defeated Spaniards got back to
headquarters and reported that they had slain Maceo, they were not
believed. It was not considered possible that he had crossed the trocha.
But a little later convincing confirmation came to them from a Cuban
source. This was furnished when Dr. Maximo Zertucha, who had been
Maceo's surgeon-general and who was the only member of his staff who had
survived the disastrous fight at Punta Brava, came to Spanish
headquarters and surrendered himself. He explained that he did so
because he had seen Maceo killed, and he regarded the loss of that
leader as certainly fatal to the cause of the Cuban revolution. The
Spanish authorities accepted his surrender and granted him full amnesty,
a circumstance which caused many Cubans to suspect that he had betrayed
his chief, by sending word of his whereabouts to the Spanish commander.
Of this there appears, however, to have been no proof. Thus perished
Antonio Maceo, who would have been the generalissimo of the Cuban forces
but for the prudent fear that maligners might then have spread
successfully the damaging libel that the revolution was nothing but a
negro insurrection; a fear which he himself felt, and on account of
which he insisted that Maximo Gomez should be the Commander in Chief of
the Cuban Revolutionary armies. Thus perished Antonio Maceo, a soldier
and a man without a superior in either of the contending armies, and a
commander, indeed, who, in personal valor, in strategic skill, in
resource, in resolution, in knowledge of the art of war, and in all the
elements of military greatness, was worthy to be ranked among the great
captains of all lands and of all time. The loss of him was irreparable.
But it was not fatal to the Cuban cause. Thereafter the effort of every
Cuban soldier and patriot was to increase his own efficiency to some
degree, so that the aggregate would atone for the loss that had been
sustained.

While Maceo was thus baffling the Spanish in the far west of the island,
Gomez and his lieutenants were more than holding their own in the other
five provinces. Jose Maceo in April marched from Oriente all the way to
the western side of Havana, where he was joined by Serafin Sanchez,
Rodriguez, Lacret, Maso, Aguirre and others, until nearly 20,000 Cubans
were gathered there. Gomez remained in Santa Clara, where the Spaniards
had a precarious foothold at Cienfuegos, protected by their fleet.
Colonel Gonzalez, commanding in the district o