Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  After Luisa Adelaida’s marriage to Tuttle, Madame Lynch had often invited the couple to her entertainments, for they were a lively and handsome pair. Of course, Major Hadley, like other officers present this night, was beginning to show the strain of three hard years. His uniform was clean but shabby, with a patch on one arm and a tear that had been stitched by Luisa Adelaida; and his face was scorched by the sun and revealed lines of worry and weariness as he listened to the marshal.

  Three times already, López had sought peace: On the eve of the battle of Curupaiti, the marshal-president had met with Mitre of Argentina; early in January 1867, López had agreed to accept an offer by the United States to mediate an accord; this past August, a British diplomat from Buenos Aires had found López amenable to a peace settlement. Each attempt had failed, for the Allies’ demand was totally unacceptable to López: “We will not discuss peace until Francisco Solano López is off Paraguayan soil.”

  When he met the British diplomat from Buenos Aires in Humaitá this past August, Tuttle had given him letters for his family in south London: Writing to his brother, Ainsley, who had served with him at the Crimea, he had given his impressions of the situation:

  *

  Since the start of the war, the enemy has said its belligerence is a crusade in the name of humanity to free Paraguay from a tyrant who rules by terror alone. López is a man to be feared. God knows, I have been within earshot of Asunción jail more times than I want to remember, when the secret police were torturing some unfortunate enemy of El Presidente. But the enemies’ claim that the destruction of López is their only objective must be doubted. Their own hands are red with the blood of political opponents they have butchered.

  The terms of the treaty signed by Brazil, Argentina, and the Colorados of Uruguay are well known here, including the secret clauses that guarantee Brazil and Argentina thousands of square miles of Paraguayan territory. The Paraguayans believe the enemies’ real objective is nothing less than the extermination of their race.

  The Paraguayan peasant, unlike his counterpart in Brazil, owns his small parcel of land or rents it from the state at a low price; his children are being educated at schools established in every pueblo; his health is protected with mass campaigns of inoculation against smallpox and with other measures instituted by the English doctors. He sees all this as coming from the despot who rules him and whom he esteems as passionately as his ancestors did the black robes of the reductions. As long as the marshal-president is there, the Paraguayans will continue the struggle, even if their beloved fatherland is left in ashes.

  *

  Like his commanding officer, Colonel Thompson, and most of the foreigners paid by López, Hadley Tuttle had chosen to remain in Paraguay, though not without increasing concern for the safety of his wife.

  Luisa Adelaida and Dona Gabriel had been at Humaitá for six months, staying with Hadley in a house near Madame Lynch’s quarters. Eliza Lynch herself had asked them here to assist in organizing a women’s corps. Several hundred mothers and daughters served in the hospital, cleaned the barracks and campgrounds, and cultivated field crops. Madame Lynch was often seen in the uniform of a colonel of the Paraguayan army when she went among the women, who had their own captains and sergeants; they had sent deputations to the marshal-president asking to be drilled as soldiers and allowed to fight, but López had turned down these requests.

  At Eliza Lynch’s house this October night, Marshal López still believed the enemy could be driven off Paraguayan soil with one more hammer blow like Curupaiti.

  López was planning to strike that blow with another attack against Tuyuti, where the Paraguayans had suffered their worst defeat. Tuyuti, now the main supply base for the Allied divisions deployed northeast of Humaitá, could be seen from watchtowers along Humaitá’s outer earthworks. López intended to send eight thousand men — sixteen battalions of infantry; six regiments of cavalry — against Tuyuti. “We failed last year because surprise was lost. This time we will cross the esteros at night and be in position before dawn. We will avenge the slaughter at first Tuyuti,” López promised.

  The guns on the Brazilian ironclads had stopped firing, and the turututus had been laid aside, when the Tuttles left Eliza Lynch’s quarters. The silence that followed the bombardment was pierced by the scream of the cicada. Sentinels in the trenches and watchtowers saw the enemy camps and ships frozen in the moonlight, but for most at Humaitá, late night brought a false but welcome peace.

  Hadley held Luisa Adelaida tightly on the short walk from Madame Lynch’s house to their own place, for they had only a few hours together: In the morning, Luisa Adelaida and Dona Gabriel were returning to Asunción.

