FullReads

Let us now follow the daring mulatto leader through the remainder of his career. General Weyler had now succeeded Campos, and began his official life with the boast that he would soon clear the provinces near Havana of rebels in arms. But he was hardly in the governor’s chair when Maceo was back from the west and swooping down on the city of Jaruco, which he looted and burned.

Weyler sent troops into Pinar del Rio, where they found no one to oppose them, and he was soon able to inform the world by a proclamation that this province was pacified. But the ink was barely dry upon it when Maceo, having burnt the port of Batabano, on the southern coast, was back in the “pacified” province, where he made his head-quarters in the mountains and defied all the power of Spain.

Instead of seeking him here, Weyler now attempted to confine him by building a new trocha, cutting off that end of the island. This took two months to complete, during which Maceo continued his work almost unopposed, destroying the tobacco of loyalists, defeating every force sent against him, and leaving to Spain only four fortified cities in the southern part of the province.

Not until autumn opened did Weyler take the field, marching into Pinar del Rio at the head of thirty thousand men, confident now of putting an end to the work of his persistent foe, whom he felt sure he had hemmed in with his trocha. Between the two forces, Spanish and Cuban, the province was sadly harried, and became so incapable of supporting a large force that Maceo was obliged to dismiss the most of his men.

Leaving the slender remnant under the control of one of his lieutenants, he once more passed the trocha, this time rowing round its end in a boat and landing in Havana province. He had sent orders in advance for a concentration of the Cuban forces in this region, that he might give Weyler a new employment.

The daring partisan leader was near the end of his career, brought to his death by the work of a traitor, as was widely believed. While waiting for the gathering of the forces, he, with the few men with him, was fired on from a Spanish ambush, and fell, mortally wounded.

Thus died the most dashing soldier that the Cuban rebellion called into the field. Dr. Zertucha, of his staff, was charged with treachery in leading him into this ambush, though that is by no means proved. Maceo was one of nine brothers, all soldiers, and all of whom had now died in the great struggle for Cuban independence. His body was recovered from the enemy after a desperate fight; his valiant spirit was lost to the cause. Yet his work had not been without avail, and the country for which he had fought so bravely was left by him on the highroad to liberty.