Urban combat in the São Paulo Revolt of 1924

Rebel tenentist revolutionaries, led by general Isidoro Dias Lopes, intended to take over the city in a few hours, but were trapped in combat in the central region against forces loyal to the government of president Artur Bernardes.

The rebels did not get the expected reinforcements from the 4th Infantry Regiment, they did not manage to cut the telegraph communications in time, they were repelled in the attack on the Campos Elíseos Palace, seat of the state government, and canceled their plans to invade Rio de Janeiro due to the 4th Battalion of the Public Force changing sides, in Luz.

With their command post in Guaiaúna, in Penha, the loyalists, divided into five brigades, began an offensive in a semicircle from Ipiranga to Vila Maria, concentrated on the tracks of the São Paulo and Central do Brasil Railways.

São Paulo, the starting point of the uprising, would witness a few hours of conflict; the city would be captured in a fulminating attack, based on audacity and surprise,[6] and from there, they would be joined by conspirators and sympathizers in other garrisons and quickly massed forces against the Federal District.

[10][12] Custódio de Oliveira would return to the barracks in Quitaúna,[13] where he would help a group of revolutionaries, led by captain Juarez Távora, to rebel the 4th Infantry Regiment.

[26] General Abilio de Noronha, informed of the revolt in the 4th BC at 04:30, alerted the state government and the Ministry of War and in half an hour visited this barracks, where the commander had just arrived.

[28] The commander of the 2nd RM proceeded to the barracks of the 4th Battalion of the Public Force at 5:30 and, without firing a shot, asserted his authority, arrested the sentries of the 4th BC who were on guard and released the loyalist officers.

[29][30] When trying to do the same in the School Corps, he was arrested by general Isidoro,[28] but he and other loyalist officers created the first unforeseen events in the revolt; the rebels were not the only ones to pull off actions of audacity and presence of mind.

The station was recovered without combat by loyalists from the 1st BFP, as lieutenant Ari Cruz, one of the revolutionary leaders who occupied it, was deceived: when he saw the arrival of an infantry company from the Public Force, he assumed that they were there to replace the guard.

[37] The loss of the 4th BFP threatened all the headquarters of Luz and forced the revolutionary command to cancel the trips to Santos and Rio de Janeiro in order to consolidate the positions within São Paulo.

[38] While counterrevolts held back the movement's geographic reach in its early days,[19] the federal government was fully informed and took action,[39] declaring a state of emergency and closing access to Paraná, Santos, and Rio de Janeiro.

[50] The heart of the revolutionary territory was the Luz barracks complex, but maneuvers and groupings on Tiradentes Avenue and neighboring streets were made impossible by the machine guns of the 4th BFP, where forty loyalists were under siege.

Lieutenant João Cabanas planned to open a breach in the wall with hand grenades, but his superior Miguel Costa prevented this operation, to preserve the public service of the plant.

[59] The loyalists at the power plant were the target of rifle fire from the Hotel Regina and the Santa Ifigênia Church, but their presence blocked the viaduct that led to São Bento square.

Thanks to recent territorial advances, the bombing was more effective, to the point that generals Pamplona and Arlindo advised the governor to transfer the seat of his government to the Secretariat of Justice, in Largo do Palácio, farther from the combat.

[70] A widespread loyalist withdrawal followed; the troops abandoned their positions, concentrating in more distant regions in the directions of Santos (Ipiranga) and Rio de Janeiro (Guaiaúna), from where they would prepare their offensive to reconquer the city.

[79] In addition to conquering positions, the loyalists began a heavy artillery bombardment from 11 July,[80] possibly as a strategy to wear down the enemy, due to lack of confidence in their own troops,[81] or as a way to minimize their casualties in direct combat.

[85][86] Historian Frank McCann speculated that the army's command set aside the modern lessons of the French Military Mission and returned to the old brutal ways of the Canudos and Contestado wars.

[95] The rebels were forced to divert troops from the front line to policing after 9 July, when, in the power vacuum created by the withdrawal of the state government, starving people looted several commercial buildings.

Attacked by the Florindo Ramos brigade, he had to retreat, but managed to reoccupy the factory and secure the defense line from Celso Garcia Avenue to the Vila Maria bridge.

[125] On the night of 14 July, this column passed through Aclimação and Vila Mariana and occupied positions as far as Liberdade, such as the barracks of the 5th Battalion of the Public Force, on Vergueiro Street, and the Convent of the Imaculada Conceição, on Brigadeiro Luís Antônio Avenue.

[143] The only mounted patrol carried out by the loyalists, according to Abílio de Noronha, was organized by the Arlindo brigade on 26 July, when infantrymen from Rio Grande do Sul, with requisitioned animals, passed by the left flank of the rebels, towards Jardim América.

[139] The reasons for this decision were several: the defeats in the direction of Sorocaba, from where a loyalist column was about to cut the road to Campinas,[146][147][148] and the futility of prolonging the destruction of the city in a struggle without prospects of victory.

[152] Small detachments commanded by Manoel Pires, Nélson de Melo and Ricardo Hall provided cover, and two cannons continued to fire to confuse the loyalists, until they were left behind when the last train departed.

[151] With no night patrols or contact with enemy infantry, the loyalist command did not notice the evacuation until the next morning, when soldiers found only straw dolls dressed in uniform in the revolutionary trenches.

[42] Abílio de Noronha argued just the opposite: "the rebels did not have a continuous line of fortifications and their trenches were very weak — a few piled up parallelepipeds and generally guarded by a small number of men".

[118][166] For Noronha, these barricades would be vulnerable to close-range assault, culminating in hand-to-hand combat at bayonet point, but instead, there were no actual infantry attacks, just ineffective ranged firing, wasting thousands of rounds.

[170] However, general Noronha noted the absence of flanking movements from the north (Guarulhos to the Tietê River) or south (Santo Amaro, Jardim América and Lapa).

[186][187] This technology could have been decisive, as, although slow, they had armor that was immune to rifles and machine guns and could easily break through street barricades or destroy fragile defenses with their cannons.

The rebels intended to combine this invention with driverless "crazy" or "ghost locomotives" that would be dispatched full steam ahead, loaded with dynamite, into enemy territory.