  Alone in their room, Hadley and Luisa Adelaida spoke in whispers, for the simple interior had makeshift partitions plaited with reeds and thick grass. They made love, knowing that they would have to cherish these moments through months of separation.

  The next morning, Hadley escorted Luisa Adelaida and her parents to an embarkation point near Humaitá to board a steamer for the voyage north. A regimental band played as the paddle wheeler that had come down from Asunción arrived at the landing. It was crammed with new recruits. A few were pure Guarani; a few, mulattoes; the majority, of mixed Guarani-Spanish descent. Some were in rags, but most wore their best shirts and trousers or chiripas, loose-fitting gear of a square of cloth draped from the waist and between the legs. A few sported red shirts, white trousers, and military caps — uniforms home-sewn or inherited from fathers and brothers who had not returned. What was common to every recruit, from the tall ones who looked older to little fellows having trouble keeping up, was youth: The youngest of these new soldiers was nine years old; the oldest warrior-to-be, thirteen.

  By the spring of 1867, the Allied generals chose their words carefully when speaking of the foe. “I expect to do a thing or two,” said Field Marshal Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, marquês de Caxias, who served Dom Pedro Segundo as minister of war and took command of the Brazilian forces after the disaster at Curupaiti. Caxias was sixty-four years old when he got to Paraguay in November 1866, boasting a reputation as a skillful tactician and organizer who had not lost a battle since graduating from the military academy at Rio de Janeiro at the age of eighteen. With the Brazilian fondness for grandiose sobriquets, the field marshal was called “O Pacificador” in honor of his triumphs, especially in suppressing revolts against the empire. Gray-haired, with a bristly white mustache, slightly hooded eyes, and sharp features; Caxias was endowed with a strong, spare physique and the stamina of a man twenty years younger. The field-marshal had need of all his energy for the tasks he found awaiting him upon landing in Paraguay at the end of 1866.

  After Curupaiti, where thousands were slaughtered, the heartsick survivors had slogged back through the carrizal with the wounded. Their demoralization had swiftly spread to every quarter of the Allied front.

  Among the fifty thousand men waiting below the miasmal Bellaco esteros were thousands of “voluntários” here against their will, both those who had come as slaves and the wretched of the sertão herded out of the caatinga in irons. Many would have deserted but for the fact that thousands of miles separated them from their hometowns.

  There was another sinister aspect to the malaise that was wearing down the Allied army: Brazilians and Argentinians were stationed along different sections of the front, but word of insolence from either group and bloody fights erupted between them, the streets of Paso la Patria not infrequently a battleground for mobs of violent Brazilians and Argentinians.

  Above all, there was the loathsome terrain occupied by the Allied army. The river below the morasses, Bellaco Sur, had become a torrent in the rainy season; the water table of the marshes had risen; campsites had been engulfed.

  Inevitably, there was sickness. Cholera and typhoid fever became the true enemies. Early in 1867, the daily toll was three hundred. By May, no fewer than thirteen thousand men were in hospitals.

  The Allied command was in
theory still shared by Bartolomé Mitre, president of Argentina; Venancio Flores, the Uruguayan, who had only a few hundred men left under his command; and, now that he had taken over the Brazilian forces, the marquês de Caxias. In practice, Caxias was virtually supreme commander, for Mitre was suffering most of the recriminations for the losses at Curupaiti, and Venancio Flores was called back to Montevideo to deal with one of the perennial disturbances between Blancos and Colorados.

  Field-Marshal Caxias spent six months reorganizing the army, which was now predominantly Brazilian. Base camps like Tuyuti were cleaned up and their fortifications improved; telegraph lines were laid and buried below earth; a serious attempt was made to map the enemy’s positions.

  Caxias restored discipline and improved morale, and by July 22, 1867, had thirty thousand men ready to move for the encirclement of Humaitá by land. General Manuel Luís Osório, who had led the initial landings in Paraguay, commanded a newly formed Third Corps. For three months, Osório’s men slogged northward, cutting almost fifty thousand yards of trenches and establishing batteries all along their twenty-eight-mile route. By late October 1867, they had swung toward the west and were in sight of the Rio Paraguay. On November 2 they captured Tayí, a small riverside post fifteen miles north of Humaitá.

