Our War with Spain for Cuba's Freedom

by Trumbull White

CHAPTER IV.

BUCCANEERING AND THE WARFARE IN THE SPANISH MAIN.

Spain's Stolen Treasures from Mexico and Peru Tempt Her European
Rivals—The Spanish Main the Scene of Piratical Plundering for
Many Years—Havana and Other Cities Threatened—Great Britain
Takes Santo Domingo—American Troops from the British Colonies
Capture Havana—Victory on Land and Sea Is Saddened by Many
Deaths of Brave Americans from Fever—Lessons of the First Capture
of Havana.

After the acquisition of rich and populous countries in the western hemisphere had begun, Spain discovered that her new-found wealth was not to be hers without a struggle. From the harbors of Mexico and Peru, Spanish galleons sailed with their loads of treasure, stolen from the Montezumas and the Incas. Year after year, rich argosies, laden with gold and silver to replenish the extravagant treasury of the Spanish crown, crossed the seas. The Atlantic ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea were furrowed with the keels of Spanish fleets, at a time when the European nations scarcely maintained the pretense of friendship with one another.

It was hardly to be expected that these rich prizes should go unmolested. England and France knew quite well that they were plundered from the native treasuries of the new world, and no reason appeared why Spain in turn should not be robbed of her plunder. So the Spanish Main, the Caribbean sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the adjacent waters, became the haunt of buccaneers and pirates, some under flags of European nations, and others under the black flag. Desperate fights were the lot of almost every Spanish galleon that sailed those seas, and fabulous prizes sometimes were taken under the skull and crossbones. Spanish men of war sailed back and forth to convoy the merchant fleets, but their protection was not always sufficient. Pirates could obtain frigates with guns as good as those of Spain, and with the temptation of wealth before them they braved conflict whenever it was necessary.

The harbors of Key West, the Dry Tortugas and others along the Florida keys, as well as many of those in the Bahamas, the West Indies and the Antilles, were the haunts of buccaneers and privateers who careened their ships on shore for repairs, or held high revel on the beaches after their triumph over some Spanish treasure fleet. Those were bloody days, full of dramatic excitement. From them some of the most notable writers of fiction have drawn their tales, which entertain readers of to-day.

What was done with all the gold thus garnered in sea fights before it reached the ports of Spain, is hard to know. Sometimes mysterious strangers appeared in the seaport towns of France and England and even the American colonies in their younger days, to spend money lavishly for a short time and then disappear as mysteriously as they came. These men were reputed to be pirate chiefs seeking relaxation from their customary life. Others of the buccaneers hoarded their wealth in hiding places known only to themselves, the secret of which must have died with them, while the gold remains undiscovered. All through the Florida keys and the West India islands, as well as along the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas, traditions still exist in relation to these treasure hoards. Sanguine people are still digging in the sands of these beaches, in the hope that some day they will unearth a sea chest full of Spanish doubloons, or the golden ornaments stripped from Aztec idols. Some finds indeed have been made, but those who make them are not apt to reveal the secret which might guide another to a successful search.

PIRATICAL RAIDS TROUBLE HAVANA.

Having discovered the wealth that could be obtained by attacks upon the Spanish fleets, the pirates began to think of the cities which were themselves the source of much of this wealth. The result of this was that they began to make descents upon the coasts, not only of Cuba, but of the neighboring islands of Jamaica and Santo Domingo. The expense occasioned by the attempts to suppress these incursions became so great toward the end of the sixteenth century, that it became necessary to impose a special tax to cover it.

Fortresses at all the fortified harbors were improved, and the power of the military officials increased as their importance increased, and that of the civil governors diminished. It was as a direct result of these conditions that the office of Captain General was created, in which the governor shared military and civil authority alike. Havana fortifications were hastened to completion and the preparations for defense began, which never have been materially improved to this day. The three fortresses of El Morro, La Punta and La Cabana were built before the end of the sixteenth century and still were standing as the most effective defenses of Havana when our war with Spain began.

It was during the same period, that African negroes were first introduced into Cuba. Slavery had proved so severe upon the aborigines, that their numbers had almost reached the vanishing point, and there was a lack of sufficient labor for the cultivation of tobacco and sugar cane, the chief products of Spanish agriculture in the island. It was to promote the production of these new luxuries that the African slave trade was begun. A royal license from the King of Spain was obtained to guarantee the privilege of importing negroes.

