HORRIBLE AFFAIR AT HAVANA.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1123, 4 March 1872, Page 4

HORRIBLE AFFAIR AT HAVANA.

The Havana correspondent of the New Toi-k Herald, writing on the 28th nltimo, gives a melancholy account of the butchery that has lately taken place in that city. It seems that it is the custom of the medical students of the university upon the days appointed by their teachers for that purpose to repair to the public cemetery, attached to which is a dead-house where they practice autopsies and hear lectures from their professors. On the afternoon df the 23rd ult. the class of tho lirst year of medicine, comprising some fifty youiig men, aged from sixteen to twenty years, belonging to gome of the best and most wealthy families in Cuba, were at the cemetery. While there they foolishly commenced " skylarking." breaking the glass cises which covered the niches in dome of the graves, and pulling down the wroaths of immortelles aud other decorati >ns. Among the tombs thus desecrated tt s *hat of Gonzalo Castafion, considered by tho Spaniards as a martyr to his cnuntrv for having been 3hot in January, 1860, by some Cub-ins at Key West ; ulhm, the grave of Major Ricaido Guzman, who died of wounds received in the beginning of the insurrection. On the 24 f h the students revisited the cemetery, where they were all arrested by guards placed there to intercept them. Unfortunately, two days after a grand parade was held in honour of the Acting CaptainGeneral, at which ovpr 10,000 volunteers passed in review. At this parade the word was passed round for a disturbance, and on defiling past the Acting Opt-iin-General the cry was raised of "Death t>the atiHmts!" In tho evening, when tho review was over, crowds of the volunteers assembled in the vicinity of the gaol in which the students wore confined, and repeated the demand for their blood. By midnight, nearly 12,000 volunteers wore underarms, and insisted on the unfortunato students being immediately tried by court-martial. All attempts to picify them proving of no avail, a court-martial Mas formed at two in the moaning, composed of six captains of the regular army, and one from each battalion of the volunteers, elected by the men — tho whole presided over by a colonel. The court sat until two o'clock on the following day. During its progress General Clavigoat about eight a.m. attempted to leave the building, but was forced back by the volunteers.' At the close of the session the sentence was read from a balcony to tho crowd. Eight of the students were to bo shot, eleven to serve six years in the chain gang, nineteen to serve four years in tho same,, four to six months' imprisonment, and only two released. The execution of the condemned students took place immediately. Between four and five o'clock in tho afternoon thoy wcro led out from tho gaol to die. Tho boys, it is said, mot their death bravely and calmly, though some of the youngest tromblcd and turried palo. One of them, Alonzo Alvarez do la Campa, endeavored to exculpate his schoolfellows by taking all the blame on himself, but in vain. Tho chaplain of th« cemetery did his best to save thorn, Baying that tho bojß had done nothing to merit such severe proceedings, that they were guilty of only " boyish freaks," and ho implored their pardon, for which conduct, ho has been removed from his office. The parents and relatives of several of the boys offered large sums of money to save their lives — Cam pa's father, it is said, offered a million — but the authorities wero unable to resist tho pressure put upon them by the volunteers, who further satisfied their taste for bloodshed by shooting six or eight persons in the streets.