Canovas devoted his attention to the Cuban question, and sent out General Martinez Campos who had been so successful in 1878. He allowed him much liberty of action, but dissented on the expediency of offering the loyalists of Cuba as much home rule as would not clash with the supremacy of Spain. The prime minister declared that the Cubans must submit first, and then the mother country would be generous. This policy rendered inevi table the failure of the efforts of Campos, who took an entirely different view of the question.
Weyler in Cuba.—Canovas then sent to the island General Weyler, who favoured purely military measures, sternly and harshly applied. He certainly cleared two-thirds of the island of Creole bands, and stamped out disaffection by vigorous military operations and by obliging all the non-combatants who sym pathized with the rebels in arms to elect between joining them in the bush (la Manigua) or residing within the Spanish lines. This system, which was disavowed in Spain by most Liberals, might probably have succeeded if American supplies had not reached the rebels in considerable quantities, and if American diplomacy had not again and again made representations against Weyler's ruthless policy of repression in the island.
Canovas so fully comprehended the necessity of averting Ameri can intervention that he listened to the pressing demands of secretary Olney and of the American minister in Madrid, Hannis Taylor, and laid before the cortes a bill introducing home rule in Cuba on a more liberal scale than Maura, Abarzuza and Sa gasta had dared to suggest two years before. Canovas did not live to see his scheme put into practice, as he was assassinated by an anarchist at the baths of Santa Agueda, in the Basque Provinces, on Aug. 9, 1897. The queen-regent appointed General Azcarraga, the war minister, as successor to Canovas ; and a few weeks later President McKinley sent General Woodford as rep resentative of the United States at the court of Madrid. At the end of Sept. 1897 the American minister placed on record, in a note handed by him at San Sebastian to the minister for foreign affairs, the duke of Tetuan, a strongly-worded protest against the state of things in Cuba, and demanded in substance that a stop should be put to Weyler's proceedings, and some measures taken to pacify the island and prevent disturbances which, he said, grievously affected American interests. Less than a f ort
night after this note had been delivered, the Conservative cab inet resigned, and the queen-regent asked Sagasta to f orm a new administration.
Weyler Recalled.—The Liberal Government recalled Weyler, and sent out, as governor-general of Cuba, Marshal Blanco, a conciliatory and prudent officer who agreed to carry out the home-rule policy, concerted by Senor Moret and by Sagasta. Had things not already gone too far in Cuba, and if public opinion in the United States had not exercised irresistible pressure on both Congress and President, the Moret Home-Rule Act (Nov. 1897) would probably have sufficed. All through the winter of 1897-98 the Madrid Government took steps to propitiate the United States, even offering a treaty of commerce which would have allowed American commerce to compete on equal terms with Spanish imports in the West Indies and defeat all European competition. But the blowing up of the American cruiser "Maine" in the port of Havana added fuel to the agitation in the United States against Spanish rule in Cuba, and war followed. When Congress met in Washington the final crisis was hurried on. Spain appealed to European mediation, to the pope, to courts and Governments, but none were disposed to go beyond purely platonic representations at Washington.
War with the United States.—At last, on April 20, 1898, when the Spanish Government learned that the United States minister, General Woodford, had been instructed by telegraph to present an ultimatum demanding the cessation of hostilities in Cuba, with a view to prepare for the evacuation of the island by the Spanish forces, Sagasta decided to give General Woodford his passports and to break off official relations with the United States. It was an open secret that this grave decision was not taken at the cabinet council presided over by the queen without a solemn protest by Moret and the ministers of war and marine that the resources of Spain were totally inadequate for a struggle with the United States. These protests were overruled by the majority of the ministers, who invoked dynastic and monarchical considerations in favour of a desperate stand, in defence of the last remnants of the colonial empire of Spain.