Fort Santiago

“ Page 223All the beach from the fort of Santiago to the fort of Nuestra Señora is occupied by the curtains and traverses—the latter very suitable, two and a half estados in height. It needs nothing but the parapet, which is being built. ”

“ I understand, from officers who were in a position to know the facts, that the original plan of attack on the city of Santiago provided for close and effective coöperation of the army with the navy, and for a joint assault by way of Aguadores and Morro Castle. General Shafter was to move along the line of the railroad from Siboney to Aguadores, keeping close to the coast under cover of the guns of the fleet, and, with the assistance of the latter, was to capture the old Aguadores fort and such other intrenchments as should be found at the mouth of the Aguadores ravine. ”

“ Its walls, with the reef on which it stands (Gallega) , shelter the harbour of Vera Cruz—which, in fact, is only a roadstead—from the north winds. Under the lee of San Juan the ships of commerce lie at anchor. There are but few of them at any time.
Another large fort (Concepcion) stands upon the beach at the northern angle of the city, and a third (Santiago) defends it towards the south. A circular bastion, with heavy pieces of ordnance, sweeps the plain to the rear, commanding it as far as the sand-ridges. ”

“ In order that that may be evident, I gave the present at the petition of the said captain and sargento-mayor, who, together with the said alférez, affixed his signature. Witnesses were Licentiate Augustin Tabuyo Baldicañas, cura and vicar in this said camp and fort, Adjutant Andres Tamayo, Alférez Don Joseph de Renteria, and many others who were present at this royal camp and fort of Santiago, where this is dated on the said Saturday, March thirty, one-thousand six hundred and twenty-four. ”

“ Our people endeavoured to get possession of the church of Santiago and the artillery, but could not succeed. The ships discontinued their fire about sun-set, but the fire from the camp continued all night, and dismounted the artillery of our bastion, so that it became necessary to abandon it: the same night, or rather in the morning of the 3d, it was resolved that a sortie should be made from the fort. About five thousand Indians had arrived from the provinces, [156] of which two thousand Pampangos were selected for this undertaking ”

“ So during the last week in June an army of about twenty-five thousand men, under General Shafter, landed a few miles east of Santiago to coöperate with our fleet in capturing the city. Our forces, losing no time, moved on through tropical jungles, exposed to the enemy's sharpshooting from trees. It was a deadly advance towards log forts on the steep heights, impeded by the annoying tangle of barbed-wire fences. ”

“ Somewhere beyond that towering mountain was Santiago, the port in which the flea-like squadron of Admiral Cervera was bottled up, and there was a deadly fear in our hearts that the wily Spaniard would sally forth to battle before we could join our fleet.
We pictured to ourselves the gray mountain massed high about the narrow entrance of Santiago Bay, the picturesque Morro Castle, squatting like a grim giant above the strait, and outside, tossing and bobbing upon the swell of a restless sea, the mighty semicircle of drab ships waiting, yearning for the outcoming of the Dons. ”

“ Santiago is a queer place. We approached the city along the road that passes by our camp. The street was narrow—not more than twenty-five or thirty feet wide—not wider than the paved portion of the street in front of our house. Many are much narrower—mere alleys in fact—but people living all along them. Across the streets trenches had been dug by the Spanish troops and barbed wire netting in front of the trenches. There were many trenches, showing what preparation they had made for a desperate resistance to our advance. The houses are nearly all one-story and have brick or stone floors. ”

“ THE dream days have come and gone. We have left historic Santiago with its forts and battle-fields, and the beautiful harbour of busy commercial Cienfuegos; we have skirted along the southern coast of Cuba, Pearl of the Antilles, through the Yucatan Channel, into the Gulf of Mexico, and now we are come to Havana, where countless voices call us in every direction both day and night.
And yet it is not of Santiago, the old Merrimac lying in midchannel, El Caney, or San Juan Hill that I am writing to-day—no, nor of the wrecks of Cervera’s fleet strewn in rocking skeletons along the coast. ”

“ Soldiers without arms, refugees, the men in brown derby hats—Cubans, negroes, dark women with black lace upon their heads, and [Pg 19] children absolutely naked, watched us very silently from the sidewalks and from balconies. The houses were of adobe, painted pale blue and pink, and roofed with rugged lichen-blackened tiles. The windows reached from sidewalk to roof and were grated heavily, the doors oak and clenched with great nail heads. Santiago, Santiago at last, after so many days of sailing, of marching, of countermarching, and of fighting. ”

“ There is not a street car in all the island of Santo Domingo, or Haiti, as you choose to call it. Dingy, wretched old carriages, their horses only a trifle less gaunt and ungroomed than those of Port au Prince, loiter about a corner of the plaza, behind the cathedral, shrieking their pleas at every possible fare who passes within their field of vision. Automobiles are not unknown, but they have not yet invaded Santiago in force. ”

“ Many refugees leave Santiago during, and directly after, the naval battle of Santiago; among these are very many wealthy women who are forced to leave their splendid homes and flee, in silken garments, with the riff-raff of the city. ”

“ Covering an area which seems a mere oblong speck on the enormous surface of the landscape, Santiago stands supreme. It is the only living thing in what appears to be a dead setting. There is perfect Sabbath stillness in the air, and you see the city now, when here and there a peasant slowly climbs the winding road, as old-time pilgrims must have looked upon it at the end of long and weary journeys.
Behind you is Arosa Bay, one of the world's finest anchorages, where modern fleets may safely lie ”