  But November 2 was also the night Marshal López chose to send eight thousand men through the esteros to destroy the Allied First Corps at Tuyuti.

  November 2 was a Saturday, All Souls’ Day. Morning Masses at Tuyuti offered prayers for those in Purgatory, but by nightfall the dead were forgotten amid a carnival atmosphere around the comércio, where sutlers plied the ranks with cachaça and other promises of blessed oblivion and escape from the drudgery of duty in the trenches and redoubts.

  Tuyuti’s High Command kept sedately to their quarters, playing cards or relaxing with their brandies and port. Another group of Brazilian and Argentinian officers, at peace with each other this night, were gathered in an open-sided mess tent at camp headquarters. Young men and old; regular army, Guarda Nacional, and voluntários — this crowd’s behavior was anything but sedate, with garrafas of liquor passing quickly from one hand to another. Smoke from a battery of thick black cigars lay banked up in the yellowish glare from oil lamps.

  Firmino Dantas da Silva — Capitão Firmino Dantas — and his cousin, gunner Clóvis Lima da Silva, were among the officers in the tent. They sat next to each other at a table to the right of a dance area where twin sisters, Sabella and Narcisa, morena girls from the Bahia, were performing. They had wavy brunette hair, ruby lips, green eyes that laughed, teased, invited; their cinnamon flesh was warm as the tropical night. They wore V-necked white lace blouses, which scarcely contained their full breasts; their dark red satin skirts swirled against their swinging hips.

  Two black soldiers, their khaki drill uniforms soaked, sat to one side, their hands a blur above the drums they played in accompaniment with three guitarists. A lancer from Rio Grande do Sul rose and joined the morenas in dance.

  The girls laughed and exchanged bawdy quips with the lancer as they moved their bodies to the beat of the drums. A procurer of prostitutes at Salvador had transported them here a year ago.

  Clóvis’s eyes followed the girls across the dance floor. Firmino Dantas melancholy gaze was more reserved.

  Firmino had returned to Tuyuti in July 1867, a few weeks before the Second and Third Corps’ drive to the north and west. Firmino still served on the staff of the quartermaster-general and had been promoted to captain, for he had done good work at Itapiru’s stores.

  Firmino had a packet of letters now from his fiancée, Carlinda, and from Ulisses Tavares. “Come back to Itatinga,” the barão had written this past April. “You have done your share, Firmino. Come home, to the honors you deserve!” That Ulisses Tavares should make this appeal had come as no surprise to Firmino. His grandfather’s expectation of a swift, victorious campaign against a barbarous foe had to seem lunacy now viewed within the slow murderous reality of a conflict claiming thousands of Brazilian lives and costing the empire sixty million dollars a year.

  Earlier tonight, Firmino and Clóvis had gone for a walk along the perimeter of the citadel. Major Clóvis had been at the base since May 1866, commanding a battery to the right of Tuyuti’s first and second lines of trenches.

  Stocky, muscular, his Tupi heritage discernible in his broad face, Clóvis da Silva was imbued with the brazen spirit of his bandeirante ancestors.

  “The Guarani still hear the Jesuits preaching about devils from São Paulo. I don’t know how long their resistance will last. Whatever it takes, however great our sacrifice, in the end, we will conquer them.”

  “Conquer, Clóvis? Or exterminate?”

  “Either way, cousin . . . either way, Brazil will triumph.”

  Firmino had not doubted, when Brazilian territory was invaded, the just cause of the war, but talk of exterminating the Paraguayans made him wonder if this conflict was to bring honor or shame to Brazil.

  Firmino agonized over such concerns. Yet, his anxieties over a protracted war and his own personal fear of combat had not driven him away from Paraguay. Ulisses Tavares had called him home, but still he remained.

  For the first time, Firmino Dantas found himself free of the patriarch who had ruled his life since childhood. Free to daydream about his inventions, to indulge his musings about technology, to fantasize about the Swiss girl, Renata Laubner.

