Ragged, sick, and weak from having nothing to put in their mouths. Although also brave and determined to give even the last drop of blood for their country. This is how the only 57 soldiers present in Baler (200 kilometers from Manila) defended in 1898 the last Spanish territory located in the Philippines a small church in which they waited for almost a year for the arrival of Hispanic reinforcements that never arrived. In the 337 days of resistance, these soldiers never admitted the defeat of the metropolis. However, they ended up leaving the place after receiving news of the definitive withdrawal of Spain from the colony. For this reason, they were known in history as the last of the Philippines.
It was then the 19th century, an unfortunate time for the now non-existent Spanish empire. And it is , the time in which in the Hispanic territory “the sun did not set” years ago had gone down the toilet and had disappeared from the collective memory. Of those regions conquered and colonized throughout the world, only Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and remained in the portfolio.
The newspaper that saved a detachment With days turned into weeks, the defenders reached 11 months of resistance. By then, the damp and unsanitary church of Baler had already become their home and very few were thinking of salvation. Starving and so thin that, according to Cerezo, their bones could be counted, the Hunters met with their officers to devise a final plan. As the lieutenant explained, when the few supplies that were left were finally exhausted, they would try to sneak away in the middle of the night to a nearby forest. From there, they would leave for Manila, where they would appear before the Hispanic authorities
Neither were things going better in the Peninsula, where poverty savagely attacked the population and where, levies here and enlistments there, freighters full of soldiers left every day to shoot themselves in Spain on the other side of the globe. But friend, we had to defend the remnants of glorious Spain that one day we went to whatever coast. In turn, and as if that were not enough, while we were plummeting, a new empire was slowly rearing its head in the world the United States (a country that at that time did not have 150 years since its foundation but that already believed in law to stick their noses where they want).Precisely one of the territories that gave the Spaniards the most headaches in those years was a small colony located near China: the Philippines. There, since 1896 and under deadly heat, the military fought a battle with rifle and machete in an attempt to quell a revolt that could end Hispanic rule in the area. However, after more than one fight and the occasional scare, the metropolis decided to change the knife for the pen and, at the end of that same year, signed a peace treaty with the leaders of the uprising that pacified the area – or, at the end of that year. less, that was thought. A brief respite for Spain in a time full of wars.
The Philippines and the US seize their moment
As we rampaged through the overseas territories fighting to maintain the remnants of the empire that still remained, the United States was experiencing a very different situation. And it is that, as the north of the continent had outgrown, its rulers began to look abroad in search of new territories that would kiss the flag of the stars and stripes. What were the selected ones? Among others, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Aware of the despair that these colonies generated in the Peninsula and the number of men and coins that they were costing Spain, they considered that it was time to try to appropriate them. For this reason, in the middle of the 19th century, the Americans opened the stock market with the intention of giving “a lot of money” to the old and battered Spain and offered no less than 100 million dollars for the island. However, we Hispanics were not around for jokes so, with a simple “no, thanks”, we kicked them back for the Americas.
“Cuba is not for sale.” That changed the way of thinking of the new world power, in which it should have been considered that, if we were not thinking of getting rid of the territories for good, we would have to get them by other methods. Thus, the United States began to help in a disguised way (an open secret, which could be said today) to the colonies with arms and money so they could become independent from the metropolis. As if there were few problems, days after the United States became bellicose, the Philippine revolutionaries again drew their rifles and began a new crusade against the Spanish. Apparently, they also understood that there is no better time to attack an empire than when it is wounded and its fronts are divided. Thus, receiving the US cannon fire from the sea and the colonial lead from the land, the less than 20,000 Peninsular soldiers present could do little and, day after day, they ceded the territory to the enemy. The war, in short, was lost even before it began.
The first Baler massacre
When the revolution broke out, it did not do so equally in all Philippine territories. In fact, while in some the Spaniards had to play an unexpected turn, in others the rebel movements took longer to forge. Precisely one of those regions in which the sedition arrived with some delay was Baler, a town located in the northeast of the Philippines. «Baler is located near the sea, on a bend, to the south of the cove or bay of its name, distant from the beach about 1,000 meters Like all Philippine populations, with purely rural life and a small number of inhabitants, it was reduced to the rectory church; And some house made of boards and mortar states Saturnino Martin Cerezo (later present in the defense of this town) in his operations diary published in 1904.Curiously, in mid-1897 the only Spanish authorities present in this small town were a corporal of the Civil Guard and four indigenous people. However, everything changed when, in 1898, the revolution broke out again. And it is because, fearful that the people could rebel against the interests of the metropolis, the Hispanic officials of the place – represented then by Commander Irizarri – decided to request reinforcements to maintain order.
