October was a disastrous month for the Spanish at sea. One of their gunboats was wrecked on a key, and another, which had just been purchased in the United States, was boarded and seized by a party of revolutionists in the Cauto River, stripped of all its guns and ammunition, and disabled and scuttled. General Enrique Collazo, who earlier in the season had several times been baffled in such attempts, at last got away from Florida with a strong party of Cubans and Americans and effected a safe landing in Cuba. A little later Carlos Manuel de Cespedes did the same, bringing a large cargo of arms. Two expeditions also came from Canada, under General Francisco Carillo and Colonel Jose Maria Aguirre. The latter, by the way, was an American citizen who had been arrested in Havana at the very beginning of the war, along with Julio Sanguilly, but was released at the very urgent insistence of the United States government. Sanguilly, who was suspected by some Cubans of having betrayed their cause, was held, tried, and condemned to life imprisonment; a fact which cleared him of suspicion of complicity with the Spaniards. Maceo advanced through Camaguey and on November 12 reached Las Villas with an army of 8,000 men. Gomez had meanwhile moved northward almost to the Gulf coast, and was operating with 5,000 men between Los Remedios and Sagua la Grande, where he joined forces with Sanchez, who had marched westward, and with Roloff, Suarez, Cespedes and Collazo. He established headquarters near the Matanzas border, where he was in touch with Lacret, Matagas and other guerrilla leaders who were actively engaged in the latter province. In that same month Maceo fought a pitched battle with General Navarro, near Santa Clara, and a few days later Gomez similarly fought General Suarez Valdes in the same region. These were two of the greatest battles of the war, in point of numbers engaged and losses suffered, and were both handsomely won by the Cubans.