The History of Cuba, vol. 3Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
The History of Cuba, vol. 3
Johnson, Willis Fletcher
Cuba -- Economic conditions; Cuba -- History
So confident was the royal government of its security, and of the
completeness with which the incipient revolution had been quelled, that
on March 17 it repealed the decree of martial law at the capital. It
was, however, cherishing a fool's paradise. The spirit of revolution was
at work, and was bound soon to reassert itself. Its next manifestation
occurred in June, when two regiments of soldiers in Madrid itself
mutinied and repudiated their officers, who had refused to join them in
their action. These troops were well armed, having twenty-six cannon,
and were soon reinforced by large numbers of volunteers from the
populace, so that it was only by a supreme effort that the government
troops were able to defeat and disperse them.
At the same time, a corresponding movement took place in the garrison at
Gerona, where a considerable body of troops revolted and, when attacked
by government forces, conducted a successful retreat across the French
frontier. Having crossed the boundary, they laid down their arms, but
the larger proportion of them soon found their way back into Spain to
join the impending revolution. Other outbreaks occurred at other points,
all of which were suppressed with difficulty, but with great severity,
many of the leaders being summarily shot as a deterrent example. But
this action instead of being deterrent was provocative. The next
revolutionary manifestation was the formation of a junta at Madrid,
which issued a proclamation setting forth the complaints of the
insurgents against the government, in part as follows:
"Savage courts have led hundreds of victims to sacrifice, and a woman
has contemplated passively and even with complacency, the scaffold which
has been erected.
"The Cortes have abjectly sold to the government the safety of the
individual, the civil rights and the well-being of the commonwealth. The
government has overthrown the press and rostrum, and has entrusted the
administration of the provinces to rapacious mandarins and sanguinary
generals; military tribunals have despoiled the rich and transported the
poor to Fernando Po and to the Philippines.
"The laws of the Cortes have been replaced by decrees squandering the
resources of the country by means of obscure and ruinous laws, trampling
under foot right and virtue, violating homes, property and family; and
during all this time, Isabella II, at Zuranz, and Madrid, meditating a
plot against Italy, our sister, for the benefit of the Roman curia,
participating meanwhile in the depredations of violence of the pachas in
Cuba, who tolerating the fraudulent introduction of slaves, are
outraging public sentiment both in the Old and in the New World, and
causing an estrangement between Spain and the great and glorious
Republic of the United States."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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