This has been hailed as the epitome of good Brazilian prose and in English this comes through. It almost reminded me of reading translations of Cicero. The author, perhaps conscious of Ceasar's GALLIC WAR, starts off with a geographical introduction to his history of the religious revolt against the forces of the young Brazilian republic.
In the case of da Cunha, however, this geographical introduction is quite lengthy and then turns into an account of how the land influenced the people living there and helps explain how they were inclined to the religious fanaticism and to the stamina which together with the terrain so frustrated the efforts of the regular army to put down the revolt.
Many may actually find the introduction of greater interest than the military history and the author's assessment that this commander was too rash and that one should have quickly struck at the rebels. Among the non-military gems are the following:
"According to the testimony of numerous witnesses, the first showers precipitated from a high altitude never reach the earth. Half way down they are evaporated between the layers of heated air which are coming up and so are driven back to the clouds, to be once more condensed, again precipitated, and to fall afresh in the form of rain. They do not so much as dampen the ground when they first reach it but very quickly return to space, being as it were vaporized, as if they had fallen on incandescent plates. Then they fall again in a rapid and incessant permutation."
"Maximum and minimum temperatures are recorded at the same time of year." "Von Martius came this way, with the prime objective of observing the meteorite which fell on the banks of the Bendego and which was already, from 1810, known to European academies through the writings of F. Mornay and Wollaston. Making his way through this wild tract, the desertus austral, as he christened it, he paid little attention to the earth and the extravagant flora that covered it -- silva horrida in his alarmed Latin terminology."
"...A vast Cretaceous ocean rolled its waves over the frontier lands of the two Americas, joining the Atlantic to the Pacific."
There is also the theory he mentions (but rejects as too simplistic) that the drought cycles observed in the 1700s and 1800s were caused by sunspot activity. In da Cunha's view, if there is a marked correlation between solar flare cycles and drought cycles there are also intermediate causes and other factors.
He also refers to prehistoric finds. As well the book should be of great interest for those enjoying geology and botany. Da Cunha was writing in 1902. This gives a certain historical interest to the comments he makes on scientific subjects. I know others may also have an interest in military history.
However, before proceeding, if I'll ever get there, to the actual fighting, here's another interesting scientific comment from the turn of the century: "The studies which have been made of the prehistoric native races are models of subtle observation and brilliant critical analysis; and thanks to them, and contrary to the way of thinking of those capricious builders of the Aleutian bridge, it would now appear to have been definitely established that the races of the Americas are autochthonous ones." He goes on to talk about Homo americanus and then Homo afer and finally, "The aristocratic factor of our own gens, the Portugues stock, which links us with the vibrant intellect of the Celt..."
This is from the beginning of his chapter on Man, in which he analyzes the characteristics of the three races in combination and the effect of geography on them. One interesting note for those who may be interested in names, in the description of the role of the Sao Francisco river in the settlement of that area, da Cunha refers to, "Expeditions to the mines of Moreya."
The chapter "Man" is more than a hundred pages long. We are shown the life and hardiness of the backlander, his rounding up cattle, his poetic challenges, his superstition and the cyclical drought's influence on him. We next see the family background of Antonio Conselheiro, the mystical Counsellor, who was the leader of the fanatical rebels. This presents the feud between his family, the Macies, and the Araujos. Da Cunha depicts this struggle, with its drama and violence, the courage of the wronged Macies and the villany of the evil Araujos, with a vividness worthy of a Hollywood western.
Next we glimpse the young Antonio Vincente Mendes Maciel, a quiet, timid young man, who through a series of reverses in life ends up renouncing the world and becoming a wandering holy man.
Then the ascetic attracts a following and exerts a beneficial influence on a region. "There were the towers of dozens of churches which he had built; he it was who had founded the settlement of Bom Jesus, now almost a city; from Chorrocho to Villa do Conde, from Itapicuro to Geremoabo, there was not a single town or obscure village in which he did not have his fervent disciples, and which did not owe to him the rebuilding of a cemetery, the possession of a place of worship, or the providential gift of a water dam."
However, he disliked new taxes and burned the tax notices and when thirty policemen arrived to enforce order, Consulheiro's followers routed them. Then the Counsellor withdrew to Canudos, the centre of his sect, a town swollen by the arrival of the faithful.
There is the next the interlude of the friar coming to Canudos as a missionary and attempting to convert the zealots. Consulheiro permitted him to preach. However, the audience did not keep its disapproval to itself. "Thus, when the preacher came to deal with fasting as a means of mortifying the flesh and bridling the passions through sobriety, without, however, calling for any prolonged self-mortification, but pointed out that, 'One often may fast by eating meat at dinner and taking in the morning only a cup of coffee' -- when he reached this point, his sermon was irreverently and ironically interrupted: 'Why that's not fasting; that's stuffing your gut!'"
Da Cunha also shares his opinion of the conditions of life in Canudos. "In the jail...could be seen daily those who had committed the slight offense of a few homocides, alongside those who had been guilty of the abominable crime of having failed to be present at prayers."
It is at the bottom of page 178 that we begin to encounter the immediate causes of the conflict and see how a magistrate of a neighbouring town breaking his contract to deliver wood to Canudos calls on the army to defend him from the anticipated attack. And this trivial beginning, if lumber for the building of a new church can be called trivial, will eventually lead a succession of armies into the backlands in the more than three hundred pages still remaining.
First, however, da Cunha, who it is said, metaphorically, composed his work with a liana stalk, reminds his readers of the backlander's acquaintance with the land and the advantages this will give him in the coming conflict. "The umbu tree will quench his thirst and give him the scant shade of its last-remaining leaves; the araticu, the verdant urucuri, the shapely marizeiro, the quixabeira with its tiny fruit -- all will give him enough and more than enough to eat and drink. The palmatorias, stripped of their numerous thorns by a process of rapid combustion, the mandacarus, carved up with a knife, or the leaves of the juas will serve to keep his horse alive; the juas will also provide him with a covering for his improvised traveler's couch; the fibrous caroas afford him strong and supple ropes. And if it should be necessary for him to continue his journey after nightfall, and in the darkness his eye is barely able to make out the bluish-phosphorescent glow of the cumanans, hanging down like fantastic garlands from the tree boughs, then all he has to do is to light a green branch of the candomba and wave it in front of him as he goes along the trail, thereby dazzling and frightening away the pumas with this gleaming torch."
Well, this has already gone on for two and a half pages, so we at least need a break before we talk about Von der Goltz, Prussian tactics and draw comparison between fighting in the streets of Canudos and those of Stalingrad. So, rather than go on at length about trench warfare or the gaucho lancers or the story of the valiant hero who died alone guarding his slain general ("This obscure soldier was on his way to a place in history when -- unfortunate enough not to have died -- he cut short the immortality that was being thrust upon him by making his appearance in the flesh, along with the last remaining stragglers, in Queimadas.") or the Krupp cannons, etc., let's have a change of pace.
Michael McKenny 1989