No sooner said than done. A few days later, a detachment of 50 Spanish hunters, commanded by a young 19-year-old lieutenant named Mota, arrived to prevent future insurrections. With a little experience, the first decision the officer made as soon as he set foot in town was to divide his troops. Thus, he created different groups that spread throughout Baler. He could not make a bigger mistake because, after a few nights, the rebels took advantage of their numerical superiority to hit them with machetes until exhaustion.
It was not long before they succeeded, because – with the darkness as an ally – they assaulted the Spanish positions in the town, killing half a dozen Spaniards and wounding as many. In turn, and unfortunately Hispanic, bad fortune also wanted the young and promising Lieutenant Mota to die. He got up in the middle of the night alone and, believing that his entire detachment had found death under Philippine knives, he grabbed a revolver and blew his brains out. Very bad news since, if he had had some patience, he could have learned that, albeit with suffering, the enemy had been repulsed.
After this attack, Irizarry understood how worrying the situation was and, until the chamber of the revolution, decided to establish what would be the defense of Baler. «The first measure that Commander Irizarri adopted, after evaluating the consequences of the assault, was to regroup his troops in the church-convent near the mouth of the river. We have already mentioned the data of the fortress, its walls of meter and a half, its 30 meters in length and 10 in width, its six windows, two in the southern part on the main facade, one facing south and one facing west, Says Manuel Leguineche in his work. I will tell you. The true story of the last of the Philippines relay arrives
On the other hand, and because the detachment had been decimated, he asked for a relief team to come from Spain that could take charge of the situation. The 2nd Expeditionary Battalion of Hunters was in charge of supplying it: 50 brave soldiers armed with the effective Mauser rifle and commanded (in the foreground) by Enrique de las Morenas and Fossi -the new Political-Military Commander of the Príncipe district- and then, by Lieutenant Juan Alonso Zayas and Lieutenant Saturnino Martín Cerezo. In turn, the provisional military health doctor Rogelio Vigil de Quiñones and Fray Cándido Gómez Carreño also left for Baler.
This new detachment took over from its comrades in May. They were only 54 brave, but they were willing to leave their eyelashes to defend Spain even if it was thousands of kilometers away. However, near them were a huge number of rebels determined to return them to the Peninsula in a pine box. It didn’t take local leaders two days to enlist a gigantic fighting force to besiege Baler and steal every last crumb of bread from his defenders. By then, the colony had already taken up arms and the Spanish were losing battle after battles against the locals.
Fearful of the Filipinos, the Spanish barricaded themselves in the church. In the second half of May, the news got publicly worse. That party, already large enough to take to the field, did so, of course simultaneously and resolutely; it took over the surrounding towns, and completely closed our internal communications with the rest of the island. There was no doubt that our little detachment continued to excite enemy greed and preferences. Nothing more natural “, highlights Cerezo in his writings. Knowing that what was coming was not an easy rebellion to quell, the Spanish officers gathered up all the food they found and barricaded themselves in the church.
There, they tried to resist until the arrival of reinforcements or until, after a bloody fight, not a single one of them was left alive. Specifically, at the time of being besieged, the Spaniards had – according to the statistics of the time – the following foods: Field rations, 7500; sacks with 500 kg of chickpeas, 20; boxes with 440 bacon ditto, 22; bags with 375 beans, 15; boxes with 5,000 cans of sardines, 50; boxes with 75 liters of olive oil, 2; sacks with 500 kilos of rice of 1st, 20; cans with 75 ditto of coffee, 5; boxes of 161 ditto for sugar, 7; boxes of 50 servings of cookies equivalent to 2,500 servings, 50; Sachets with 2,507 kg of flour, 109 . Besides, before the start of the site, they managed to get a good amount of Australian meat (canned) and as many kilos of rice. Unfortunately, they did not have any salt – a staple for preserving food – or drinking water.