Then began that foul commerce which was another black stain on the history of Spanish colonization of the western hemisphere. Spanish ships descended upon the African coasts and kidnapped thousands of negroes for service in the Cuban cane and tobacco fields. The horrors of the trade cannot be magnified and are too distressing for repetition. It is sufficient to say that in Havana it is understood that the harbor was free from sharks which now swarm there, until they followed the slave ships from the African coasts in multitudes, for the feast of slaves who were thrown overboard on the long voyage. Scores and hundreds of Africans died during the journey, from the hardships they were compelled to undergo, and Havana harbor itself was the last grave of many of these hapless ones.

GREAT BRITAIN THREATENS SPANISH POSSESSIONS.

It was just after the middle of the seventeenth century and during the rule of Oliver Cromwell in England, that the Spanish governors of Cuba began to fear an attack by a British fleet. A squadron sailed in 1655 with the design of capturing Jamaica, a purpose which was easily accomplished. That island was taken by Great Britain, the Spanish forces defending it were utterly defeated, the governor was killed, and many of the inhabitants removed, in consequence, to Cuba. From Jamaica the same fleet sailed for Havana, but the attack was repulsed and the ships abandoned the attempt. Except for the encroachments of the French upon the island of Santo Domingo, and the continual piratical incursions of French and English buccaneers, the Spanish in the West Indies were not threatened with any more hostilities except by their own internal dissensions until 1762. At that time Spain and England were at war, Spain in alliance with the French, and it was decided by the British government that Cuba was a vulnerable possession and a valuable one that ought to be taken.

The capture of Havana by forces under the English flag fills little space in the history of England and Spain, because of the magnitude of the interests involved elsewhere. It is almost forgotten in America, in spite of the bearing of all its contemporary incidents upon the rapidly approaching revolution, and yet it was an achievement of the colonial troops and consequently the first assault upon Cuba by Americans.

It was an event of the first importance in its own day and contained lessons of the first moment for the guidance of those who had to plan the conduct of the war against Spain in 1898. It proved that American troops under efficient officers could take the field with success against double their number of Spaniards fully provisioned and strongly intrenched. It proved that Havana could be successfully assaulted by a combined military and naval force, regardless of her picturesque but obsolete fortifications. Spain's lack of administrative ability in the later war as well as in the first, destroying any advantage to be derived from balls and cannon. On the other side it proved that Americans had to look forward to a considerable loss of life as a result of climatic conditions, if they attempted to conduct hostile operations in Cuba during the summer season.

The utter incapacity for straightforward, pertinacious fighting, which both Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington found in the Spanish army during the Peninsular war, was as conspicuous fifty years before, when the Americans took Havana, and may rightly be argued as perpetually inherent in the national character; for though the annals of Spain are filled with instances of individual courage of the first rank, demoralization sets in as soon as they come together in numbers in the face of a civilized foe. Their chief maneuver in the course of a century and a half, has been just plain running away. The victorious Wellington, seeing his Spanish allies running for dear life just after he had whipped the opposing French line in the last battle of the peninsular campaign, was moved to remark that he had seen many curious things in his life, but never before 20,000 men engaged in a foot race.

Yet the fight made by the Spaniards in Havana during the attack of the British and colonial forces in 1762 is the one notable instance of a prolonged struggle between men who speak English and men who speak Spanish. History may be searched in vain, either in the old or new world, for a defense as able in point of generalship or as stubborn in resistance as the Spaniards made at the siege of Havana. In all other cases, from the Elizabethan campaigns in Holland to the war with Mexico, the men educated in the Spanish school of arms have been content to spend their energies upon a single assault and then flee, sometimes even when the odds were greatly in their favor.

The English Armada left Portsmouth on March 5th, 1762, under the command of the gallant Admiral Pococke and Lord Albemarle, the force moving in seven divisions. It consisted of nineteen ships of the line, eighteen frigates or smaller men-of-war, and 150 transports containing about 10,000 soldiers, nearly all infantry. At the Island of Hayti, then called Hispanola, the British were joined by the successful expedition from Martinique. Together they sat down before Havana, July 6th, 1762.

SPAIN'S INTELLECTUAL DRY ROT.