“ The city was burned three times by the French buccaneers during their struggles with the Spanish colonial authorities and later by the Haitian general Christophe on the occasion of the retreat of the emperor Dessalines in 1805. It had again attained importance when it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1842. Once more it was reduced to ashes in 1863 at the outbreak of the War of the Restoration. To-day Santiago is one of the richest and most flourishing cities of the island and has aspirations to become the capital of the Republic, so that an intense rivalry exists with Santo Domingo. ”

“ Santiago ranks first, both for its age and name; it was built by Diego Velasco. At the south coast of the island about 20 degrees North Latitude, opposite Hispaniola, almost two miles from the sea, in the depth of a harbor which one may well pronounce the first among the large and safe harbors of the New World. For the ocean enters through a narrow inlet and is received by a large bay, like a gulf, with several little islands; it is so safe a port that one does not need to cast anchor. This city was once well populated, but now the population is reduced to a very small number. ”

“ But in spite of its flying start Santiago has by no means kept pace with many a parvenu in the New World. Barely can it muster twenty thousand inhabitants, and in progress and industry it has drifted but slowly down the stream of time. Revolutions have been its chief setback, for the innumerable civil wars that have decimated the population of the republic ever since it asserted its freedom from the Spanish crown have almost invariably centered about the city of caballeros. A hundred Spanish-American towns can duplicate its every feature. ”

“ Admiral Cervera said in reply that the matter had been referred to General Blanco.
The Suwanee landed weapons, ammunition, and provisions for the insurgents at a point fifteen miles west of Santiago.
In Santiago were about twenty thousand Spanish soldiers, mostly infantry; but with cavalry and artillery that may be drawn from the surrounding country. On the mountains five thousand insurgents, many unarmed, watched for a favourable opportunity to make a descent upon the city. ”

“ The escort watched. Back along the Spanish and the American trenches thousands of men stood in line and watched; Santiago watched, and Washington, Spain and the United States, the two hemispheres, the Old World and the New, paused on that moment, watching. A sentence or two was spoken in low tones and the Generals replaced their hats and shook hands smilingly.
Instantly a great creaking of saddles took place as the men eased their positions, and conversation began again. ”

“ I do not thank God for the destruction of Cervera's fleet at Santiago. No, I thank Schley and the men with the trained eyes and the nerves of steel, who stood behind the guns. I do not thank God because we won the battle of Santiago. I thank the Regular Army, black and white—the Volunteers—the Rough Riders, and all the men who made the grand charge at San Juan Hill. ”

“ To talk of continually shifting camp or of moving up the mountains or of moving into the interior was idle, for not one of the plans could be carried out with our utterly insufficient transportation, and at that season and in that climate they would merely have resulted in aggravating the sickliness of the soldiers. It was deemed best to make some record of our opinion, in the shape of a letter or report, which would show that to keep the army in Santiago meant its absolute and objectless ruin, and that it should at once be recalled. ”

“ Santiago Bay is shaped like a champagne bottle, with a narrow neck and an oblong body. It is a most difficult harbour to enter, and the town ought to be impregnable; but the fortresses, although architecturally imposing,—especially the Morro, which looks like a mediæval castle, its walls rising straight out of the rocks,—are, I am assured, mere toys so far as modern warfare is concerned. ”

“ It lies well up in the lap of a plain more than two thousand feet high, at the northern end of the great central valley of Chile in which most of its population is gathered, with large hills in the far distance cutting it off from the Pacific, and, so close at hand as to seem almost above it, the everywhere dominating background of the main Cordillera of the Andes. But for this great white overhanging horizon, Santiago would be commonplace indeed; with it, its most dismal scenes have the advantage of a splendid setting. It is never uncomfortably hot ”

“ There is little of historical or archæological interest in Santiago, no skeleton of its founder (as of Pizarro in Lima) , for Pedro de Valdivia was taken prisoner and killed by the Araucanian Indians hundreds of miles away; no palace of the Inquisition, for Santiago was in the seventeenth century too small a place to need the elaborate machinery of the Holy Office for the protection of its orthodoxy. Till the War of Independence it was a remote provincial town. But Nature has given it one spot to which historical associations can attach. ”

“ Santiago was one immense crater—the fire embraced the whole city; its devouring flames had dissipated the darkness, and spread around a light which allowed the dark outlines of the combatants to be seen as they struggled with the sublime energy of despair.
A countless swarm of Indians had invaded the town, and fighting was going on on all sides. The Spaniards disputed the ground inch by inch, and the streets, the squares, and the houses were the scene of a horrible massacre. Tahi-Mari, ever in the first rank of the Indians, excited his soldiers by his shouts and example. ”

“ An earlier chapter has already set forth the gallant manner in which colored non-commissioned officers, left in command by the killing or wounding of their officers, commanded their companies at La Guasima, El Caney and in the charge at San Juan. On numerous occasions, with none of the heroic setting of the Santiago campaign, have colored soldiers time and again command detachments and companies on dangerous scouting expeditions, and in skirmishes and fights with hostile Indians and marauders. The entire Western country is a witness of their prowess. ”

“ He also sent 1,000 men, under General Ríos, against the 6,000 men at Manzanillo. Of this garrison, 3,500 started to reenforce the garrison at Santiago, and were engaged in no less than thirty combats with the Cubans on their way before reaching Santiago. ... With an additional force of 5,000 men General Garcia besieged the garrison of Santiago, taking up a strong position on the west side and in close proximity to the harbor, and he afterwards received General Shafter and Admiral Sampson at his camp near that place. ”

“ And then "to accompany the commanding General to a point midway between the Spanish and American lines and there to receive the surrender of General Toral. At noon, precisely, the American flag will be raised over the Governor's Palace in the city of Santiago. A salute of twenty-one guns will be fired from Captain Capron's battery. The regimental bands will play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and the troops will cheer. ”