We all felt sure that there was no other stockade besides these two which we saw, when, at the third turn of the hill, the advance-guard came upon another, which we had not been able to see. They commenced to fight bravely from below it, but because the position of the stockade was very strong, and that of our men very cramped—hemmed in by formidable precipices, and exposed to all the guns and other weapons of the enemy (especially sompites, bacacayes, and stones)—no sooner would some of our men gain the little open place before the stockade than they would fall dead or wounded. For this reason, after having fought a good two hours, the fort could not be taken.
During this time the four priests who went up the hill—Father Juan de Barrios, the Augustinian friar, the chaplain of the fleet, and I—remained at this place, confessing the wounded and encouraging the others. On the whole march, so far, I had not chosen to unfurl the standard of the holy Christ and St. Francis Xavier; but at the time of the battle, my fervor and zeal being aroused, I did what the Holy Ghost bade me, and was thus constrained to give the banner to a soldier—who at my order went on ahead, further up the hill, to guard the person of his Lordship, who had left me in order to reconnoiter the stockade from a nearer point. A ball came, which pierced the canvas of both the sacred pictures, but without touching the figures; at that time the saint was facing the stockade, and it has been positively learned (how, I know not) that that ball was intended by the evil one to kill a great personage, and the saint who stood before him saved him from it.
I, seeing that our affairs were in such straits, offered on my part an earnest prayer to the saint; and afterward I said aloud to his Lordship that he ought to make a vow to the saint that he would build him a chapel at San Miguel. To this he replied with much spirit and generosity, “Yes, Father, and it shall be made very rich and very beautiful.” I thought it best to designate that church, because it was that of the saint to whom St. Francis Xavier, when he was living, felt most devotion and love. I cannot deny that my heart was much troubled at this time, although not for fear of the bullets, which flew about us like mosquitoes, and made a terrifying noise in the trees; for I can truthfully assert to your Reverence that I felt no trace of fear during this whole campaign, thanks to God, although I found myself in the greatest straits and perils of my whole life; and His grace comforted and aided me greatly in this emergency. Forever blessed and hallowed be His holy name, que attingit a fine, usque ad finem fortiter, et disponit omnia suaviter,[15] who hath brought me by so many circuitous ways to a position so in accord with my life-long desires. Thus, what distressed me on that day was not fear, but the sight of the bravest and most gallant soldiers either dead or wounded; nevertheless, it consoled me much to see them enter the battle with the names of Christ and St. Francis Xavier on their lips, and die uttering the same words. Over many was laid the standard containing these two images, which even bore some spots of blood. Some were praying with their reliquaries and kissing them, others beseeching me for general absolution to prepare them for so glorious a death—obtained in avenging the injuries done to the holy Christ (this was the common formula, as it were, of all)—and others at last, whom I could not reach, declared their sins publicly giving tokens of the great grief and contrition which they felt. There was one of these, in particular, who said three times: “Sirs, tell such-a-one to pardon me; for money was given me in Manila to induce me to murder him in time of battle, and I should have murdered him had not God brought me to this condition.” Truly, the depth of his contrition touched me greatly—only this one thing he had not confessed the night before; then I confessed nearly all the rest, and they received the sacrament with the utmost devotion.
Among the first wounded was Captain Ugalde, who had two bullet-wounds in his arms, and Sargento-mayor Don Pedro Hurtado de Corcuera, with a musket ball which went through his right leg; so that this valiant cavalier, being no longer able to be upon his feet, remained for a long time upon his knees, encouraging the soldiers, although he was in great danger of being killed. He was in the very spot where they had wounded Don Rodrigo de Guillestigui, who was a most distinguished soldier; for he fought continually, and remained all the time in the ditch of the stockade without coming out, even when he had a considerable wound. Alférez Amesquita succeeded in hoisting our flag over the fort, but with the utmost danger; for they nearly hurled him down, with a spear-wound in his head and several sompites in his throat. Our men were fasting, and, besides that, laden with provisions and arms, and wearied by the march (which had been more difficult than long); but, like lions, they caused the Moros much more fear in their death than if the port had been taken without bloodshed. The Moros were terrified, too, by seeing our soldiers thus obstinately keep up the battle in a slaughter-house—for this place deserves no other name. And your Reverence may be well assured that a million of Spaniards could never have gained the height; for I believe that no one can possibly picture or imagine the strength of that place unless he were present at the attack. The truth is, that they passed from courage to rashness; for, by not ceasing to fight, they changed his Lordship’s orders (or else they heard them backwards) [as if he were] commanding the leaders to rally instead of ordering a retreat. Then they counted on gaining the victory through the soldiers who were coming up behind (though most of them paid for this over-confidence with their lives), and were for a long time deceived with this hope. However, the real reason why the governor did not sooner order the retreat was that he was waiting for the instant when Nicolas Gonçalez should attack from above on the other side, for the latter had no more than three leguas to go; but, having found the road very bad, and being himself far from well, he could not get there till night. With these hopes, and with very many false tidings of victory, which were very often given, his Lordship waited, and urged on the soldiers for full two hours in a very dangerous place, exposed to all the weapons of the enemy; but, seeing many dead and wounded, he pushed his way forward, and, with great danger to himself (and to all of us, if any mishap had befallen him), reached the little open space in full sight of the stockade. There he stood, in a furious storm of bullets, stones, bacacayes, and sompites, which killed and wounded many at his side—especially his armor-bearer, through whose helmet and skull they sent a bullet. Now, having reconnoitered the place for more than half an hour, and seeing that it could not be taken by storm from this road (as a half-pay officer had told him a little while before), he expressed his annoyance at those who sought with lies to detain him and involve him more deeply, and ordered the retreat to be sounded.
