ich he
had pursued. Later, out of office, he talked with much bitterness of the
political conspiracies which had been formed against him by the
Spaniards of Cuba, of their moral treason to the cause of Spain, and of
the sordid tyranny which they exercised. He declared that Spain herself
was at fault for the Cuban revolution, which never would have occurred
if the island had been treated as an integral province of Spain and not
as a subject and enslaved country; and he prophesied that the verdict of
history would be, as it had been in the case of Central and South
America, that Spain had lost her American empire through the perverse
faults of the Spaniards themselves. "My successor," he added, "will
fail." Three days later he sailed for Spain.

CHAPTER V

The administration of General Marin lasted only a few weeks, but it was
marked with strenuous doings. His first effort was to do what Campos had
failed to do, namely, to maintain an impassable barrier between Pinar
del Rio and Havana. He massed troops on the line between Havana and
Batabano, and took command himself at the centre, hoping to draw Maceo
into a general engagement. But Maceo sent Perico Diaz with 1,400 men
from Artemisia to create a diversion just north of the centre, which was
done very effectively, Diaz and General Jil drawing a large Spanish
force into a trap and inflicting terrible slaughter with a cavalry
machete charge. Taking advantage of this, Maceo with a small detachment
easily crossed the trocha at the south. At once the Spanish forces all
rushed in that direction, to head off Maceo and to prevent him from
joining Gomez, whereupon the remainder of Maceo's troops crossed the
trocha at the centre and north. After raiding Havana Province at will,
and capturing fresh supplies, Maceo returned to Pinar del Rio, fought
and won a pitched battle at Paso Real, won another at Candelaria, where
the Spanish General Cornell was killed, and captured the city of Jaruco
and its forts with 80 guns.

By this time the new Captain-General had arrived. This was General
Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau; the man most of all desired--and indeed
earnestly asked for--by the Volunteers and other extremists among the
Spanish party in Cuba, the man most undesired by the Autonomists, and
the man most hated by the Cuban revolutionists. He had made himself
unspeakably odious in the Ten Years' War as the chief aid of Valmaseda
in his savage outrages, and he was confidently e