>>39343
>while waiting for other people burn themselves by digging out the potato from the coals
i.e. Mourão Filho, who was willing to fight and die in a failed rebellion. Instead he triggered the government's collapse. The conspirators in Rio then got out of their rat holes, waltzed into the abandoned edifice of power and ruthlessly sidelined Mourão Filho even before he marched in with his troops. He could've used them to attack the other coupists but chose not to and came back empty-handed, disappearing from history books on this point onward. It seems he genuinely wanted elections in 1965 and civilian government. His memoirs, published posthumously, devastate the military elite and were offensive enough to get briefly banned. All he ever finds in other officers is cowardice and selfishness, his closest allies were very incompetent.

The third power in the Paraíba Valley, between the GUEs and the IInd Army, was General Médici with his Agulhas Negras Academy. It had cadets and a Command and Service Battalion with a company of guards. The Battalion was already in readiness on the 31st, by the Ist Army's orders. As soon as Médici learned of Mourão Filho's movement, he was convinced of its righteousness.
Hence he picked a side and chose to block the road with his meager military strength. One reason he might have done this was that he hadn't partaken in the coup process until the very end and now had to win prestige with the other generals. He was successful as his action gained mythological status in the future.
Another, cited by one of his officers, was that the Academy couldn't just watch as eunuchs while the two Armies turned its home into a battleground.
At 17:30 he had activated his Staff to draft a war plan. At 02-03:00 he received calls from Costa e Silva and the Ist and IInd Armies, letting the IInd know his position, and then made his final decision known to the rest of the Academy.
Morale was high, if the decision hadn't been made some officers were willing to cross the mountains and join the rebels in Minas Gerais. Nevertheless a few cadets were arrested, some leftists, others just worried about legality.

As the day began the Academy dominated Resende. All fuel was in its hands. The mayor was arrested. Professors were embedded in the media.
Kruel asked Médici to mount a defense with the Paraíba Valley regiments underway (5th and 6th), the 1st Armored Infantry in Barra Mansa and the Command and Service Battalion. But he had other ideas, and outright rejected having Kruel's troops in the frontline. The cadets themselves were his fighting force. Nobody wanted to shoot at cadets, much less those of the greatest military academy: it was a psychological strategy, using a vulnerable group as a meat shield. Hence his manifesto pleaded: "Do not try to cut at the nest so many vocations".

By 09:30 morning in the 1st of April, the bulk of the cadets had left. The infantry entrenched perpendicular to the road. The communications teams worked tirelessly on telephone lines.
In the Oral History most interviewees praise them as an "elite" force, but those who actually served there are more pessimistic. The professors were competent commanders, of course, but the cadets were just students, with incomplete instruction. A GUEs soldier recounts seeing a whole group of infantrymen in line, easily mowed down by anyone with a machine gun.
In the artillery the lack of training and equipment was starkest. It was towed by underpowered Engineering vehicles, with no maps or radios. It had 250 shells, versus 35.000 brought by just two batteries of the GEsA. The hilly terrain demanded vertical fire which the cadets didn't know yet; they received some instruction in the field but it's not something that can be just improvised.