History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics: Being a Political, Historical, and Statistical Account of the Island, from its First Discovery to the Present TimeBallou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
History
History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics: Being a Political, Historical, and Statistical Account of the Island, from its First Discovery to the Present Time
Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Cuba -- History
Meanwhile, the daring attack upon Cardenas, while it demonstrated the
determination of the invading party, caused great anxiety in the mind of
General Roncali. True, he had at his disposal an army of more than
twenty thousand regular troops; but he was by no means sure of their
loyalty, and he therefore determined to raise a local militia; but, as
he suffered only Spaniards to enlist in it, he aroused the jealousy of
the Cuban-born inhabitants, and thus swelled the force of opposition
against the government. General Lopez was informed of this fact, and
based new hopes upon the circumstance.
The Spanish government, having recalled Roncali, appointed Don José de
la Concha captain-general of the island, and the severity of his sway
reminded the inhabitants of the iron rule of Tacon. It was during his
administration that Lopez effected his second landing at Playitas, sixty
miles west of Havana. Several partial insurrections, which had preceded
this event, easily suppressed, as it appears, by the Spanish government,
but exaggerated in the accounts despatched to the friends of Cuba in the
United States, inflamed the zeal of Lopez, and made him believe that the
time for a successful invasion had at length arrived.[9] He was so
confident, at one time, of the determination and ability of the Cubans
alone to secure their independence, that he wished to embark without any
force, and throw himself among them. It was this confidence that led him
to embark with only four hundred ill-armed men on board the little
steamer Pampero, on the 2d of August, 1851. This force consisted mostly
of Americans, but embraced forty-nine Cubans in its ranks, with several
German and Hungarian officers; among the latter, General Pragay, one of
the heroes of the Hungarian revolution, who was second in command to
General Lopez on this occasion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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