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As with Weyler's contidential letter to the friar landlords, these discoveries convict their writers of bad faith, with no possibility of mistake. This point in the reformed Spanish writer's biography of Rizal is made occasion for another of his treacherous attacks upon the good name of his pretended hero.
As for the population at large, it was cured of treason; it no longer resisted, even weakly, the law of Spain. The reason was that it lay dying. Weyler's cure was simple, efficacious it consisted of extermination, swift and pitiless. Poverty had been common in Matanzas, even before the war, but now there were so many beggars in the city that nobody undertook to count them.
Conservative estimates from Spanish sources placed the deaths among these distressed people at over 40 per cent from the time General Weyler's decree of reconcentration was enforced.
In spite of Weyler's boasts when he assumed command of the Spanish forces in Cuba that he would quickly put down the insurrection, his failure was as complete as that of General Campos had been, and his recall was finally demanded.
Some will have it that he was smitten into a despairing bashfulness during Weyler's administration, and that when the governor went home with a couple of million dollars in his valise the savings from his salary the Devil went home likewise, awe-struck. His Satanic Majesty's last recorded exploit occurred in the view of three men, of whom one may still be alive to vouch for it.
About a month later news came to the band that Antonio Maceo, having evaded the Spanish army in the province of Pinar del Rio, and got on the other side of Weyler's trocha, had been killed in a skirmish not far from Havana, which city he had proposed to threaten, with the object of causing the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the western end of the island.
Unfortunately they were unable to extract very much information, for it appeared that every officer had perished, either in the attack upon the estate, or at the far end of the defile: while the soldiers seemed either too stupid or too ill-informed to be able to give trustworthy replies to any of the questions asked, except that General Weyler had gone back to Havana, and that the operations in the province of Pinar del Rio were being conducted by Generals Bernal and Arolas, who, by strict command of Weyler, were laying the entire country waste, destroying every building of whatsoever description, churches included, on the ground that they afforded possible places of refuge or shelter for revolutionaries; mercilessly shooting down every man, woman, and child found, on the plea that, not having obeyed General Weyler's concentration order, they were contumacious rebels: that, in short, where this host went they found smiling prosperity, and left behind them a blood-stained, fire-blackened waste.
The wholesale devastation of the island was an idea of General Weyler's. If the captain of a vessel, in order to put down a mutiny on board, scuttled the ship and sent everybody to the bottom, his plan of action would be as successful as General Weyler's has proved to be.
We hold that this government would be justified not only in recognizing Cuban belligerency, but also in recognizing Cuban independence, on the sole ground of the rights and claims of outraged humanity. ... In consequence of Weyler's barbarous decrees the most harrowing scenes of savagery and brutality are of almost daily occurrence in this beautiful island, which is situated a hundred miles from our Florida coast line.
Conservative estimates from Spanish sources placed the deaths among these distressed people at over 40 per cent from the time General Weyler's decree of reconcentration was enforced.
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