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Weyler, instead of trying to suppress the rebellion by hurrying detachments of troops first to one spot and then to another in pursuit of enemies accustomed to guerrilla tactics, determined to stamp it out province by province. This was his policy of "reconcentration."
The unfortunates, being for the most part women and children, with aged and helpless men, enfeebled by disease and hunger, could not have tilled the soil without tools, seed, or shelter for their own support or for the supply of the cities. Reconcentration, adopted avowedly as a war measure in order to cut off the resources of the insurgents, worked its predestined result.
The forts, redoubts and batteries belonging to this last belt of fortifications are situated at least two miles from the city limits proper, and even Versailles is taken into this belt of fortifications. The strongest of these forts form fortified camps, large enough to give protection to strong armies and also the possibility for a new reconcentration. There are three of these camps.
The steaming water rises through fissures in volcanic rocks and is now depositing in the rifts a vein stone of quartz, with metallic ores of iron, mercury, lead, and other metals. RECONCENTRATION. Near the base of the zone of solution veins are often stored with exceptionally large and valuable ore deposits. This local enrichment of the vein is due to the reconcentration of its metalliferous ores.
By the time the present administration took office a year ago, reconcentration so-called had been made effective over the better part of the four central and western provinces, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana and Piuar del Rio.
After a period of restlessness in Congress which was shared by the whole country, the President finally transmitted an important message. It included a resume of the progress of the Cuban revolution from its beginning and considered in some detail the workings of that devastating policy of General Weyler, known as reconcentration.
This step threw to the side of the insurgents the great mass of the middle class Cubans who had previously wavered in uncertainty, questioning the success of revolution while adhering to its general object. Weyler instituted the brutal policy that came to be known as reconcentration. It may be said, in a way, that the Cuban forces themselves instituted this policy.
Many of the occupants of his reconcentration camps received there their first lessons in hygienic living. Many of them were reluctant to leave the camps and return to their homes when normal conditions again prevailed. The number of Filipinos killed during the Batangas campaign was very small.
From the definite tabulation, under American auspices, in 1899, showing 1,576,797, it has been estimated that the number in 1895, was a little less than 1,800,000, the difference being represented by the disasters of the war, by the result of reconcentration, and by departures during the disturbance. The general result seems to be that the population was practically quadrupled.
It was not this legislation, however, that rendered the period significant; it was the adoption of a new national policy of expansion, incident to the war with Spain. The Spaniards had been unable to put down the Cuban insurrection. The drastic measures, especially the policy of "reconcentration" adopted by General Weyler, had discredited the Spanish cause.
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