The siege begins
On July 1, as the suffocating heat hit the Spanish soldiers hard, the first shot of a siege that would last 337 days was fired. It came out of a Filipino rifle while Cerezo patrolled, as he did daily with a dozen other men, the vicinity of the church. The enemy had just arrived and, knowing that it was impossible to stand up to him in the middle of the plateau, the Spanish officer retreated. All the soldiers then left for the safety of the church, a building on whose tower the red-and-yellow flag was flying. The last Spanish territory in the colony. I had been lucky enough to answer the first shots and I had to answer with the last. We were besieged “, explains the Hispanic in his diary.
That same afternoon, the defenders prepared to defend to the last man a damp building, narrow and devoid of any comfort. To do this, they bricked up the windows, leaving only a few small gaps through which they could fire their rifles. On the other hand, they tore several tiles from the ground to make an oven with which to cook bread, they made a latrine in a corral attached to the enclosure, and even undermined the earth to build a well in which they found water. A piece of luck that allowed them to stay on their feet for almost a year without dying of dehydration.
While the Hunters went through reforms, the Filipinos did not remain – far from it – still. That same night a large rebel contingent arrived under the command of Teodorico Luna Novicio, who also had a line of ditches built around the church to prevent the besieged from fleeing. “The sea had been deserted, the town had been evacuated and remained silent, the river did not seem to be fordable, the forest and the mountain far away. This was the scene of the struggle”, in this case, Leguineche completes in his work.
In the days that followed, as the Spanish heroes began to acclimatize to what would be their new home, the Filipinos demonstrated their chivalry by sending the besieged various messages informing them of the Spanish withdrawal from the colony. They tried, by all means, to make them understand that no one would come to rescue them and that they were alone in the face of danger. However, none of them were willing to capitulate so, arguing that it was a Machiavellian plan to make them surrender, they continued to prepare the defense without a hint of doubt: the Philippines was, for them, red-equalized.
So chivalrous was the combat in principle that besiegers and besieged came to exchange gifts. “On July 8, the leader Cirilo Gomez Ortiz sent us a letter requesting the suspension of hostilities, so that the troops could rest from the fighting. The man wanted to dismiss them as generous and, saying that he had heard from (our) deserters of the shortage we suffered in terms of food, he offered us whatever we wanted (and) a pack of cigarettes for the captain and a cigarette for each of them. the troop. The suspension was agreed and, in just correspondence with the gift, we sent him a bottle of Jerez so that he could contribute to our health and a handful of half royalties ”, adds Cerezo.
Still, the pomposity came to an end when the enemies saw that the Hunters were unwilling to surrender. It also did not help, for example, that two Spanish soldiers came out bare-chested and, on the run, burned several houses that were around the church to prevent them from being used as a parapet by the besiegers. This act, which once again left Spanish courage at the top, greatly angered the enemy. From that moment on, the continuous firing of guns began against the last Spanish stronghold in the Philippines. While the Hunters went through reforms, the Filipinos did not remain – far from it – still. That same night a large rebel contingent arrived under the command of Teodorico Luna Novicio, who also had a line of ditches built around the church to prevent the besieged from fleeing. “The sea had been deserted, the town had been evacuated and remained silent, the river did not seem to be fordable, the forest and the mountain far away. This was the scene of the struggle”, in this case, Leguineche completes in his work.
In the days that followed, as the Spanish heroes began to acclimatize to what would be their new home, the Filipinos demonstrated their chivalry by sending the besieged various messages informing them of the Spanish withdrawal from the colony. They tried, by all means, to make them understand that no one would come to rescue them and that they were alone in the face of danger. However, none of them were willing to capitulate so, arguing that it was a Machiavellian plan to make them surrender, they continued to prepare the defense without a hint of doubt: the Philippines was, for them, red-equalized.
So chivalrous was the combat in principle that besiegers and besieged came to exchange gifts. “On July 8, the leader Cirilo Gómez Ortíz sent us a letter requesting the suspension of hostilities, so that the troops could rest from the fighting. The man wanted to dismiss them as generous and, saying that he had heard from (our) deserters of the shortage we suffered in terms of food, he offered us whatever we wanted (and) a pack of cigarettes for the captain and a cigarette for each of them. the troop. The suspension was agreed and, in just correspondence with the gift, we sent him a bottle of Jerez so that he could contribute to our health and a handful of half royalties ”, adds Cerezo.
