The Province of Cavite
Bonifacioʼs followers were few, and, from this moment, Emilio Aguinaldo gradually rose from obscurity to prominence. Born at Cauit[5] (Cavite) on March 22, 1869, of poor parents, he started life in the service of the incumbent of San Francisco de Malabon. Later on he went to Manila, where, through the influence of a relative, employed in a humble capacity in the capital, he was admitted into the College of San Juan de Letran under the auspices of the Dominican friars. Subsequently he became a schoolmaster at Silan (Cavite), and at the age of twenty-six years he was again in his native town as petty-governor (Municipal Captain). He is a man of small frame with slightly webbed eyes, betraying the Chinese blood in his veins, and a protruding lower lip and prominent chin indicative of resolve. Towards me his manner was remarkably placid and unassuming, and his whole bearing denoted the very antithesis of the dashing warrior. Throughout his career he has shown himself to be possessed of natural politeness, and ever ready with the soft answer that turneth away wrath. He understands Spanish perfectly well, but does not speak it very fluently. Aguinaldoʼs explanation to me of the initial acts of rebellion was as follows:—He had reason to know that, in consequence of something having leaked out in Manila regarding the immature plans of the conspirators, he was a marked man, so he resolved to face the situation boldly. He had then been petty-governor of his town (Cauit) sixteen months, and in that official capacity he summoned the local detachment of the civil guard to the Town Hall, having previously arranged his plan of action with the town guards (cuadrilleros). Aguinaldo then spoke aside to the sergeant, to whom he proposed the surrender of their arms. As he quite anticipated, his demand was refused, so he gave the agreed signal to his cuadrilleros, who immediately surrounded the guards and disarmed them. Thereupon Aguinaldo and his companions, being armed, fled at once to the next post of the civil guard and seized their weapons also. With this small equipment he and his party escaped into the interior of the province, towards Silan, situated at the base of the Sun͠gay[6] Mountain, where the numerous ravines in the slopes running towards the Lake Bómbon (popularly known as the Lake of Taal) afforded a safe retreat to the rebels. Hundreds of natives soon joined him, for the secret of Aguinaldoʼs influence was the widespread popular belief in his possession of the anting-anting (vide p. [237]); his continuous successes, in the first operations, strengthened this belief; indeed, he seemed to have the lucky star of a De Wet without the military genius.
On August 31, 1896, eleven days after the plot was discovered in Manila, he issued his pronunciamiento simultaneously at his birthplace, at Novaleta, and at San Francisco de Malabon. This document, however, is of little historic value, for, instead of setting forth the aims of the revolutionists, it is simply a wild exhortation to the people, in general vague terms, to take arms and free themselves from oppression. In San Francisco de Malabon Aguinaldo rallied his forces prior to their march to Imus,[7] their great strategic point. The village itself, situated in the centre of a large, well-watered plain, surrounded by planted land, was nothing—a mere collection of wooden or bamboo-and-thatch dwellings. The distance from Manila would be about 16 miles by land, with good roads leading to the bay shore towns. The people were very poor, being tenants or dependents of the friars; hence the only building of importance was the friarsʼ estate-house, which was really a fortress in the estimation of the natives. This residence was situated in the middle of a compound surrounded by massive high walls, and to it some 17 friars fled on the first alarm. For the rebels, therefore, Imus had a double value—the so-called fortress and the capture of the priests. After a siege which lasted long enough for General Blanco to have sent troops against them, the rebels captured Imus estate-house on September 1, and erected barricades there. Thirteen of the priests fell into their hands. They cut trenches and threw up earthworks in several of the main roads of the province, and strengthened their position at Novaleta. Marauding parties were sent out everywhere to steal the crops and live-stock, which were conveyed in large quantities to Imus. Some of the captured priests were treated most barbarously. One was cut up piecemeal; another was saturated with petroleum and set on fire, and a third was bathed in oil and fried on a bamboo spit run through the length of his body. There was a Requiem Mass for this event. During the first few months of the rising many such atrocities were committed by the insurgents. The Naig outrage caused a great sensation in the capital. The lieutenant had been killed, and the ferocious band of rebels seized his widow and daughter eleven years old. The child was ravished to death, and they were just digging a pit to bury the mother alive when she was rescued and brought to Manila in the steam-launch Mariposa raving mad, disguised as a native woman. Aguinaldo, personally, was humanely inclined, for at his headquarters he held captive one Spanish trooper, an army lieutenant, a Spanish planter, a friar, and two Spanish ladies, all of whom were fairly well treated. The priest was allowed to read his missal, the lieutenant and trooper were made blacksmiths, and the planter had to try his hand at tailoring.
