"Well, you'll make a good soldier, and we shall be
glad to have you." He extended his hand, and O'Reilly took it
gratefully.
The city of Matanzas was "pacified." So ran the boastful bando of
the captain-general. And this was no exaggeration, as any one
could see from the number of beggars there. Of all his military
operations, this "pacification" of the western towns and provinces
was the most conspicuously successful and the one which gave
Valeriano Weyler the keenest satisfaction; for nowhere did
rebellion lift its head--except, perhaps, among the ranks of those
disaffected men who hid in the hills, with nothing above them but
the open sky. 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. When the refugees began to pour in by the thousands,
and when it became apparent that the Government intended to let
them starve, the better citizens undertook an effort at relief;
but times were hard, food was scarce, and prices high. Moreover,
it soon transpired that the military frowned upon everything like
organized charity, and in consequence the new-comers were,
perforce, abandoned to their own devices.
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