The whites, headed by Maximo Gomez, and the negroes and mulattoes by their chieftain, Antonio Maceo, both of whom had done valiant service in the earlier war, started upon a campaign of deliberate terrorism.

This time they were resolved to win at any cost.

Spurning every offer of conciliation, they burned, ravaged, and laid waste, spread desolation along their pathway, and reduced thousands to abject poverty and want.
Then the Spanish Government came to the conclusion that nothing but the most rigorous sort of reprisals would check the excesses of the rebels.
In 1896 it commissioned Valeriano Weyler, an officer who personified ferocity, to put down the rebellion.

If the insurgents had fancied that the conciliatory spirit hitherto displayed by the Spaniards was due to irresolution or weakness, they found that these were not the qualities of their new opponent.

Weyler, instead of trying to suppress the rebellion by hurrying detachments of troops first to one spot and then to another in pursuit of enemies accustomed to guerrilla tactics, determined to stamp it out province by province.