The insurgents occupied Parañaque and Las Piñas on the outskirts of Manila, and when General Blanco had 5,000 fresh troops at his disposal he still refrained from attacking the rebels in their positions. Military men, in conversation with me, excused this inaction on the ground that, to rout the rebels completely without having sufficient troops to garrison the places taken and to form flying columns to prevent the insurgents fleeing to the mountain fastnesses, would only require them to do the work over again when they reappeared. So General Blanco went on waiting in the hope that more troops would arrive with which to inflict such a crushing defeat on the rebels as would ensure a lasting peace. The rebels were in possession of Imus for several months. Three weeks after they took it, artillery was slowly carried over to Cavite, which is connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus, so the rebels hastened to construct a long line of trenches immediately to the south of this (vide map), whereby communication with the heart of the province was effectually cut off. Not only did their mile and a half of trenches and stockade check any advance into the interior from the isthmus, but it served as a rallying-point whence Cavite itself was menaced. The Spaniards, therefore, forced to take the offensive to save Cavite falling into rebel hands, made an attack on the Novaleta defences with Spanish troops and loyal native auxiliaries on November 10. The next day the Spaniards were repulsed at Binacayan with the loss of one-third of the 73rd Native Regiment and 60 Spanish troops, with 50 of both corps wounded. The intention to carry artillery towards Imus was abandoned and the Spaniards fell back on Dalahican, about a mile north of the rebel trenches of Novaleta, where they established a camp at which I spent a whole day. They had four large guns and two bronze mortars; in the trench adjoining the camp they had one gun. The troops numbered 3,500 Spaniards under the command of General Rios. The 73rd Native Regiment survivors had quarters there, but they were constantly engaged in making sorties on the road leading to Manila. No further attempt was made in General Blancoʼs time to dislodge the rebels from their splendidly-constructed trenches, which, however, could easily have been shelled from the sea side.
A number of supposed promoters of the rebellion filled the Cavite prison, and I went over to witness the execution of 13 of them on September 12. I knew two or three of them by sight. One was a Chinese half-caste, the son of a rich Chinaman then living. The father was held to be a respectable man of coolie origin, but the son, long before the rebellion, had a worthless reputation.
In the Provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan, north of Manila, the rebel mob, under the command of a native of Cabiao (Nueva Ecija) named Llaneras, was about 3,000 strong. To oppose this Major Lopez Arteaga had a flying column of 500 men, and between the contending parties there were repeated encounters with no definite result. Whenever the rebels were beaten off and pursued they fled to their strongholds of San Mateo (Manila, now Rizal) and Angat (Bulacan). The Spaniards made an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge the enemy at Angat, whilst at San Mateo, where they were supposed to be 5,000 strong, they were left undisturbed. The rebels attacked Calumpit (Bulacan), pillaged several houses, decapitated an Englishmanʼs cook, and drove the civil guard and the parish priest up the belfry tower. On the other side of the river, Llaneras visited the rice-mills of an Anglo-American firm, took some refreshment, and assured the manager, Mr. Scott, that the rebels had not the least intention to interfere with any foreigners (as distinguished from Spaniards), against whom they had no complaint whatever.
At length a plan of campaign was prepared, and expeditionary forces were to march in two directions through the disaffected provinces south of Manila, and combine, according to circumstances, when the bulk of the rebels could be driven together. One division operated from the lake town of Viñan, whilst General Jaramillo took his troops round to Batangas Province and worked northwards. Before the lake forces had gone very far they met with a reverse at the hands of the rebels in the neighbourhood of Carmona, but rallied and pushed on towards the rebel quarters near Silan, where the enemy was apparently concentrating for a great struggle. The combined columns under General Jaramillo at length opened the attack. A pitched battle was fought, and no quarter was given on either side. This fierce contest lasted a whole day, and the Spaniards were forced to retire with considerable loss. The combined operations accomplished nothing decisive, and served only to check an advance on the capital by the rebels, who were already in practical possession of the whole of Cavite province excepting the port, arsenal, and isthmus of Cavite.
