een men. The regulars were armed with the
Mauser magazine-rifle, while the guerrillas used a .45-caliber
Remington, carrying a large and very destructive brass-jacketed ball.
They had neither artillery nor machine-guns, and relied wholly upon
their small arms, their rifle-pits, and the great natural strength of
their position. The officer in command was Brigadier-General Joaquin
Vara del Rey. The attacking force, under direction of General Lawton,
consisted of four brigades, numbering about forty-five hundred men, and
was made up wholly of regulars with the exception of the Second
Massachusetts.

The battle began at half-past six o'clock in the morning. General
Chaffee's brigade took up a position six or eight hundred yards from the
fort on the eastern side of the village; Ludlow's brigade marched around
on the western side, so as to seize the Caney-Santiago road and thus cut
off the enemy's escape; while the brigade of General Miles closed in on
the south. Capron's battery, from the summit of a hill a little more
than a mile southeast of the fort, fired the first shot at 6:35 A. M.
Our infantry on General Chaffee's side then opened fire; the Spaniards
replied from their fort, blockhouses, and rifle-pits; and the engagement
soon became general. For the next three or four hours the battle was
little more than a rifle duel at about six hundred yards' range.
Capron's battery, from the top of the distant hill, continued to bombard
the fort and the village at intervals, but its fire was slow and not
very effective. Our infantry, meanwhile, were suffering far more loss
than they were able to inflict, for the reason that they could find
little or no shelter, while the Spaniards were protected by loopholed
walls and deep rifle-pits, and were firing at ranges which had been
previously measured and were therefore accurately known. In spite of
their losses, however, our men continued to creep forward, and about
eleven o'clock General Chaffee's brigade reached and occupied the crest
of a low ridge not more than three hundred yards from the northeastern
side of the village. The fire of the Spanish sharp-shooters, at this
short range, was very close and accurate, and before noon more than one
hundred of General Chaffee's men lay dead or wounded in a sunken road
about fifty yards back of the firing line. The losses in the brigades of
Generals Ludlow and Miles, on the western and southern sides of the
village, were almost as great, and