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Origin and Conduct of Cuban Wars: Spanish

The "Book of Blood" claims for the Cubans all the humanities, and says that at the beginning of the war they took many Spanish prisoners at Bayamo and paroled them, but were rewarded by treachery and cruelty; and the indictment reads:

Meanwhile in all parts of the Island no Cuban taken prisoner of war was spared; to a man they were shot on the spot as so many dogs. Nevertheless, up to August, 1869, many Spanish prisoners of war were captured and not executed by the Cubans.

Then the insurgent General Quesada, threatened retaliation, and in October, 1869, when the war had lasted a year, and the Spanish adhered to the policy of shooting prisoners, the matter was "brought to the notice of the Cuban leaders," and it was ordered that sixty--seven men who were in the Cuban army and had engaged in a conspiracy "to revolt under circumstances of peculiar atrocity" should be executed, and they "were accordingly executed." The conspiritors had enlisted with the purpose of turning over to the Spanish General. Puello the rebel chieftains. The official organ in Havana said: "Our officers and the Cubans compromised in the counter--revolution were shot, thus sealing with their lives their devotion to their beloved mother--country." It is necessary in this connection to give the celebrated Valmaseda proclamation:

Inhabitants of the country! The re-enforcements of troops that I have been waiting for have arrived; with them I shall give protection to the good, and punish promptly those that still remain in rebellion against the government of the metropolis.

You know that I have pardoned those that have fought us with arms; that your wives, mothers, and sisters have found me in the unexpected protection that you have refused them. You know, also, that many of those I have pardoned have turned against us again.

Before such ingratitude, such villany, it is not possible for me to be the man that I have been; there is no longer a place for a falsified neutrality; he that is not for me is against me, and that my soldiers may know how to distinguish, you hear the order they carry: 1st. Every man, from the age of fifteen years, upward, found away from his habitation, (finca) and does not prove a justified motive there for, will be shot. 2d. Every habitation unoccupied will be burned by the troops. 3d. Every habitation from which does not float a white flag, as a signal that its occupants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes.