The insurrection had not gained much headway, however, when the provisional government of the mother country instructed a new Governor and Captain General--whose name, Dulce (Sweet), had an auspicious sound--to open negotiations with the insurgents and to hold out the hope of reforms.

But the royalists, now as formerly, would listen to no compromise.

Organizing themselves into bodies of volunteers, they drove Dulce out.

He was succeeded by one Caballero de Rodas (Knight of Rhodes) who lived up to his name by trying to ride roughshod over the rebellious Cubans.

Thus began the Ten Years' War--a war of skirmishes and brief encounters, rarely involving a decisive action, which drenched the soil of Cuba with blood and laid waste its fields in a fury of destruction.
Among the radicals and liberals who tried to retain a fleeting control over Mexico after the final departure of Santa Anna was the first genuine statesman it had ever known in its history as a republic--Benito Pablo Juarez, an Indian.