The enemy might, indeed, have done us much injury when we commenced the retreat; for the dead numbered eighteen, the wounded more than eighty, and the few who remained were very weary, and hampered by the aforesaid wounded men. Besides this, the road was precipitous, and more difficult to descend than to climb. But God our Lord, by the intercession of my glorious saint, blinded the enemy wholly; and the courage and prudent management of his Lordship gave them no time to attack us. With the utmost courage, he went along as if nothing had happened, brandishing his naked sword—encouraging all; holding back the soldiers, so that they should retreat gradually; with his face always to the enemy, sending the men down; and having our drums and trumpets sounded, until we reached the house which Adjutant Don Martin had fortified. When all were there, we saw on one side a great number of Moros coming down a defile to prevent our retreat to the camp. A few cannon-shots were fired at them, and they quickly hurried back to the hill. His Lordship wished to halt here and await the attack by Nicolas Gonçalez, but the smallness of his forces compelled him to retire, which he did, the drums beating, as before, until we reached the camp. The wounded were placed, for that night, in a cabin in front of the mosque; and in the morning we transferred them to the champans, burying three who had died. Many were of the opinion that his Lordship ought to retire that evening to the fort—a safer place, in case of attack—but he was not willing to display any weakness before the enemy, and so that night passed in great anxiety; for, if the Moros were to come down, it would at least endanger the wounded. We learned from some of the captives that they really intended to attack us; but that, thinking the governor (for whom they mistook Captain Martin Monte,[16] on account of his distinguished presence) had fallen on that day, they felt it necessary to give thanks first to Mahoma for so great a victory, with many ceremonies and revels which they held that night, with the heads of our dead—as we ourselves guessed from the great number of lights which we saw at the same time on the hill. After this assault, when we retired at nightfall to the camp, the governor wrote to Nicolas Gonçalez, telling him of what had happened; and ordering him that if, by his position and the state of his troops, he thought he could take the hill, he should attack vigorously alone; but, if he thought that he could not succeed, he should contrive an honorable retreat to the camp, where they would arrange everything. He gave the letter to Sosocan to send, but no one dared to take it, so it came back to the secretary.
Very early the next morning, I was saying mass, when cannon-shots and volleys of musketry commenced to be heard from the hill—a sign that our men were fighting. The whole camp was in a tumult, and his Lordship ordered Don Pedro to march with all the able-bodied men by the same road that they had followed the previous day, in order to divide the enemy’s forces, assuming that Nicolas Gonçalez was already engaged. I kept on with the mass, although with much difficulty, because of the many tears which the noise of the cannon called forth; and since the mass that I was saying was for our dead soldiers, I implored their blessed souls to obtain from God for us the victory for which they had spent their blood the day before. After mass, we said the full litany, and all engaged in prayer; it was an impressive thing to see the governor on his knees with tears in his eyes, his hands raised to heaven like Moses of old, praying for aid, and that the victory might come to his troops. Less than an hour had passed when two soldiers came with the news of the victory, and soon Father Melchor arrived with the enemy’s flags. I will not write of the embraces, the merrymaking, and the joy in our camp, for your Reverence can imagine it better than I can describe it. His Lordship at once gave a banner to the soldiers who had brought the news, and by him he sent [the promise of] an encomienda to Nicolas Gonçalez.
