See what Lacret's men handed me;
they are posted from one end of the island to the other." He
displayed a printed bando, or proclamation, signed by the new
captain-general, and read as follows:
"All inhabitants of the country districts, or those who reside
outside the lines of fortifications of the towns, shall, within a
period of eight days, enter the towns which are occupied by the
troops. Any individual found outside the lines in the country at
the expiration of this period shall be considered a rebel and
shall be dealt with as such."
It was that inhuman order of concentration, the result of which
proved to be without parallel in military history--an order which
gave its savage author the name of being the arch-fiend of a
nation reputed peculiarly cruel. Neither Esteban nor Rosa,
however, grasped the full significance of the proclamation; no one
could have done so. No eye could have foreseen the merciless
butchery of non-combatants, the starvation and death by disease of
hordes of helpless men, women, and children herded into the
cities. Four hundred thousand Cubans driven from their homes into
shelterless prison camps; more than two hundred thousand dead from
hunger and disease; a fruitful land laid bare of all that could
serve as food, and changed to an ash-gray desolation; gaunt famine
from Oriente to Pinar del Rio--that was the sequel to those
printed words of "Weyler the Butcher" which Esteban read.
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