  Firmino had even considered confessing to the barão his passion for Renata, but after several attempts at writing to Ulisses Tavares, he had thought better of it and kept his love a secret.

  Firmino had been less discreet with Clóvis da Silva. “When I return to Tiberica, she’ll be mine,” he had said to his cousin.

  “Carlinda Mendes will be there, Firmino.”

  “I’ll be honest with Carlinda.”

  “Dream all you want, Firmino, but when you go back to Itatinga, you’ll take Carlinda Mendes in your arms and be happy with your bride.”

  In the mess tent, as they watched Sabella and Narcisa, Clóvis suddenly turned to Firmino: “Why so sad, cousin? Sick with longing for your princess? Jewels flutter before you, but do you see them? You’re blind, Firmino, stricken with the old sickness.”

  “And what may that be?”

  “Ah, such a malady! The sickness that’s raged like an epidemic ever since the Portuguese came to Brazil: our craving for El Dorado!”

  “But Renata Laubner is there, Clóvis. She sleeps this very hour at Tiberica, her crown of golden hair upon a satin pillow.”

  “Yes — at Tiberica! And here, Firmino — tonight? With one of these jewels fluttering between your fingers?”

  “One jewel? Compared with the treasure I seek?”

  “Ah, dreamer, a drink, then. To your golden princess, cousin Firmino — El Dorado of your heart!”

  At daybreak on November 3, 6,500 Paraguayan infantry and fifteen hundred cavalrymen who had crossed the Bellaco esteros in the dark fell upon Tuyuti base. The first line of trenches, manned by Paraguayan exiles, deserters, and prisoners compelled to serve the Allies, fell to the attacking brigades in minutes. At the second, defended by Argentinians and Brazilians, the few companies who stayed at their posts were slaughtered and the mass of defenders hurled back toward the comércio.

  Major Clóvis da Silva was at a redoubt to the right of the trenches to which he had returned the early hours of November 3. The artillerymen were taken by surprise: At the alarm, seven hundred Paraguayan cavalrymen leapt from their ponies and were on the earthworks with swords drawn as the gunners poured out of their tents and shelters in total confusion. At 6:30 A.M., half an hour after the Paraguayans had left the esteros, the redoubt surrendered; twelve officers and 249 men were taken prisoner.

  By 7:00 A.M., Tuyuti base lay beneath a pall of smoke from blazing stores and destroyed powder magazines. Hundreds of Allied soldiers fleeing with the horde of camp followers did not stop running until they reached the banks of the Upper Paraná
, three miles to the south. Others streamed into the citadel, where they sheltered behind the earthworks, waiting for the next enemy onslaught. The attack did not come immediately, for the Paraguayans had halted at the comércio.

  They went berserk there, plundering the wagons and stores, swilling garrafas of liquor, stuffing their mouths with handfuls of sugar, fighting one another for dainties they had not seen before, gnawing at raw artichokes and rock-hard English cheeses.

  The rampage cost the Paraguayans dearly, for it gave the battered garrison an opportunity to regroup. At 8:00 A.M., Brazilians and Argentinians counterattacked from the citadel and other positions, engaging the Paraguayans in ferocious hand-to-hand combat.

  By 9:00 A.M. the second battle of Tuyuti was over. The Paraguayans streamed back through the esteros, leaving twelve hundred dead and the same number wounded. The Allies claimed victory, but they had lost two thousand men and their garrison was a smoldering ruin. The Paraguayans took fifteen Allied guns back to Humaitá and many captives, including Clóvis da Silva.

  Firmino Dantas da Silva relived every agony of his first battle. He rushed like a madman toward those very Yatai palms where he had cowered during the earlier battle. One hundred yards from the trees, he was cut down by Paraguayan soldiers, two bullets buried in his flesh, a machete wound in his shoulder.

  Firmino Dantas was carried back into the citadel, among hundreds of wounded, and, miraculously, survived. But his trials in Paraguay were not over.

  Four days after the battle, Firmino was moved from a field hospital to the base at Paso la Patria and placed in a tent ward with thirty officers from Tuyuti. He felt immensely guilty among these men, who greeted him as a brave man among brave men. His first night he lay awake listening to others cry for mother, for God, for water.