"Cubans! If you would save your honor and that of your families; if you would conquer forever your liberty, be soldiers. War leads you to peace and to happiness. Inertia precipitates you to misfortune and to dishonor. Viva Cuba! Viva the President of the Republic! Viva the Liberating Army! Patria and Liberty! "MANUEL QUESADA." The proclamation of Count Valmaseda, to which General Quesada referred, had been issued at Bayamo on April 4, and was as follows: "Inhabitants of the Country-- "The forces which I expected have arrived. With them I will afford protection to the good and summarily punish all those who still rebel against the government of the metropolis. "Know ye that I have pardoned those who have fought against us, armed; know ye that your wives, mothers and sisters have in me found the protection they admired and which you rejected; know, also, that many of the pardoned have turned against me. After all these excesses, after so much ingratitude and so much villainy, it is impossible for me to be the man I was heretofore. Deceptive neutrality is no longer possible. 'He that is not with me is against me,' and in order that my soldiers may know how to distinguish you, hearken to the orders given them: "Every man from the age of 15 upward, found beyond his farm, will be shot, unless a justification for his absence be proven. "Every hut that is found uninhabited will be burned by the troops. "Every hamlet where a white cloth in the shape of a flag is not hoisted in token that its inhabitants desire peace, will be reduced to ashes. "The women who are not found in their respective dwellings, or in those of their relatives, will return to the towns of Jiguani or Bayamo, where they will be duly provided for. Those who fail to do so will be taken by compulsion. These orders will be in force on and after the 14th inst.! "COUNT VALMASEDA. "Bayamo, April 4, 1869." General Cespedes about this time sent to the Government of the United States, in his name and in that of the Provisional Government of Cuba, a request for recognition, as belligerents. His letter contained these references to the strength of the movement in Cuba: "We now hold much more than fifty leagues of the interior of this Island in the Eastern Department, among which are the people (or communities) of Jiguani, Tunas, Baire, Yara, Barrancas, Datil, Cauto, Embarcadero, Guisa, and Horno, besides the cities of Bayamo and Holguin, in all numbering 107,853 inhabitants, who obey us, and have sworn to shed to the last drop of blood in our cause.