The Insurrection of 1896
Many just reasons exist for the Filipino uprising in 1896, and their attempted abolition of Spanish rule in the islands. Among these reasons were oppression, forcible collection of unjust taxes…
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“Insurrection of 1896” from The Philippines and Filipinos by Oscar William Coursey, 1914.
Many just reasons exist for the Filipino uprising in 1896, and their attempted abolition of Spanish rule in the islands. Among these reasons were oppression, forcible collection of unjust taxes for the support of the church, the income tax, and the demand for forty days hard labor for the government by each male citizen each year.
The wakening of the Filipinos to a deep sense of the injustice being practiced upon them, was largely due to the introduction of secret societies into the islands, and to the influence of higher education obtained by those of means, in the schools of Hong Kong and other Old-World cities. The society of Odd Fellows spread to the islands in 1872, and it was largely responsible for the petty insurrection of the following year. Masonry was introduced in 1877. It spread rapidly, and today a large number of the natives belong to this order.
Their grievances grew more intense each year, and they needed only an opportune time to kindle the smoldering embers of discontent into a mighty conflagration of blood-shed.
At this time all of the available troops that Spain could spare at home, had been sent to Cuba to crush the life out of an insurrection that had been instituted by the Cubans for their independence from Spanish domination. The Filipinos, under the leadership of Don Emilio Aguinaldo and a few of his learned associates, took advantage of Spain's embarrassing position and secretly planned the murder of the Spanish Governor, the massacre of every Spanish garrison in the archipelago, and the subsequent independence of the islands from the yoke of Spanish tyranny.
A Filipino women, wife of one of the chief conspirators, growing uneasy over the responsibility of her weighty secret and fearful of the results, betrayed her husband's confidence, and, on the first day of August, 1896, she revealed the entire scheme to the Spanish authorities. They took pronounced steps at once to unearth the conspiracy in full, arrested hundreds of Filipinos and Chinese, and inflicted death upon them in the most atrocious manners known to the supposedly civilized world. The climax of inhumanity and barbarism was at least reached when they suffocated several hundred prisoners who had fallen into their hands, in the awful dungeon of San Sebastian. To this the Filipinos retaliated each morning, by taking twenty-five of the Spanish prisoners whom they had captured, and putting them into a deep pit a few miles west of Cavite, where they practiced markmanship upon them till they were all dead.
Spanish cruelty did not dishearten the Filipinos nor allay their determination to carry out their secret plans. On August 20, 1896, while the Spanish regiment to which Aguinaldo had been attached as a petty officer, was on parade, he and his soldier-accomplices in the conspiracy, suddenly opened fire and shot all the Spanish officers in the regiment. They immediately escaped for their own safety into the bamboo jungles in the interior of Luzon, where Aguinaldo gathered about him a large army of Tagalos and prepared for a final conflict.
In order to keep up the courage of his troops, he allowed them to pillage the homes of all Spanish sympathizers. His vindictive slaughter was even carried inside the defenses of Manila.
The Spanish-General offered Twenty Thousand Dollars for Aguinaldo's head. To this he replied in a very tense little note, "I need the sum you offer much, and will deliver the head myself." This he is reported to have done a few days latter, by slipping into Manila in disguise and gaining admission to the Governor's palace, where he disclosed his identity, and, at the point of a long, glittering bolo sharpened for the occasion, forced the governor to keep his promise and hand over the money.
He then siezed Cavite, a strongly fortified town seven miles from Manila; and captured and killed a large number of small Spanish garrison. The Spanish authorities became alarmed at his success and the rapidity with which he was collecting troops. Knowing the Filipinos' yearning for riches, the Spaniards finally offered Aguinaldo, and two other accomplices, each Two Hundred Thousand Dollars if they would leave the islands forever. They accepted the bribe and left for Hong Kong.
Aguinaldo's departure left the insurrection without a head; and the troops for want of a leader and supplies, gradually dissolved into small bands and retreated inland for permanent safety. One-half of the bribe (Four Hundred Thousand Dollars) given to Aguinaldo and his two co-partners, was furnished by the priests. Spain agreed to pay the remainder; but as her treasury was low, she only paid Two Hundred Thousand Dollars. This was deposited in a bank at Hong Kong where much trouble arose between Aguinaldo and his associates when they endeavored to get possession of it. Spain never paid the balance of the bribe, and Aguinaldo used this breach of contract as an excuse for returning to the islands at the breaking out of the
Spanish-American war. He said he was not bound to keep the contract either by honor or duty, as Spain herself had violated its stipulations.
General Polavieja, the Governor-General of the islands, offered amnesty to the Filipino troops, many of whom, upon positive intelligence of Auginaldo's trickery, readily accepted it.
These successive events defeated the object of the uprising, and the insurrectos dissolved themselves into tribal hordes that wandered hither and thither, plundering, pillaging, and murdering; doing far more damage to their own countrymen than to Spain.
This insurrection, although badly broken up, did not die out. When the United States battleship, Maine, was blown up in Havana harbor and it became apparent that Spain and the United States were going to fight, these bands of insurrectionists began to re-assemble, and they soon formed a large army that surrounded Manila on all sides, except the bay, and greatly harrassed the population of the city.
Coursey, Oscar William. The Philippines and Filipinos. The Educator Supply Co, 1914
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