f Remedios, routed the
forces of General Oliver. Then, the Spanish power in the three great
eastern provinces having been rendered negligible, a general movement
westward was undertaken, following in the trail of the two Maceos. Gomez
himself took supreme command, and Collazo, Calixto Garcia and others
marched their forces to join him. Calixto Garcia, after only Maximo
Gomez and Antonio Maceo, was the foremost chieftain of the patriots, and
not unworthy to rank with them in a trinity of military prowess. He was
now advanced in years, having been born in 1839, at Holguin, Oriente.
From childhood a fervent patriot, at the outbreak of the Ten Years' War
he took the field under Donato Marmol. His native bent for military
achievement assured him advancement, and at Santa Rita and Baire he was
a Brigadier General under Gomez. In 1871 he besieged Guisa and Holguin,
and then, when Gomez marched westward into Camaguey, thence to force
passage of the trocha between Jucaro and Moron, Garcia was left in
supreme command in Oriente. In that capacity he was active, triumphing
at Santa Maria, Holguin, Chaparra, the siege and capture of Manzanillo,
and at Ojo de Agua de los Melones. Then came the incident which for the
time ended his military career and which gave him that scar in the
centre of his forehead which was ever after so conspicuous a feature. At
San Antonio de Baja he and only twenty of his men were surprised and
surrounded by a large force of Spaniards. Seeing that escape was
impossible, and having vowed never to fall alive into the hands of
Spain, he put the muzzle of a pistol beneath his chin and fired. The
bullet passed through the tongue, the roof of his mouth, behind his
nose, and out at the centre of his forehead. But not thus was he to die.
The Spaniards took him to a hospital at Santiago, where he recovered,
and then sent him to prison in Spain; whence he returned to Cuba after
the Treaty of Zanjon. He was a leader in the "Little War"; then,
enjoying the respect and friendship of Martinez Campos, he went back to
Spain and for a time was a bank clerk at Madrid. Thus he was engaged
when the War of Independence began. Suspected and watched, he was not
able to escape until a year later. But on March 24, 1896, he landed at
Baracoa with an important expedition, and thereafter he was a raging and
consuming flame of war.

The westward march was marked with victory. On May 14 Colonel Segura's
whole battalion was captured. On