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nudos “possessed the consistency and the treacherous flexibility of a huge net,” wrote
da Cunha. “In the somber story of cities taken by storm, this humble village must stand
out as an extraordinary and tragic instance. Intact, it was very weak indeed. Reduced to
rubble,itwasredoubtable.”Soldierscrawledthroughthewreckage,lostanddisoriented,
easy marks for snipers and urban guerrilla fighters of both sexes. Little streets became
blocked-off cul-de-sacs, and the invaders became hapless targets. The problem wasn't
getting into Canudos; “the difficult thing was to leave it.”
Moreira Cesar called for a cavalry attack, and snipers in the church tower picked off
the horses and riders as they waded chest deep into the Vasa Barris, including the erratic
commander of the charge, Treme Terra himself. Wheeling and refusing, once in the city,
the horses were even worse at maneuvering in rubble of urban warfare. Cavalry was,
after all, a military technique for open plains, not for guerrilla fighting in urban wreck-
age. It was not an assault but “a rash battering of a monstrous barricade.” The remain-
ing eight hundred men of the Republican army, withdrawing from the town, fled back
throughtheSertão.Theinhabitants ofCanudoswenttothechurchplaza and“brokeinto
aprolonged,shrillanddeadlyintentionedululation”—abansheesoundofvoodooweird-
nessthatfollowedthepanickedbattalionsastheyretreatedandstumbledthroughaland-
scapelitteredwithnewcorpsesandthebleedingwounded,laceratedbythethornybrush
and trampled by bolting horses. The confused and terrified troops were easily picked off
by snipers positioned in boulder nests along the lines of retreat. Soldiers who saw their
companionsfallattheirsidesdroppedtheirweaponsandchargedawayfromtheinfernal
assaults that came from the front, from behind, and from the side, as though the land-
scape itself held the fleeing men in their sights. The troops in disarray had been largely
drawnfromlocalmilitias,andaccordingtodaCunha,theirinexplicabledefeatsoontook
on a supernatural character. Most of the combatants “had not so much as laid eyes on a
single one of the enemy.”
Figure 3.2. Euclides da Cunha, far right, in Bahia, awaiting departure to Canudos.
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