CHAPTER XI.
THE BATTLE OF MANILA.
Three centuries ago the power of Spain in the western hemisphere covered a larger area than the foreign possessions of any other country in Europe. And in the same year in which Cortes, by a romantic and amazing military exploit, brought her the kingdom of Mexico, Magellan discovered for her another rich empire in the Pacific, which she governed, robbed, and oppressed for three hundred and seventy-seven years, until she lost it—probably forever—one May morning, when an American fleet sailed into the bay of Manila and won a victory as complete and astonishing as that of Cortes. The greater part of the reasons why such a victory was possible are indicated in the foregoing pages, but the circumstances that gave occasion for it need explanation.
| Diagram of Manila Bay. |
Spain's misrule in her colonies finally produced in most of them a chronic state of insurrection, and one after another they slipped from her grasp. Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, the Argentine, Mexico, Louisiana, Florida, and the greater part of the West Indies once were hers. She ceded Louisiana to France in 1800, and Florida to the United States in 1819, and two years later Mexico achieved her independence. She still had the rich islands of Cuba and Porto Rico in the West Indies, and the Philippine group in the East.
Though there have been revolutions and counter revolutions in Spain since the beginning of this century, the colonies have profited by none of them. Whether the home government was republic or monarchy, it was equally impressed with the idea that colonies were for plunder only. In 1848 the United States offered to buy Cuba for one hundred million dollars, but the offer was indignantly rejected with the remark that there was not gold enough in the world to buy that island from Spain. Of the many insurrections there, the most serious were that which lasted from 1868 to 1878, costing Spain a hundred thousand lives and Cuba nearly sixty thousand, and that which broke out in 1895. In the former of these, forty thousand prisoners who were captured by the Spanish troops were deliberately put to death; and in the latter such barbarous measures of repression were resorted to as subjected, not men alone, but women and children, to the most cruel suffering. Meanwhile, the United States Government was doing its utmost to enforce the laws of neutrality, and a part of its navy was kept busy watching the coasts and thwarting filibustering schemes, some of which were successful in spite of them.
The feelings of horror excited among the American people by the atrocities of the Spanish commander in Cuba began to demand that somehow or other an end be put to them; and every comment on the great powers of Europe for permitting the massacre of Armenians by the Turks, suggested a parallel criticism in regard to the United States and Cuba.
A similar insurrection was in progress in the Philippine Islands. That group is about two hundred miles from the coast of China. The largest of them, Luzon, is about as large as the State of Ohio, and the next, Mindanao, is almost as large; while the smallest are mere islets. There are nearly two thousand in all. The total area is estimated at one hundred and fourteen thousand square miles (about equal to the combined areas of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland), and the total population at seven million (about equal to that of the State of New York). Of this population more than half are on the island of Luzon. Here also is the capital city, Manila, with a population (including suburbs) of a quarter of a million.