He led the Revolta da Armada against the First Brazilian Republic alongside Custódio José de Melo and was killed by government forces during the Federalist Revolution in the Battle of Campo Osório.

Defeated by the troops of Hipólito Ribeiro on 24 June 1895, he was killed in combat at the Battle of Campo Osório by Salvador Sena Tambeiro, a Uruguayan commanded by João Francisco.

In 1908, his remains, together with those of admiral Francisco Manuel Barroso da Silva, were transferred to Brazil and are currently buried in a mausoleum in the São João Batista Cemetery.

In "Minha Formação" (1900), Joaquim Nabuco says about him: "I had met Saldanha at the Philadelphia Exposition, then we connected a lot in New York, where we lived in the same hotel, the Buckingham.

The sphinx of life that had given him, as a teenager, one of his indecipherable enigmas to solve, destroying in him the aspiration to be happy, reappeared again, blocking his step just as he could dispute the most important position in the country".