In Manila the volunteers mounted guard whilst the regulars went to the front. For a while the volunteers were allowed to make domiciliary search, and they did very much as they liked. Domiciliary search was so much abused that it had to be forbidden, for the volunteers took to entering any house they chose, and roughly examined the persons of natives to see if they had the Katipunan brand. Crowds of suspects were brought into Manila, and shiploads of them were sent away in local steamers to the Caroline Islands and Mindanao, whilst every mail-steamer carried batches of them en route for Fernando Po. On October 1 the s.s. Manila sailed with 300 Filipinos for Chafarinas Islands, Ceuta, and other African penal settlements. In the local steamers many of them died on the way. The ordinary prisons were more than full, and about 600 suspects were confined in the dungeons of Fort Santiago at the mouth of the Pasig River, where a frightful tragedy occurred. The dungeons were over-crowded; the river-water filtered in through the crevices in the ancient masonry; the Spanish sergeant on duty threw his rug over the only light- and ventilating-shaft, and in a couple of days carts were seen by many citizens carrying away the dead, calculated to number 70. Provincial governors and parish priests seemed to regard it as a duty to supply the capital with batches of “suspects” from their localities. In Vigan, where nothing had occurred, many of the heads of the best families and moneyed men were arrested and brought to Manila in a steamer. They were bound hand and foot, and carried like packages of merchandise in the hold. I happened to be on the quay when the steamer discharged her living freight with chains and hooks to haul up and swing out the bodies like bales of hemp. From Nueva Cáceres (Camarines), the Abellas and several other rich families and native priests were seized and shipped off. Poor old Manuel Abella, like scores of others, was tortured in Bilibid prison and finally shot. He was a notary, unfortunately possessed of a fine estate coveted by an impecunious Spaniard, who denounced Abella, and was rewarded by being appointed “Administrator” of his property, out of which he so enriched himself that he was able, in a few months, to return to Spain in a good financial position. A friend of mine, a native planter of Balayán, was imprisoned for months, and then sent back to his town declared innocent. He had been a marked man since 1895, just after his son Quintin, a law student, had had a little altercation with his clerical professors in Manila. Thousands of peaceful natives were treated with unjustifiable ferocity. The old torture-chamber on the ground-floor of the convent of Baliuag (Bulacan) is still shown to visitors. The court-martial, established under the presidency of a colonel, little by little practised systematic extortion, for, within three months of the outbreak, hundreds of the richest natives and half-castes in Manila were imprisoned for a few days and released conditionally. From the lips of my late friend, Telesforo Chuidian, a wealthy Chinese half-caste, known to all Manila society, I heard of the squalid misery and privations to which he and others of his class were subjected, but the complete list would fill a page. Some were even re-arrested for the same nefarious purpose, and the daily papers published their names on each occasion. Archbishop Nozaleda and Gov.-General Blanco were at variance from the beginning of the revolt, and in accordance with historical precedent it could only end in one way, namely, that the clerical party advised the Cánovas Ministry to recall the General and appoint in his stead another who would be obedient to the friars.
General Blanco was not sufficiently sanguinary for the monks. As a strategist he had refused, at the outset, to undertake with 1,500 European troops a task which was only accomplished by his successor with 28,000 men. But the priests thought they knew better, and Blanco left for Spain in December, 1896. The relative positions of the parties at this crisis stood as follows:—The rebels were in possession of the whole of the Province of Cavite excepting the city and arsenal of Cavite and the isthmus connecting that city with the mainland. They were well fortified at Imus with trenches and stockades extending from the estate-house fort in several directions, defended by an army of 6,000 to 7,000 men. Their artillery was most primitive, however, consisting only of a few small guns called lantacas, some new guns of small calibre roughly cast out of the church bells, and iron waterpipes of large diameter converted into mitrailleuse mortars. They were strongly entrenched behind a mile and a half of strategically constructed earthworks defending the town of Novaleta, which they held. They were supposed to have at least 20,000 men in occupation there. Including San Francisco de Malabon, Silan, Perez Dasmariñas, and the several other places they held, their total force in the whole province was estimated at 35,000 men. About one-fifth of that number was armed with rifles (chiefly Maüsers), the remainder carrying bowie-knives and bamboo lances. The bowie-knife was irresistible by the Spaniards when the native came to close-quarter fighting. The rebels had ample supplies of rice, buffaloes, etc., stolen from the non-combatant natives. To my personal knowledge they had daily communication with Manila, and knew everything that was going on there and the public feeling in the capital. They had failed in the attempt to seize the town of Santa Cruz (La Laguna), where they killed one Spaniard and then retreated. Loyal natives in Viñan organized volunteer forces to keep them out of that town. Those Manila volunteers known as the Guerrilla á muerte battalion, with a few regulars, frequently patrolled the lake coast in steam-launches from Manila, and kept the rebels from occupying that district. North of Manila the rebellion reached no farther than Bulacan and Pampanga Provinces, where Llanerasʼs flying column, together with the rebels in the mountain fastnesses of Angat and San Mateo, amounted to about 10,000 men. Llaneras notified the Manila-Dagúpan (English) Railway officials that they were to cease carrying loyal troops on their line; but as those orders were not heeded, a train was wrecked on November 19 about 20 miles up from the capital. The locomotive and five carriages were smashed, the permanent-way was somewhat damaged, five individuals were wounded, and the total loss sustained was estimated at ₱40,000. In the last week of November the friarsʼ estate-house at Malinta, some five miles north of Manila, was in flames; we could see the blaze from the bay. The slightest reverse to Spanish arms always drew a further crowd of rebels into the field.