"We captured seventeen, thirteen of whom were shot outright; on dying they shouted, 'Hurrah for free Cuba! hurrah for independence!' A mulatto said, 'Hurrah for Cespedes!' On the following day we killed a Cuban officer and another man. Among the thirteen that we shot the first day were found three sons and their father; the father witnessed the execution of his sons without even changing color, and when his turn came he said he died for the independence of his country. On coming back we brought along with us three carts filled with women and children, the families of those we had shot; and they asked us to shoot them, because they would rather die than live among Spaniards."
Pedro Fardon, another officer, who entered entirely into the spirit of the service he honored, writes on September 22, 1869:
"Not a single Cuban will remain in this island, because we shoot all those we find in the fields, on the farms, and in every hovel."
And, again, on the same day, the same officer sends the following good news to his old father:
"We do not leave a creature alive where we pass, be it man or animal. If we find cows, we kill them; if horses, ditto; if hogs, ditto; men, women, or children, ditto; as to the houses, we burn them: so every one receives his due—the men in balls, the animals in bayonet-thrusts. The island will remain a desert."
These atrocities were perpetrated not alone by the common soldier. In fact, the above reports come from men who were officers in the Spanish army, and they show that such actions were approved by the highest authority. A well-authenticated account assures us that General Count Balmaceda himself went on one occasion to the home of a patriot family, Mora by name, to arrest or kill the patriots he had heard were stopping there; but, finding the men all absent, he wreaked his vengeance and thirst for blood by butchering the two Mora sisters and burning the house over their bodies.
PEACE AND FAIR PROMISES.
At last, Spain, seeing that she could neither induce the Cubans to surrender nor draw them into a decisive battle; and finding, furthermore, that her army of 200,000 men was likely to be annihilated by death, disease, and patriot bullets, made overtures, which, by promising many privileges to the people that they had not before enjoyed, effected a peace. As a result of this war, slavery was abolished in the island; but Spain's promises for fair and equitable government were repudiated, and the civil powers became more extortionate and severe than ever. This war laid a heavy debt upon Spain, and Cuba was taxed inordinately. The people soon saw that they had been duped. The world looked upon Cuba and Spain as at peace. To the outsider the surface was placid, but underneath "the waters were troubled." Such heroic spirits as Generals Calixto Garcia, Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo, and Maximo Gomez, leaders in the ten years' struggle, still lived, though scattered far apart, and in their hearts bore a load of righteous wrath against their treacherous foe. While such men lived and such conditions existed another conflict was inevitable.
THE LAST GREAT STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM.
It was on February 24, 1895, that the last revolution of the Cuban patriots began. Spain had heard the mutterings of the coming storm, and hoped to stay it by visiting with severe punishment every Cuban suspected of patriotic affiliations. Antonio Maceo, a mulatto, but a man of fortune and education, a veteran of the ten years' war, and a Cuban by birth, was banished to San Domingo. There were other exiles in Key West, New York, and elsewhere. Jose Marti was the leading spirit in forming the Cuban Junta in New York and organizing revolutionary clubs among Cubans everywhere. Antonio Maceo was the first of the old leaders in the field. He went secretly to Cuba and began organizing the insurrectionists, and when war was declared the flag of the new republic, bearing a lone white star in a red field, was flung to the breeze. Captain-General Calleja declared martial law in the insurgents' vicinity, and troops were hastily summoned and sent from Spain. The revolutionists from the start fought by guerrilla methods of warfare, dashing upon the unsuspecting Spanish towns and forces, and escaping to the mountains before the organized Spaniards could retaliate.