Rizal was born in 1861 not far from Manila. He came of intelligent stock. After his early training at the Jesuit school in Manila and the Dominican university, Rizal went to Spain, where he took high honors at the University of Madrid in medicine and philosophy. Post-graduate work in France and Germany followed.
JOSE RIZAL.
He was an ardent patriot, and in order to awaken his countrymen to the need of reform, although he was a Roman Catholic, he published while in Germany his book called "Noli Me Tangere,"—Touch Me Not—which dealt with the immoral life of the friars. An English translation has been issued with the title, "The Social Cancer." The circulation of the book in the Islands was forbidden, but it was read by most of the educated Filipinos. In reading it, one is again and again struck by the author's clear comprehension of the needs and the difficulties of the Filipinos, and the calm, unprejudiced way in which their problems are discussed.
In 1891, Rizal began the practice of medicine in Hongkong. Meanwhile, the Spanish authorities, in their desire to get him into their power, worked upon his feelings by persecuting his mother. The trick was successful, and he returned to Manila, where he was soon arrested, and banished to the island of Mindanao.
The most powerful leader of the insurrection was Andres Bonifacio, a passionate and courageous man of little education. He sent an agent to Dr. Rizal to aid him in escaping from his place of exile and to request him to lead the Katipunan in open revolt. Rizal refused, believing that the Filipinos were not yet ready for independence. Bonifacio resolved to proceed without him.
Bonifacio assured his audience that when he gave the signal the native troops would join them. It was of great importance to the success of his plan that the army, as in 1872, was engaged in operations against the Moros. There were available in Manila only some three hundred Spanish artillery, detachments amounting to four hundred men, including seamen, and two thousand native soldiers. The plot was discovered, but Bonifacio escaped from Manila, and sent out orders for an uprising in that part of Luzon which had been organized by the Katipunan. Manila was attacked, but the rebels were repulsed. Martial law was proclaimed in eight provinces of Luzon, followed by wholesale executions. Many of those arrested on suspicion "were confined in Fort Santiago, one batch being crowded into a dungeon for which the only ventilation was a grated opening at the top, and one night the sergeant of the guard carelessly spread his sleeping-mat over this, so the next morning some fifty-five asphyxiated corpses were hauled away."
Just before the outbreak, Rizal received permission to join the army in Cuba as surgeon, but on the way there was arrested and brought back to Manila. His fate was now sealed. The trial by court-martial was a farce. On a December day in 1896 he was led to execution.
FORT SANTIAGO.