At dawn on August 16, the sledgehammer was raised again on a plain called Acosta Ñu, sixteen miles north of Piribebuy. The comte d'Eu brought twenty thousand men with him and divided them into four divisions, one on each side of the plain. Facing them in the red earth trenches were 4,300 Paraguayan soldiers, the rearguard and largest surviving contingent of the army López had built the past summer.

      Among thousands of Brazilians at Acosta Ñu were three veterans who had been in the war from the start: Colonel Clóvis Lima da Silva; Lieutenant Surgeon Fábio Alves Cavalcanti; voluntário Antônio Paciência. They were all witness to what happened on the plain of Acosta Ñu this southern winter's day in August 1869.

      Clóvis da Silva, fully recovered from his incarceration by López and recently promoted to colonel, commanded an eighteen-gun battery on a knoll 2,100 yards west of the Paraguayan trenches. On eminences to the south and east were more howitzers and guns to sweep the enemy positions with a belt of fire. At 7:00 A.M., Colonel da Silva gave the order for two guns on the right of his battery to fire the first rounds.

      As the artillery crews came smartly to orders, Clóvis da Silva stood with a telescope glued to his eye. The morning was overcast, a raw chill in the air, with patches of mist hanging over the plain, which was covered with clumps of macega , a short, hardy grass. Clóvis saw sections of the Paraguayan earthworks and part of their camp — a long, dark smear in the macega.

     “Ready! Fire! Fire!”

      Clóvis's body stiffened noticeably as the guns roared out. Mentally, he counted off the seconds, waiting for the distant boom. He held the glass steady, watching the shells burst. Immediately, there were other loud reports from the other batteries.

     “Another round, Number one and two,” Clóvis ordered. “More to the left.”

     Clóvis cast a practiced eye over the gunners as they loaded charges and ammunition, trained the pieces laterally, adjusted elevation, and stepped to their places to the right and left at the command “Ready!”

    “Fire! Fire!”  (Contd. below)

(c) 2008 BRAZIL by Errol Lincoln Uys, excerpt from Book Five, Sons of the Empire

Again, Clóvis counted off the seconds before the shells burst, throwing up earth and dust at the Paraguayan trenches. Again, there were explosions from the Brazilian cannon on their right.

    And from the enemy, answering fire, the first shells from six Paraguayan guns facing their position, whistling high over their heads to explode behind them.

   “Keep this range,” Clóvis ordered. “Battery fire!”

Clóvis da Silva's battery and the artillery to their right hammered the enemy's positions. The Paraguayans returned fire with twenty-three fieldpieces, and where there had been mist, there were patches of drifting white smoke.

     By mid-morning, the infantry and cavalry attacks began. The overcast sky livened with battle's fury; the white kepis of thousands of soldiers spread like blossoms in the macega, the steel of their bayonets dull gray as they pressed toward the enemy's trenches. And coming down from the north-still too distant to be more than a dark, indistinguishable mass; still too distant to hear the rumble of the earth — were the first blocks of cavalrymen unleashed from the body of eight thousand waiting to assault the enemy.

     The Brazilians attacked from every direction, bullets humming and hissing through the macega. The cavalry sweeping down from the north tore into a band of Paraguayan horses riding out to meet them, sabering to the left and right, making swift work of the slaughter. But the Paraguayans' inner defenses withstood the first onslaught and kept the Brazilians pinned down in the macega and at the overrun advance trenches. There was a lull in the battle. Then the Brazilians launched fresh assaults, hour after hour, slowly but relentlessly cleaning out the Paraguayan trenches.

     Lieutenant Surgeon Fábio Alves Cavalcanti was at a field hospital two miles south of Acosta Ñu. There had been a steady trickle of ambulance wagons since early morning, bringing the human wreckage of battle to be pieced together, stitch by stitch.

Mid-afternoon, Fábio was still at the operating table. The orderlies had brought him a screaming Paraguayan, with one foot sliced off and one leg pulped below the knee, a Guarani boy, no more than twelve years old.

     In the sixteen days since the start of the campaign across the cordillera, Fábio Cavalcanti had experienced a growing sense of tragedy. The sight of victims like this boy were ever more frequent as the Brazilian columns obliterated the enemy's position and drove in the Paraguayan left. Two days ago, at Piribebuy, Fábio and his fellow surgeons had treated fifty-three of their own wounded. It was more than the carnage at Piribebuy that troubled Fábio: There were reports that the Brazilian troops had massacred women and children fleeing the ruined town. There was a rumor, too, that the infirmary of Piribebuy had been purposefully set alight and those within prevented from fleeing that hideous bonfire.

     Fábio had left Asunción in June, with the medical corps, for the cordillera campaign. Renata had remained at the barrack hospital, and Fábio was thankful she was spared the horrors of this final thrust against the enemy — for that it would bring an end to the war, he had no doubt.

     In the operating tent, the Guarani boy, sedated with ether, lay naked on the table. Fábio and his helpers staunched the flow of blood where the boy's foot had been severed; the other leg was amputated below the knee.

     The boy died while they were stitching the flaps on the stump.

     Late afternoon at the plain of Acosta Ñu, the Paraguayan lines were collapsing. For nine hours they had withstood the onslaughts, but on every quarter now, gun positions were overrun; trenches were stormed and taken. Hundreds of prisoners were being driven back behind the Brazilian lines.

    “C'est magnifique!” said the comte d'Eu at his headquarters near Clóvis da Silva's battery. “Ce moment de la victoire!”

    The homely Prince Louis Gaston had proved himself a veritable tiger in battle, galloping fearlessly from one position to another exhorting his troops to fight. And now, as the overcast sky darkened, the moment of victory was almost at hand.

     There was a wood just south of the plain. In the fading light, and viewed from a distance such as lay between the comte's headquarters and the forest, tiny black dots could be seen emerging from out of the trees, scuttling through the macega toward the Paraguayan lines; they looked like so many squads of small, dark peccaries bolting through the grass. And like wild pigs, they provided excellent sport for cavalrymen who rode them down, sticking them with their lances.

     Those tiny figures dashing across the macega were the mothers of boys in the trenches. They had hidden in the woods all day watching the progress of battle and were running to see if their children were dead or alive.

(c) 2008 BRAZIL by Errol Lincoln Uys, excerpt from Book Five, Sons of the Empire