A History of the Philippines

by David P. Barrows

On the 25th, Draper summoned the city to surrender; but a council of war, held by the archbishop, who was also governor, decided to fight on. Thirty-six hundred Filipino militia from Pampanga, Bulacan, and Laguna marched to the defense of the city, and on the 3rd of October two thousand of these Filipinos made a sally from the walls and recklessly assaulted the English lines, but were driven back with slaughter. On the night of the 4th of October a breach in the walls was made by the artillery, and early in the morning of the 5th four hundred English soldiers entered almost without resistance. A company of militia on guard at the Puerto Real was bayoneted and the English then occupied the Plaza, and here received the surrender of the fort of Santiago.

The English agreed not to interfere with religious liberty, and honors of war were granted to the Spanish soldiers. Guards were placed upon the convent of the nuns of Santa Clara and the beaterios, and the city was given over to pillage, which lasted for forty hours, and in which many of the Chinese assisted.

Independent Spanish Capital under Anda at Bulacan.—The English were thus masters of the city, but during their period of occupation they never extended their power far beyond the present limits of Manila. Previous to the final assault and occupation of Manila, the authorities had nominated the oidor, Don Simon de Anda y Salazar, lieutenant-governor and captain-general of the Islands, with instructions to maintain the country in its obedience to the king of Spain. Anda left the capital on the night of October 4, passing in a little banca through the nipa swamps and esteros on the north shore of Manila Bay to the provincial capital of Bulacan.

Here he called together the provincial of the Augustinian monks, the alcalde mayor of the province, and some other Spaniards. They resolved to form an independent government representing Spain, and to continue the resistance. This they were able to do as long as the British remained in the Islands. The English made a few short expeditions into Bulacan and up the Pasig River, but there was no hard fighting and no real effort made to pursue Anda’s force. The Chinese welcomed the English and gave them some assistance, and for this Anda slew and hung great numbers of them.

The Philippines Returned to Spain.—By the Treaty of Paris in 1763, peace was made, by which France surrendered practically all her colonial possessions to England; but England returned to Spain her captures in Cuba and the Philippines. In March, 1764, there arrived the Spanish frigate “Santa Rosa,” bringing the first “Lieutenant of the King for the Islands,” Don Francisco de la Torre, who brought with him news of the Treaty of Paris and the orders to the English to abandon the Islands.

Resistance of the English by the Friars.—In resistance to the English and in the efforts to maintain Spanish authority, a leading part had been taken by the friars. “The sacred orders,” says Martinez de Zuñiga,[1] “had much to do with the success of Señor Anda. They maintained the Indians of their respective administrations loyal to the orders; they inspired the natives with horror against the English as enemies of the king and of religion, inciting them to die fighting to resist them; they contributed their estates and their property; and they exposed their own persons to great dangers.” The friars were certainly most interested in retaining possession of the Islands and had most to lose by their falling into English hands.

Increase of the Jesuits in Wealth and Power.—In this zealous movement for defense, however, the Jesuits bore no part; and there were charges made against them of treasonable intercourse with the English, which may have had foundation, and which are of significance in the light of what subsequently occurred.

At the close of the eighteenth century, all the governments of Catholic Europe were aroused with jealousy and suspicious hatred against the Jesuits. The society, organized primarily for missionary labor, had gradually taken on much of a secular character. The society was distinguished, as we have seen in its history in the Philippines, by men with great capacity and liking for what we may call practical affairs as distinguished from purely religious or devotional life. The Jesuits were not alone missionaries and orthodox educators, but they were scientists, geographers, financiers, and powerful and almost independent administrators among heathen peoples. They had engaged so extensively and shrewdly in trade that their estates, warehouses, and exchanges bound together the fruitful fields of colonial provinces with the busy marts and money-centers of Europe. Their wealth was believed to be enormous. Properly invested and carefully guarded, it was rapidly increasing.

What, however, made the order exasperating alike to rulers and peoples were the powerful political intrigues in which members of the order engaged. Strong and masterful men themselves, the field of state affairs was irresistibly attractive. Their enemies charged that they were unscrupulous in the means which they employed to accomplish political ends. It is quite certain that the Jesuits were not patriotic in their purposes or plans. They were an international corporation; their members belonged to no one nation; to them the Society was greater and more worthy of devotion than any state, in which they themselves lived and worked.

Dissolution of the Society of Jesus.—Europe had, however, reached the belief, to which it adheres today, that a man must be true to the country in which he lives and finds shelter and protection and in which he ranks as a political member, or else incur odium and punishment. Thus it was their indifference to national feeling that brought about the ruin of the Jesuits. It is significant that the rulers, the most devoted to Catholicism, followed one another in decreeing their expulsion from their dominions. In 1759 they were expelled from Portugal, in 1764 from France, and April 2, 1767, the decree of confiscation and banishment from Spain and all Spanish possessions was issued by King Carlos III. Within a year thereafter, the two most powerful princes of Italy, the king of Naples and the Duke of Parma, followed, and then the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta expelled them from that island. The friends of the order were powerless to withstand this united front of Catholic monarchs, and in July, 1773, Pope Clement XIV. suppressed and dissolved the society, which was not restored until 1814.