From other communications we learn that the soldiers at Alaminos were about to desert on November 30th, 1898;[10] that it was deemed necessary to restrict travel between Tarlac, Pampanga, Bataan and Zambales in order to prevent robberies;[11] and that on January 9, 1899, the governor of the province found it impossible to continue the inspection of a number of towns, as many of their officials had fled to escape the abuses of the military.[12] Conditions were obviously very serious in Zambales at this time.
Cavite
Cavite province lies immediately south of Manila province as the latter was then constituted. On August 24, 1898, the secretary of war wired Aguinaldo that two drunken Americans had been killed by Insurgent soldiers.[13] On the same day General Anderson advised the governor of Cavite that one American soldier had been killed and three wounded by his people, and demanded his immediate withdrawal, with his guard, from the town.[14] The governor asked Aguinaldo for instructions. Aguinaldo replied instructing the governor to deny that the American had been killed by Insurgent soldiers and to claim that he had met death at the hands of his own companions. The governor was further directed to give up his life before leaving the place.[15]
In view of the definite statement from one of his own officers that the soldier in question was killed by Filipino soldiers, Aguinaldo’s instructions to say that he was killed by Americans are interesting as showing his methods.
Not only were the Insurgents obviously unable to control their own soldiers in Cavite town sufficiently to prevent them from committing murder, but conditions in the province of the same name left much to be desired. On December 29, 1898, the governor wired Aguinaldo that the town of Marigondong had risen in arms.[16]
It is a well-known fact that land records were destroyed in Cavite. Of this matter Taylor says:—
“In Cavite, in Cavite Province, and probably in most of the other provinces, one of the first acts of the insurgents who gathered about Aguinaldo was to destroy all the land titles which had been recorded and filed in the Spanish administrative bureaus. In case the independence of the Philippines was won, the land of the friars, the land of the Spaniards and of those who still stood by Spain, would be in the gift of Aguinaldo or of any strong man who could impose his will upon the people. And the men who joined this leader would be rich in the chief riches of the country, and those who refused to do so would be ruined men.”[17]