"...leaving their despondent families' embraces after the Christmas holidays, both rugged veterans of the front and fresh-faced recruits across Brazil suddenly dug in their heels and refused to return to duty, at one mustering camp even going so far as to seize their weapons. "Let us go home!" and "We are prisoners, not soldiers!" were battle cries of the exhausted, terrified young men who it was increasingly the view of much of the Brazilian political establishment were being fed into the maw of war to satisfy Fonseca's ego and ideological obsession with Argentina.
The Revolt of the Recruits, also known as the New Years Mutiny, occurred roughly between December 27, 1915 and January 4, 1916. At its peak on the 29th, as many as twenty thousand men returning to the front from holiday or headed there for the first time after conscription stood arm-in-arm and denounced Fonseca personally and specifically. As news of this spread, mutinies began to spread across the front and logistics camps in Mesopotamia. Concordia and Uruguiana, probably the two most important railheads for troops being routed into Argentine territory, erupted in rioting as soldiers, including field nurses and doctors, either threw their guns on the ground and dared military officers to shoot them or got into firefights with officers themselves.
The causes of the mass mutiny of soldiers across southern Brazil and the occupied territories is a subject of considerable debate but the continuously delayed next offensive across the Parana was certainly one of them; for much of Brazilian society, particularly elites, it wasn't clear what some more planes from CASD would do that had not been done before. Supplies could flow relatively freely to Argentina over the Andes or around the Horn now, and Mexico was no longer a belligerent to distract the United States, and the rumored expediting of dispatching an expeditionary force to Argentina had had its intended effect on Brazilian military planners.
Some academics, particularly of the Integralist school, were persuaded of the idea of a conspiracy against Fonseca, which depending on which variant of Integralism one followed was either the correct option or a betrayal of Holy Brazil. It was generals of the Renovator faction such as Klinger and Tavora who were largely in charge of training both officers and recruits, and it was they who benefited most from Fonseca's fall from grace and power - while they almost certainly did not organize the entire mutiny, it is today broadly accepted that they encouraged and fanned contempt for the Chief of the Army amongst the enlisted ranks. Beyond the perhaps open plotting and scheming of those two, however, Fonseca's rapid political demise in January of 1916 was simply pure opportunism for men who had been previously paralyzed by collective inaction.
Hermes da Fonseca had long been protected by a cult of personality he had built around himself that actually had few if any members; his perceived power had been just that, perceived. He had created an illusion, through force of charisma and demagogy, that he and he alone represented the ambitions of the Brazilian Army and that he was the noble sword of the Brazilian people and Catholic Church in its crusade against secularism, radicalism, and republicanism. [1] Politicians were persuaded that he would destroy careers if not carry out a putsch if he was not sated, and his use of a secret police outside of the control of the government to silence opposition indeed suggested as much. The Revolt of the Recruits thus demonstrated once and for all that what many were beginning to suspect was true - the gallant knight of conservative Brazil was wearing no armor.
Dom Agosto Leopoldo, the Emperor's cousin and Chief of the Navy, denounced Fonseca in a speech before Parliament on January 5, a loaded date as it was the 16th anniversary of the death of Pedro III, and a day after the worst of the violence had been pacified, even if small scattered mutinies endured. This on its own was not particularly strange, as the Prince-Admiral had never been particularly afraid to condemn the general publicly, but the words he used were stronger than ever, referring to Fonseca as a "charlatan," who had "not just failed the Emperor but betrayed the confidence of the Brazilian people." Dom Agosto concluded his remarks, which were met with applause, by stating, "All that is left to do that is gentlemanly would be to resign, and perhaps even accept exile."
Normally, Fonseca could have weathered such a storm, especially since the General Staff was one of the few places where he had some actual loyalists on hand. But the political situation had deteriorated for him dramatically over the past several months, with his promised offensive now thrice delayed, his ally Pinheiro Machado in the ground, and the following government having lasted all of two months under Barbosa. Emperor Luis I was exhausted and tired of Fonseca's domineering antics and his new Prime Minister Pessoa, having spent about as much time in the job now as Barbosa, was eager to make his mark in government early. On January 6, Pessoa gathered his cabinet to review the aftermath of the Mutiny and agreed with the assessment of Foreign Minister Lauro Muller that "discipline and morale within the Army is now nonexistent," Fonseca protested, but Pessoa pointedly asked him to provide "hard evidence if you are to name Dom Lauro a liar." Fonseca, perhaps for the first time in his meteoric career, slumped in his chair, stewing, for he had little to say.
The next day, January 7, Luis I called upon Pessoa and asked if he retained confidence in the Chief of the Army and Minister of Defense; Pessoa replied that he did not, and by the end of the day both men had separately requested Fonseca's resignation, with it clear that it was a courtesy to avoid the destabilizing spectacle of his sacking. After five and a half tumultuous, dangerous years atop Brazil's military, all it took were thousands of recruits declaring that they refused to die for him for Fonseca's reign to end. Isidoro Dias Lopes, one of the capable general from the front, was immediately tapped as his replacement, and Dias Lopes immediately handed Pessoa his assessment that Brazil was unlikely to gain more from the war than it already had and stood the risk of simply killing more men and losing more naval assets if it continued, with which Pessoa, despite his hardline political views and instincts, reluctantly agreed with. In that sense, the hundreds of recruits killed during the Mutiny saved thousands of their countrymen's lives through their sacrifice.
The Revolt of the Recruits was historically significant - it led directly to the end of the war with Argentina, as we will discuss in the next chapter, but it also proved to be a hugely controversial moment that immediately polarized politics. It left supporters of Fonseca deeply embittered and feeling betrayed, wondering if the war had been for nothing (especially considering that Uruguay had been seized for the Blancos in the first weeks of the war), while radicals and socialists saw how fragile the Brazilian state was to mass action and political violence. More than anything, though, it left a lasting impression on the Integralists, who saw the dispute not as one of nationalism or anti-progressivism but rather that of a "weak state," a "mongrelized" people who lacked a unifying cause to fight around for their motherland and who needed something to unite them and, of course, discipline them into becoming an actual world power rather than the embarrassing display they had put on since the Battle of the River Plate two years earlier..."
- War in the Cone
[1] Our many Brazilian readers will note the irony of this