Still, the pomposity came to an end when the enemies saw that the Hunters were unwilling to surrender. It also did not help, for example, that two Spanish soldiers came out bare-chested and, on the run, burned several houses that were around the church to prevent them from being used as a parapet by the besiegers. This act, which once again left Spanish courage at the top, greatly angered the enemy. From that moment on, the continuous firing of guns began against the last Spanish stronghold in the Philippines. The silent killer However, three months after the siege, the brave Spaniards discovered, to their misfortune, that Baler’s only danger was not the Philippine rifles and cannons, but also some silent executioners who, little by little, did not stop adding dead to the ranks of “the last of the Philippines.” These killers were the diseases favored by poor hygienic conditions, lack of ventilation, humidity, and a shortage of food in good condition.
Beri-beri was caused by a lack of vitamin B
The first one was the one that filled the most coffins: the beriberi. Caused by the lack of vitamin B, this disease, according to Cerezo “begins its invasion of the lower extremities, which swells and renders useless, covering them with disgusting swellings, preceded by an extraordinary paralysis and a convulsive tremor, it rises and rises like silt over the submerged bodies and when it reaches its development to certain organs, it produces death with terrifying sufferings.
Dysentery wasn’t much better. Favored by the precarious health conditions, this disease leads to inflammation of the intestine and generates fevers and diarrhea in the affected person – in addition to vomiting and abdominal pain. Many were the brave defenders who had to come face to face with her. However, and once it was observed that some soldiers suffered from it, it was ordered to ventilate the church, throw away the food in poor condition, and, finally, make a cesspool to prevent the excrement from piling up so close to the bedrooms. In the absence of a better solution, this series of hygiene measures helped Hispanics avoid contagion, although the infirmary remained full of patients.
A hectic few months
During the following months, the defenders lived their most tense moments. And it is that to the food shortage the continuous firing shots of the enemy were added. The situation ended up worsening when the Filipinos received several artillery pieces with which they hoped to reduce the church of Baler to rubble. However, as a good gentleman that he was, the indigenous colonel first sent a parliamentarian with whom he tried to persuade the Spaniards to leave the place: either they left, or they would be annihilated. Las Morenas’s response was emphatic: “You can start the cannonade whenever you want.” Fortunately, the building had thick walls and the artillery was old, so there was no serious damage. Dysentery wasn’t much better. Favored by the precarious health conditions, this disease leads to inflammation of the intestine and generates fevers and diarrhea in the affected person – in addition to vomiting and abdominal pain. Many were the brave defenders who had to come face to face with her. However, and once it was observed that some soldiers suffered from it, it was ordered to ventilate the church, throw away the food in poor condition, and, finally, make a cesspool to prevent the excrement from piling up so close to the bedrooms. In the absence of a better solution, this series of hygiene measures helped Hispanics avoid contagion, although the infirmary remained full of patients
During the following months, the defenders lived their most tense moments. And it is that to the food shortage the continuous firing shots of the enemy were added. The situation ended up worsening when the Filipinos received several artillery pieces with which they hoped to reduce the church of Baler to rubble. However, as a good gentleman that he was, the indigenous colonel first sent a parliamentarian with whom he tried to persuade the Spaniards to leave the place: either they left, or they would be annihilated. Las Morenas’s response was emphatic: “You can start the cannonade whenever you want.” Fortunately, the building had thick walls and the artillery was old, so there was no serious damage. The same could not be said of diseases, which buried more Spaniards than enemy lead. The beriberi ended up taking the priest first and, on November 22, Captain Las Morenas. They all mourned his death because he was like a father to each soldier present. Without the officer par excellence, Cerezo took command, although he preferred to continue pretending to the Philippine emissaries that his superior was alive so as not to give them joy. And that was an arduous task because tirelessly, the enemies sent dozens of parliamentarians – both Spanish and indigenous – to convince Hispanics of the definitive defeat of the Spanish army in the Philippines. But to the Hunters, and especially to the commanding officer, this was all bullshit. For them, it was impossible for an empire over three centuries to fall in just a few months.
