But by 1890, Maria Christina, who was even more dictatorial than her late husband, asked his resignation and called in Cánovas, whose conservative and high-tariff policy brought a marked diminution of foreign trade. Cánovas’ chief trouble came from his own party. After two and a half years, he resigned and again advised the calling of Sagasta, who sent an expedition of twenty-five thousand soldiers under Campos to Morocco and forced the sultan to pay an indemnity of £800,000 for attacks on the Spanish outposts at Melilla in Morocco. He was not so happy with the Cuban question.
Cuba had long been rather the victim and prey of the mother-country than a colony, and the efforts for relief by the few friends in Spain had received practically no attention. The growth of the sentiment of revolt, the failure of the milder policies of men like Martínez Campos, and the equal fiasco of the mediævally relentless policy of General Weyler, who won the name of “butcher,” are detailed in the later volume devoted to Spanish America. It must suffice here to say that Cánovas was assassinated by an anarchist, August 9th, 1897, while pressing a bill for more liberal home rule in Cuba. He was succeeded by the former war minister General Azcarraga.
Meanwhile the people of the United States had been so deeply stirred by the decades of torture inflicted on their island neighbours in Cuba that General Weyler was recalled through pressure brought to bear by American diplomacy. The conservative cabinet gave way to Sagasta, Marshal Blanco replaced Weyler and tried a gentler policy. But the ruination of Cuba could not be checked by any mild and negative treatment. The people of the United States had been wrought to a pitch of horror by the tales of the starvation of Cuban men, women, and children by the thousand, and when the United States cruiser Maine, while visiting the port of Havana, was blown up with great loss of life, it needed only the declaration of a commission of inquiry that she had been sunk by a submarine mine, to bring the United States to demand the evacuation of Cuba by Spain. There was no implication that the destruction of the Maine had official sanction, but it was given as a final proof of the intolerable state of affairs in Cuba.
[1897-1898 A.D.]
The demand was naturally more than Spanish pride would bear and the American minister was given his passports. The European powers refused to intervene, though the press was almost unanimously for Spain, except in England. It was notorious that Spanish resources were hopelessly inadequate to a protracted war with the infinite riches of the United States, but the American navy was small and according to European experts decidedly inferior in discipline, morale, and efficiency to the Spanish navy. This theory was exploded by the swift and utter destruction of two Spanish fleets, that of Admiral Montojo by Admiral Dewey in Manila Bay, May 1st, 1898, and that of Admiral Cervera by the fleet under Admiral Sampson in Santiago de Cuba, July 3rd. Land-forces in Cuba, the Philippines, and Porto Rico won those islands with comparatively little struggle, as is described in the second volume of our history of the United States.
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo
Late in July, Spanish pride saw nothing left but surrender of practically all her colonies. A treaty of peace was signed at Paris, December 12th, 1898, after a protocol had put an end to hostilities for some months. The Caroline Islands which remained to Spain in the Pacific, and over which there had almost been a war with Germany in 1885, were sold to Germany in 1899 for £800,000; and in 1900 the United States bought two small islands that had been overlooked in the earlier treaty, paying $100,000 (£20,000) for them.
Spain came out of the war in a sad financial state. Besides the practical annihilation of her navy and the great loss of her army’s prestige, her national debt of £259,116,500 had been increased by £60,000,000 for war expenses (borrowed at very high interest); and the United States had forced her to assume the Cuban and Philippine debts of £46,210,000. The mountain of debt that confronted her was thus £365,326,500; or more than $1,826,600,000.
The liberals, who had been compelled to take the government at the outbreak of war, had faced inevitable defeat, but there were so many details of maladministration, of neglect and ignorance in war preparations that the blame of the disaster fell on them as if they had been its origin. Sagasta gave way to the conservative Silvela. He feared to support the radical measures which Villaverde, the minister of finance, felt necessary for the reduction of expense and the increase of revenue, and which provoked violent and organised resistance from tax-payers. Villaverde in consequence was sacrificed, though he had attacked his problem with sanity and courage. The resistance of the National Tax-payers’ Union did not cease, however, and Silvela was driven to rigorous measures of repression.