Canovas resumed office in March 1895 immediately after the outbreak of the Cuban insurrection, and devoted most of his time and efforts, with characteristic determination, to the preparation of ways and means for sending 200,000 men to the West Indies to carry out his stern and unflinching policy of no surrender, no concessions and no reforms. He was making up his mind for another effort to enable General Weyler to enforce the reforms that had been wrung from the Madrid government, more by American diplomacy than from a sense of the inevitable, when the bullet of an anarchist, in August 1897, at the baths of Santa Agueda, cut short his career.