a monstrous blue bird-of-paradise. The Colonel ordered all the enemy who had not escaped or been slain taken prisoner. There must be at least some among them who would serve as guides back to the São Francisco, and since they had operated under Cesarão’s control, they ought, he was convinced, to be returned to his father’s estate. Cesarão’s head, along with the infernal fetish, hunkered in its bloody, fecal glaze in a burlap sack.
The number of captives was few. None was willing, without coercion, to lead the tormentors out of the jungle. Finally, an older woman, sufficiently broken by the Colonel himself, conducted them to the initial outpost from which they had started. It was, unaccountably, no more than a two-day journey.
The Colonel, Viana
Another small regiment, under the command of Viana, had stopped there, awaiting further orders; they had been sent as backup to the Colonel, since he and his men had not been heard from in months.
Viana inquired about the Africans. Who were they, were they agents of the Dutch, how had they come to be so badly maimed? The Colonel demanded to see his papers. Had Fonte da Ré sent him? An argument ensued. When Viana refused to listen any longer to the “obviously feverish and belligerent cafuzo,” the Colonel ordered his men to seize Viana’s weapons, commandeer his boats, which were anchored at the dock, and place the few remaining rebels on them. He had Viana and his regiment bound and lashed to trees, though they were, ostensibly, the King’s soldiers. Viana promised that the Colonel would never see beyond the gates of a military prison once he got free; the Colonel’s first impulse was to raise his sword; the festering burlap sack could surely hold another head, but dos Santos implored him to think better of it. The Portuguese sentries manning the dock and post opportunely vanished.
The boats plied the river back to its mouth. Every hundred kilometers one of the captives endeavored to leap into freedom of the currents, such that by the time the Colonel reached his father’s plantation, only one young male, whom he had tethered to dos Santos, and two young females remained. José Inocêncio, now walking with the aid of a cane, and his elegant wife, Dona Maria Francisca, received their son and his men in the sitting room of their house. The son presented the recaptured slaves; his bewildered father was unsure that he could take such easy title to any of them, who in any case were too young and wild to incorporate immediately into his docile stock. He would have to consult his lawyer. Still, he had all three taken out to the slave quarters. The young male black, the elder man noted, looked vaguely familiar. At this point, the son presented to him the burlap sack, which by now was swarming and putrid. After a brief and horrifying examination, Londônia ordered it removed and cast out into the voracious river; very likely, like a vial bearing a message of incalculable importance, it rapidly made its way to the open sea.
Once he was fed, outfitted and properly horsed, which devoured nearly a month, the Colonel brought his men back to Salvador. As soon as he reported to his garrison, he was seized; a warrant had been issued for his arrest, for violations of the military code. Viana, already back in the capital city, had reported him. The Colonel was remanded to the military prison, to await adjudication of his case. He asked to meet with Fonte da Ré, but this request was denied on the grounds of practicality. His commander had been killed in battle at Arraial do Cabo, near the port of Nazaré, only a few days earlier.
The Tribunal
There was no precedent in the records of the military courts of Brazil, a councilor with connections to the colonial administrator and hired by José Inocêncio argued, for such a state of affairs, about which officers and prominent townspeople were buzzing. In the case of Lázaro Inocêncio Londônia de Figueiras, there could be no charge of insubordination. Viana held no titular rank above him; the commander only took the steps he did in order to complete his mission without delay; he had remained faithful to the original orders, as best he interpreted them, of his commanding officer; he had suffered an insult to his face, his dignity—there were witnesses. On the first and final counts, the argument appeared to have standing. On the second and third, questions lingered. Fonte da Ré, now deceased, was unable to attest either way. The men in Londônia’s regiment had suddenly grown silent, and might have to be ordered to testify by the tribunal. Still, tying up a fellow officer and his soldiers, when they posed no threat of sedition, desertion or sabotage, constituted an extraordinary scenario. The councilor would have to consult with more learned authorities, and write to Lisbon for more guidance. During this interim, Londônia would remain in military custody.
Not only Londônia, but his father and relatives in high places found his circumstances intolerable. He was a Figueiras, strings must be pulled. But there were, oddly enough, no Figueirases among the upper hierarchy of the army. But there were many Figueirases who had the ear of the Church, the Crown’s representatives, among the sugar-growing and ranching aristocracy not only of Bahia, but also of Parahyba, and Rio de Janeiro. But making an exception on behalf of this Londônia without the appearance of even a pro forma hearing might possibly harm morale among the officer corps during this critical period, as the Crown was engaged in a di
fficult war against the Dutch. But who was this Viana anyways, the son of unknown bumpkins from the south? But those same Vianas were landowners as well, had contacts. But Figueiras Henriques, his brother-in-law, was already on a frigate bound for Iberia, and would request an audience in Philip’s court in Madrid, if need be. But there were witnesses. But, a war hero? But honor, duty, esprit de corps?
While the councilor consulted with knowledgeable parties, Londônia remained impounded. His connections, being what they were, insured that he would not suffer undue privations. He had to keep busy, so he had prisoners write letters to his parents, his elder brother, his nieces and nephews, members of his regiment. He organized athletic contests, drills. He assisted in the disciplining of slaves. His sister was permitted to visit him regularly, former classmates and fellow trainees sent tributes. Figueiras Henriques, on his return, met with members of the military command. The Bishop of Bahia received another influential relative. Some time passed, and the brouhaha waned, while the sequestration, though inconvenient, grew almost pleasant.
A closed tribunal of officers was finally seated at the urging of several key parties. A military lawyer from a less-distinguished family opened with his argument on behalf of the army, which is to say, Viana. He seemed, it struck all present, to be whispering into his chest, as if trying to perform an act of ventriloquism. One member of the tribunal had to be awakened twice. Then Londônia’s councilor, deputized to appear before a military panel, delivered his defense. Such an elegant wig, such golden perorations, such learned command of the royal law. There was much nodding and noting of the councilor’s key points. So it went. Viana’s lawyer presented his rebuttal. It was noted that his Portuguese evidently carried fewer Latin eloquences than was common in continental courts of law; where on earth had he received his training? The tribunal broke for the Sabbath. When it resumed, the councilor intended to call Viana as his witness.