Waching daily Jan 10 2018

In today's video we will discuss the organization of the main force used by the Empire of Brazil during the War of the Triple Alliance

the Fatherland Volunteers Corps.

At the beginning of the war the Empire needed men to expand the Army and face the threat posed by the Republic of Paraguay.

That is why, on January 7, 1865, Decree No. 3,371 was published which created the Fatherland Volunteers Corps

which would act during the war against the Republic of Paraguay. The text of the decree is found in the description of this video.

Initially the Volunteers Corps had a variable composition: their composition depended on the number of volunteers who presented themselves.

The Province of Bahia, for example, formed 14 Volunteer Corps throughout the conflict, several of them with full force.

On the other hand, the Province of Paraíba do Norte formed the 21st Volunteer Corps,

who went to the theater of war with 428 recruits and officers,

less than half of the regulatory force foreseen by decree, although several of these "volunteers" were recruited by use of force.

I will leave the question about recruiting the Volunteers for a future video.

On the Order of the Day No. 14 of December 20 1866 written in the Tuyuty camp,

the Commander of the Allied Forces in operation against Paraguay, Luiz Alves de Lima e Silva, Marques de Caxias

decides that the existing Volunteer Corps be reorganized according to Decree No. 782 of 1851.

Caxias's decision reflected the need to recover the fighting power of the Corps, many of them defunct by the fighting they had fought,

and suffered greatly from illness and other adverse conditions of the campaign.

Some Volunteer Corps had even been dissolved, the remaining soldiers of these distributed among other Corps,

leaving the numbering of the Bodies "truncated", in the words of the Commander in Chief.

After the Order of the Day No. 14, the Fatherland Volunteers Corps were organized in the same format as a Line Infantry Battalion

in accordance with Decree No. 782 of 1851. Thus, a Fatherland Volunteers Corp would be composed of:

a Staff, a Minor-Staff, and eight Riflemen Companies.

The Staff of the Corps would be composed of its Commander, in the rank of Lieutenant-colonel;

the second in command and Fiscal of the Corps, in the rank of Major;

an assistant Captain; a quartermaster Captain ;

and a lieutenant secretary, thus totalizing 5 officers.

The Minor-staff of the Corps was composed of a assistant sergeant;

a quartermaster sergeant;

a "fusilier" and a "coronero", responsible for the armament of the Corps;

the Tambor-mor, a Master of Music, 2 fifes and 16 musicians

all part of the band of the Corps. There are a total of 24 subalterns and privates.

A Riflemen Company consisted of a Captain, a 1st Lieutenant,

2 2nd Lieutenants, a 1st Sergeant, two 2nd Sergeants, a "Furriel", eight Corporals,

eight "Anspeçadas", eighty privates and two Drumers, totaling 4 officers and 102 privates.

In total, addin the eight companies and the largest and smallest states, a Volunteer Corps would have 37 officers and 840 soldiers.

Obviously, during the campaign the numbers of Corps components tended to vary due to casualties and replacements.