When these came, General Otis divided his forces. General MacArthur began a movement from his right against the insurgents, who contested every village and locality capable of defense, and burned every train before abandoning it to American hands. The insurgent capital, Malolos, was occupied. In April, General Lawton took Santa Cruz. The American casualties during these operations were about ten thousand officers and men, but the sick report listed fifteen per cent of the expedition, mostly from heat prostration. [Illustration: SAN JUAN BRIDGE.] General Lawton, who went out early in 1899, and was killed in December of the same year at San Mateo, is believed to have been perhaps the most able of our commanders. Uniformly the Filipinos lost, but when their courage waned their officers would announce that they had won a big victory somewhere else. In one day, they reported, we had lost twenty-eight thousand men, in a region where in the entire month we had lost but fifty-six. On another occasion they announced that two thousand colonels had been killed. They must have thought our troops were all from Kentucky. All summer and into the fall this more or less formal and regular warfare continued. But by that time Aguinaldo had decided that while a concentrated field army might appear more impressive to foreigners and be better for advertising purposes, it was not effective for his purpose, and some change must be made. The discontent among the conservative men who still had anything to lose was increasing, while the labourers in the fields, the fishermen, and the great masses of the people were growing weary of the war and the exactions of the commanders of their troops. The spell which Aguinaldo had cast over Luzon was almost broken. The war was nearly over, it seemed--in a civilized country it would have been over. To the Americans it appeared that the insurrection had been destroyed, and that all they now had to do was to sweep up the remnants of the insurgent forces by a system of police administration not likely to be either difficult or dangerous. In November, MacArthur had his force ready to strike anything within reach, but there seemed to be nothing within reach to strike. He soon came to the conclusion that there was no organized resistance left, that the insurgent army had broken into fragments which would soon become banditti. The disbandment of the insurgent field forces, which the American authorities took to mean the coming of a general submission to our rule, was followed by a long period of inactivity. This, of course, strengthened the impression, but the time was being used by the Filipinos to prepare for a new method of warfare and to organize for resistance by means of a general banding of the people together in support of the guerillas in the field. [Illustration: GENERAL LAWTON.]