Desperate not to achieve the Spanish surrender, the Filipinos then began their particular psychological war against the besieged. This consisted mainly of throwing stones on the zinc roof of the church at night to keep the Spaniards from sleeping, and they even ordered the Hispanic deserters to shout all kinds of insults at their former companions from the trenches. It was seldom effective, for the Hunters were determined to die in this inhospitable place. After seven months of confinement, the Hunters also had to resist with all their might the offers made by the Filipino officers (who tempted the Spaniards with food and a steamer that would transport them to Spain). And it is that, around Christmas, food began to be scarce and any animal that appeared in the church was ideal to fill the stomach. From crows to lizards, every living creature with some meat fell into the pot and was divided equally among the exhausted Spaniards.
The lack of vitamin B, a deficiency that aggravated beriberi, was also becoming increasingly apparent. Thus, Cerezo made a desperate exit from the building in which he found pumpkin seeds. That booty was a treasure because, after planting them in an orchard near the enclosure, it was possible to stop the fearsome disease that, more and more assiduously, took the military to the other neighborhood. On the other hand, the arrival of “something green” relaxed the regiment’s doctor, who was better able to treat the sick with these foods. The steam of salvation? It took several months for a new attempt to remove the Hunters from the church to become apparent. This happened on April 11, when the defenders had almost given up all hope of leaving the place alive. It was precisely in the middle of the afternoon when, in the distance, several gunshots from a steamship were heard. Immediately, Cerezo interpreted that the reinforcements had finally arrived; an immense army that would land in Baler and put an end to the aspirations of those Filipinos by recovering the colony for the Spanish empire.
The steam of salvation?
It took several months for a new attempt to remove the Hunters from the church to become apparent. This happened on April 11, when the defenders had almost given up all hope of leaving the place alive. It was precisely in the middle of the afternoon when, in the distance, several gunshots from a steamship were heard. Immediately, Cerezo interpreted that the reinforcements had finally arrived; an immense army that would land in Baler and put an end to the aspirations of those Filipinos by recovering the colony for the Spanish empire. The newspaper that saved a detachment
With days turned into weeks, the defenders reached 11 months of resistance. By then, the damp and unsanitary church of Baler had already become their home and very few were thinking of salvation. Starving and so thin that, according to Cerezo, their bones could be counted, the Hunters met with their officers to devise a final plan. As the lieutenant explained, when the few supplies that were left were finally exhausted, they would try to sneak away in the middle of the night to a nearby forest. From there, they would leave for Manila, where they would appear before the Hispanic authorities… if they remained. In total, and according to the guidelines, they should travel more than 200 kilometers. Without a doubt, an impossible mission that would end up killing them, but what else could they do?
A few days before departure, however, an unexpected “gift” drastically changed the situation of the besieged. When they opened, as they did every morning, the doors of the temple, they found a pile of newspapers. At first, Cerezo was suspicious, since previously he had been sent several local newspapers stating that Spain had fled the colony with the rifle between his legs. Gross forgeries, he thought at the time. In this case, on the contrary, the paper that awaited him in front of the church was engraved with the emblem of “El Imparcial”, a Spanish newspaper.
A number of “El Imparcial” convinced Cerezo of the loss of the Philippines
“The same music”, that was the only thing that the Spanish official said at first before checking the columns and noticing news that made the newspaper true and, therefore, his extensive explanation about the loss of the Philippines was absolutely real. I was admiring the work when a small release made me shudder with surprise. It was the simple news that a second Lieutenant D, Francisco Diaz Navarro, was destined for Malaga; that officer had been my companion and close friend in the Bourbon Regiment; And I knew very well that he had resolved to ask the aforementioned population for his fate.This could not be invented .As if it were an epiphany, Cerezo understood that everything they had been telling him those months was absolutely true. Spain had been expelled from the colony, there was no longer any remnant of the empire on those islands and, to top it all, they had been the last defenders of the Philippines.
He immediately gathered the remaining defenders and, after sharing an intense conversation for several hours, they resolved to surrender to the natives, albeit with a series of premises. Among them was that they would be escorted to Spanish territory and none of Baler’s survivors would be harmed. Fortunately, this was the case. What was left of the detachment left what had been their home for 11 months on June 2, 1899, after 337 days of heroic resistance in which the Spanish flag always flew at the top of the bell tower? However, the defense had not come cheap because, of the more than fifty men who had entered the temple almost a year ago, 15 had died of illness, 2 had died from Philippine bullets, 6 had deserted and another 2 had been shot by Cerezo himself after they tried to pass over to the enemy. However, they had achieved a place in history and a title that would resonate throughout Spain to this day: “The Last of the Philippines.”