Father Vera related to us the story of the taking of the hill, as follows: They marched all day Tuesday the seventeenth, the day of our attack, not because the way was so long, but so bad, as I have already said, and because Nicolas Gonçalez had to travel in a hammock. He was actually so weak and ill that, as he afterward admitted to me, his sword served him for a cane the day of the fight; and a boy had to support his arm, which he could not lift for the weight of his shield. They had various encounters with Moros, but, in order to avoid noise, the order was given not to fight; and so on the way they killed only the cachice [i.e., kasis] of Corralat, whom they found hidden in a thicket. They halted that night and fortified themselves in a height which overlooked the hill; and early on the morning of Wednesday (the day of St Joseph’s vigil and of the glorious angel Gabriel) Nicolas Gonçalez had urged on the soldiers, and told them that since there was no avenue of retreat open to them, there was nothing for it but to gain either the hill or heaven. They made a valiant attack upon the enemy, who were awaiting them behind a huge tree lying across the middle of the road—having no other stockades or ditches on this part of the hill, for they could not imagine that we would attack them there. They held their ground, fighting, for a time; but Captain Castelo, who was leading the vanguard, having crossed with some soldiers to the other side of the log, forced them to abandon their position. Then he followed them with his troops, without difficulty or danger, on the rear as far as the stockades and forts, till he remained master of two of these with four pieces of artillery and the king’s strong-house where he kept his treasure. Many Moros were killed, not only by our shots, but by rushing down in a furious and headlong flight through a very narrow ravine which was at the entrance of this very stockade where they expected us—falling, by a just judgment of God, into the very snares which they had laid for us. At the same time Captain Castelo met some Moros who were coming to join the others—the garrison of the third stockade, which we had attacked the day before with our vanguard; and, with the same ease, he compelled them to flee and fling themselves down, he remaining master of the fort and its arms, which were muskets with rests, arquebuses, campilans, etc. The relatives and the men and maid-servants of Corralat, with many of his people, who were taken prisoners on that day, said that the night before he had put under his feet a monstrance containing the blessed sacrament, which he had stolen, saying to all that there was nothing to fear, for he had the God of the Christians already under his feet; and that, considering the great strength of his fortified hills and stockades, and the large quantity of provisions that they had, they would be quite safe, unless it rained men from heaven. But when, the next morning, they brought him word that our men were attacking from the rear, he said to his wife: “The Spaniards have chosen a bad place for me” (reflecting that, as I have said, he had no defense for guarding the rear of the hill); “however, be of good courage, and wait here for me, for I am going to do to these what I did yesterday to the others.” He went, and his wife, seeing that we were coming in, urged her women to fling themselves down with her, so as not to be captured. They, being more sensible, refused to do this,[17] and so they became our slaves; while the poor queen, with a child which she was holding in her arms, flung herself down and remained hanging from a tree. This was a cause of regret to us all, on account of the kind disposition which she possessed, according to the report given us by the father rector of Dapitan, who knew her to be very friendly to our Christian captives—sending them food secretly (especially to the religious), and reproaching her husband when he maltreated and abused them. After the queen had flung herself down, Corralat, with a bullet-wound in one arm, came in search of her; and, seeing her already dead, he fled by one of those declivities, without being recognized, to some hamlets four leguas from the hill, where they say he is now recovering.
None of our men died, thanks be to God; only seven or eight were wounded, and they are now well. Don Rodrigo—who had set out that morning, as I have said, with the other troops—learning en route of the victory, sent the soldiers to Nicolas Gonçalez as reënforcements, and himself returned to the camp.
Now your Reverence will see whether we could ever have taken the camp by starvation, as they said we could; it contained grain-fields, banana patches, a brook of very pure water, and six or seven thousand baskets of rice—which for them was very extensive provision. Nicolas Gonçalez fortified himself with his troops in two places: Captain Bezerra, with fifty soldiers, occupied the king’s house which had been set aside for his Majesty [the king of Spain], and Nicolas Gonçalez remained with the rest of the forces in the principal stockade where the artillery was; while they burned all the other stockades, and the houses, rice, and grain-fields, and brought down the four pieces of artillery. This they did in two days, to the admiration of all—even of the gunners, who held it to be impossible. Those men would have abandoned them, if his Lordship had not remained firm in his intention of not going until the cannon came down—not wishing Corralat to say that the Spaniards could not bring down what he had taken up, although he did it with two thousand Indians, in six months, and our men did it in two days with four rowers [barrigas].
I cannot deny that the joy of that day was very great, but the death of the two Recollect fathers distressed us greatly—his Lordship having tried to the utmost of his power to deliver them from the Moros. Although they had captured three at Pintados, one of them was killed by our own men[18] under Nicolas Gonçalez, on the day when he surprised the enemy’s fleet at Punta de San Sebastian, formerly Punta de Flechas. One the Moros killed on the day when we gained the lower port, because, when they were fleeing with their wives and captives to the upper fort, this good servant of God being unable to travel very fast on account of having been ill, they killed him with a shower of blows; and then hanged him, dead, from a tree so that we should see him from the camp. But, because we were at a distance, we could not, although we saw him, get possession of his body—especially as they took it away early the next day; and we were unable to find out what they did with it. The other father they killed on the hill, through rage, on the day that Nicolas Gonçalez won the hill—although he did not die until the following day, in the mosque below the hill, before the altar. It comforted him greatly to see already blessed, with the title of Nuestra Señora de la Buen Succeso [“Our Lady of Success”], the building which a little while before had stood there dedicated to Mahoma. Five fathers whom we found at the camp were present at his death; and the next morning we buried him in the sea, not being willing to leave his sacred body to the hands of the barbarians. When I was washing him to prepare him for burial, I was astounded at the great number of wounds and cruel campilan blows with which they had mutilated his whole body; and then I wondered at his patience and endurance. The soldiers too admired the great zeal of this holy man, because, when they found him thus wounded in a corner of the fort, he did not complain, but immediately asked if there were any wounded soldier for him to confess. When he was told that he must not fatigue himself, and that we had brought a Jesuit father for that very purpose, he was greatly rejoiced, and asked to have him brought so that he might confess to him; Father Melchor de Vera came up at once.