Daily provisions grew scarcer, and Maximilian himself had only the coarse, tough food which was served to the common soldiers. Day after day Marquez was looked for with the promised aid, but night after night brought only disappointment. At length, on the night of May 14, General Lopez, in charge of the most important point in the city, turned traitor and admitted two battalions of the enemy. From this point the assailants swarmed into the city, where terror and confusion everywhere prevailed. Lopez had not intended that the emperor should be captured, and gave him warning in time to escape. He attempted to do so, and reached a little hill outside the town, but here he was surrounded by foes and forced to deliver up his sword. Juarez, the Indian president, was at length full master of Mexico, and held its late emperor in his hands. The fate of Maximilian depended upon his word. Plans, indeed, were made for his escape, but always at the last moment he failed to avail himself of them. His friends sought to win for him the clemency of Juarez, but they found him inflexible. The traitors, as he called them, should be tried by court-martial, he said and abide the decision of the court. Tried they were, though the trial was little more than a farce, with the verdict fixed in advance. This verdict was death. The condemned, in addition to Maximilian, were his chiefs in command, Miramon and Medjia. The late emperor rose early on the fatal morning and heard mass. He embraced his fellow victims, and as he reached the street said, "What a beautiful day! On such a one I have always wished to die." He was greeted with respect by the people in the street, the women weeping. He responded with a brief address, closing with the words, "May my blood be the last spilt for the welfare of the country, and if more should be shed, may it flow for its good, and not by treason. Viva Independencia! Viva Mexico!" In a few minutes more the fatal shots were fired, and the empire of Maximilian was at an end. MACEO AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CUBAN INDEPENDENCE. On the 24th of February, 1895, the people of Havana, the capital of Cuba, were startled by a report that rebels were in the field, a band of twenty-four having appeared in arms at Ybarra, in the province of Matanzas. Other small bands were soon heard of elsewhere in the island. A trifle this seemed, in view of the fact that Cuba was guarded by twenty thousand Spanish troops and had on its military rolls the names of sixty thousand volunteers. But the island was seething with discontent, and trifles grow fast under such circumstances. Twenty years before a great rebellion had been afoot. It was settled by treaty in 1878, but Spain had ignored the promises of the treaty and steadily heaped up fuel for the new flame which had now burst out.