Spain, suffering, as it suffers to-day, from intellectual dry rot, had known for weeks of the intended beleaguerment. Then, as now, nothing adequate was done to meet it. The Governor of Havana, the Marquis de Gonzalez, was a gallant soldier, as he was to prove; but that ounce of prevention which is proverbially worth more than the pound of cure, was not taken by him, and the British found the fortifications in a partially ruinous condition, and the fourteen ships of the line which were lying in the harbor before the city in such a state that they could hardly be called in commission. The Spanish army of defense numbered 27,000 men, and was in better condition; but the Spanish sailors were utterly demoralized by the granting of too much shore liberty, and the best use the Spaniard could put his fighting ships to was by sinking them at the entrance to the anchorage to prevent the entrance of the British fleet. Once the enemy was before the city, however, all was activity. The fortifications, which were too newly erected to be quite incapable of repair, were set in order, the guns of Morro Castle and of the fort known as the Puntal, across from it, were trained on the advancing foe, and the Spanish ships were sunk, as has been said.

Those familiar with the history of English administrative methods during this period will find little to choose between them and the methods of Spain. The season of the year most unwholesome to the inhabitants of a temperate climate had already set in, with all its train of pestilences, when the British arrived. Though deluged by the tremendous rains of the tropics from day to day, the water supply was wholly insufficient, and the little obtainable was so tainted as to make its use fraught with danger. There was no pilot who knew the roadstead in order to lead the ships against the Morro and the Puntal for many days. In throwing up the parallels and approaches to the walls of the city on the landward side, the soldiers found such scarcity of earth, the blanket over the rocks being of the thinnest sort, that this necessary material for covering an attack had to be brought from a distance. Then, too, it was charged with the germs of disease, and all who handled it suffered extremely. Despite all the precautions of the officers, the sanitary condition surrounding the camp was horrible, and the troops died like dogs.

YANKEES IN CUBA.

Meanwhile there was a large force of British regulars in North America, stationed there ever since the fall of the French empire in the new world in 1760. Four thousand of these soldiers were gathered in New York City. To them the colonies of East and West Jersey added a regiment of 500 men, New York another of 800, while Lyman raised a full thousand in Connecticut. When these, too, had been assembled in New York, Lyman was made Brigadier General of the colonial troops, and his Lieutenant Colonel, Israel Putnam, was made Colonel of the Connecticut soldiers in his stead. This was the same Putnam who fought the wolf single-handed in its cave, and who was to take that breakneck ride a few years later to escape the very troops with whom he was now associated. The entire force of 2,300 provincials under General Lyman's command was not a mere bevy of raw militia. Nearly all of them had seen service against the French in those well trained and active forces which were given the general name of "Rangers;" the officers especially, of whom Putnam was hardly more than a type, being men of extended experience. The fact that so many men were willing to volunteer in this arduous and, as it turned out, desperate service for the King, speaks volumes for what could have been done with such men had Pitt and not Bute been at the head of the English nation at that time. The advices from Havana showed that the army there was in great need of reinforcements, so by great efforts the regulars and provincials were stowed way in fourteen transports, and with an escort of a few frigates they set sail for the South about the middle of May. There were the usual shouts of an admiring populace and the tears of sweethearts and wives; but it is easy to say that there would have been no rejoicing if the people of Connecticut, the Jerseys, and New York could have foreseen that hardly one of every fifty of their volunteers would see his home again.

AMERICANS WERE WRECKED.

Just before the arrival of these welcome reinforcements on July 20, some English merchantmen had come along with cargoes of cotton bags, which were pressed into immediate use for the lines which were now closing around Havana; and in the ships were also found several pilots. Then the forces from the North came amidst general rejoicings, but without Putnam and 500 of his Yankees. These, in a transport which was skirting the dangerous coast much too closely, were shipwrecked on one of the treacherous shoals thereabouts. Putnam, with true New England fertility of resource, extemporized rafts from the fragments of the vessel and got all his men ashore without the loss of a life. They landed near the City of Carthagena, threw up breastworks, and were found ready to repel a force of thousands of Spaniards when the ships from before Havana arrived for their rescue, their own companions wisely pressing on and sending aid back from the headquarters.

The American troops went bravely to work, engaging themselves chiefly with the undermining of one of the walls. To reach this it was necessary for them to pass along a narrow eminence where they were in plain view and easy range of the Spaniards. A number were lost in this dangerous enterprise, but their valor was dimmed neither by this nor by the still heavier losses which came upon them through the diseases prevalent in every portion of the British camp. Though men of such hardiness that they must have been equal in resisting power to the British, their losses were comparatively much greater, proving that they occupied positions of greater danger, either from bullets or the fevers of the region.

MORRO CASTLE TAKEN.

Five days after the arrival of the reinforcements, Lord Albemarle judged himself sufficiently strong to assault Morro Castle, and the word was accordingly given. The sunken ships were blown up early on the morning of July 25, and the British ships sailed into the fury of the Spanish cannon, belching shot from all along the shore. The big guns of the ships could not be elevated sufficiently to silence the fire from Morro Castle, and this was accordingly left to be carried by assault. The Puntal was silenced, troops landed, and after five days of ferocious fighting, in which the British and American losses were enormous by reason of their exposed position, and where every one concerned exhibited the utmost valor, Morro Castle was carried by the bayonet. The fighting within its walls after an entry had been made was exceedingly fierce. The Marquis of Gonzalez was killed by his own cowardly men for refusing to surrender. The cannon from the other Spanish batteries were turned upon the Morro as soon as the Spanish flag had been lowered, and the British ensign run up in its place; and then the slow and disastrous work of the siege was taken up again.

As the lines grew nearer and nearer, and the last hope of the Spaniard for relief was given up, there was the usual attempt made to buy the attacking party off. Though it would have been a hopeless undertaking at any time, the amount offered for the ransom of the city was so far below the treasure which was known to be in the town that the offer was made a subject for derisive laughter. Fifteen days after Morro Castle had fallen, though the mortality in the trenches was so great that a few weeks more must have seen the abandonment of the enterprise, the city fell, the garrison stipulating for a passage out with all the honors of war, which was freely accorded them, owing to the climatic predicament in which Lord Albemarle found himself. It was also stipulated that private property should be respected. This was strictly observed, though Spain had set repeated examples of giving a captured city over to plunder in the face of a stipulation to the contrary.

August 14, 1762, the British entered, the glory of their victory over such heavy odds even then dimmed by the enormous mortality. It was reckoned that the few days of August had wrought more damage to the invading forces than all the weeks of hard labor and open assault which had gone before. In the city—the Havannah, as it was then called—treasure was found to the amount of $7,000,000, much of it in such shape that there had been abundant time to withdraw it either to Spain or into the interior of the island, had there been any other than Spaniards at the head of affairs.

The occupancy of the British and colonial forces lasted but a few months. Lord Albemarle, with $120,000 of the prize money as his personal share, received notice of the conclusion of the treaty of Paris and withdrew his army to Great Britain. A single ship sufficed to remove the shattered remnant of the soldiers from Connecticut, the Jerseys, and New York. Twenty-three hundred sailed; barely fifty returned. It was a part of the good fortune of America—all of the good fortune, to be exact—which brought Colonel Israel Putnam safely home again, though the paralysis which shortened his labors not many years after the Declaration of Independence was unquestionably due to his exposure to the vertical sun of Cuba and to the poisons of its pestilential coast.

In the hands of George III., then King of England, all this suffering and deprivation amounted to virtually nothing. He was a coward at heart, a man who could not even avail himself of such hardly gained victories. The peace of Paris was signed, and by its terms George yielded up Cuba and the Philippines again to the power that has never ceased to misuse the advantages so obtained.

The belief gained ground in Havana, in 1807, that the English government again contemplated a descent on the island; and measures were taken to put it in a more respectable state of defense, although, from want of funds in the treasury, and the scarcity of indispensable supplies, the prospect of an invasion was sufficiently gloomy. The militia and the troops of the garrison were carefully drilled, and companies of volunteers were formed wherever materials for them could be found. The French, also, not content with mere preparations, made an actual descent on the island, first threatening Santiago, and afterwards landing at Batabano.

The invaders consisted chiefly of refugees from St. Domingo; and their intention seems to have been to take possession with a view to colonize and cultivate a portion of the unappropriated, or at least unoccupied, territory, on the south side of the island, as their countrymen had formerly done in St. Domingo. Without recurring to actual force, the captain-general prevailed on them to take their departure by offering transportation either to St. Domingo or to France.