He sat down on the bed with a heavy thud. “When you plunder, there is an amount of devilry that as a captain you have to turn the other way on. Harassing the women, looting and burning, but these men…they didn’t care.” He dropped his head into his hands. After a moment’s reflection he slowly looked up, wiping his hands over his face as he did. “They set buildings on fire, with no regard for who was in them. They openly raped women right in the streets.

“I killed one.” He looked up at me with large, sad eyes. “I was riding through the carnage and I saw him having his way with a young girl.” His voice cracked. “She was just a child. I was so disgusted, I…I ran him through as I rode by. I didn’t even yell, didn’t give him any warning. I killed him while he was on the girl. I killed my own man.”

I sat next to him on the bed in silence. “You did what you had to under the circumstances.” I reached out and took his wrist, beginning to tenderly massage it. “You can’t control all of your men’s actions all of the time.”

“Can’t I?” José pulled his arm away. “When I go into battle, I know my men. I know each and every name. They are disciplined. If I give an order, they do not think twice about taking it. They have to be that way. I can’t bring them home unless we operate like a finely tuned machine. Those men, the ones that I picked up on my way to Imaruí, were demons, pure evil incarnate.” José looked away, focusing on his boots. “Imaruí is gone,” he whispered. “I had to scream like the devil himself to get them under control. If I didn’t, I don’t think they would have even gotten back on the ship. They would have followed the townspeople who escaped into the woods.”

After a moment I reached up to touch his arm. He jumped. “We burned everything.” He sighed. “There’s nothing left.”

“The Imperial army is going to retaliate, aren’t they?”

“I’d lose respect for them if they didn’t,” he responded, looking back up at me.

Thirteen

January 1840

José was right. The raid on Imaruí was seen as a blatant insult to the government. The fourteen-year-old king, Dom Pedro II, wanted to put an end to this insurrection that his regents, a succession of three, each one weaker than the last, had allowed to continue. Dom Pedro II determined this was his opportunity to start his reign with a show of strength. He would not be a fragile ruler like the regents that preceded him. The king was prepared to bring the full wrath of the Imperial army down on the Farrapos and anyone who harbored them.

He called our attack on Imaruí a massacre. The articles in the papers decried the loss of life due to the horrendous actions of the mercenary known as Giuseppe Garibaldi. They went on to further provoke the monarchy, saying he was being made a cuckold. The young king decided he would put an end to our rebellion once and for all and that end would come at Laguna, the port town that dared to shelter the man responsible for making him a fool.