CHAPTER XVI

“I CAME FROM MARTYRDOM UNTO THIS PEACE”

It was November 3, 1896, when Rizal, heavily guarded, passed again through the dark gateway of Fort Santiago, whence he had issued four years before to go to Dapitan. Now his enemies had him wholly in their power; he was dragged to earth at last. Yet for a time they were puzzled how to proceed with him. Dull as they were and remote from the highways of European thought, they were not unaware that the eyes of a scornful world were upon them. Therefore they could not, as in the cases of so many “unvalued men,” shoot him at sunrise on a dunghill. Some pretense of legality must be followed; there must be regard to decency.

But of anything civilized men could call evidence against him or of reason for anything such men could call a trial there was no trace nor suggestion. Say that the Katipunan was all that hysteria described it; not a scrap of paper connected Rizal with it. He was not a member; he had expressly disapproved of its aims; he had been an exile in Dapitan while it was being formed. How then? And what then? In all such dilemmas it had been the practice of the Government of the Philippines to resort to those medieval precedents that best befitted the theory upon which its authority was based. Where required testimony was not to be stumbled upon it was usually to be produced with the thumb-screw and the lash; to torture somebody into perjury was the sovereign specific. Upon these promptings the authorities seized Paciano, Rizal’s brother, and exercised upon him their most recondite arts. To his left hand was fitted the terrible screw; at his right were pen and ink and a statement that his brother had part in the Katipunan conspiracy. Then the screw was applied until the victim fainted with the pain. But he would not sign; no, not for all the ingenious torments of their devising. There was iron in the Rizal blood; father and mother had shown it. When the mother had started to trudge around Laguna de Bay, when the father had refused to submit to the tyranny of the friar’s agent, when José had dared to write “Noli Me Tangere,” they had vindicated their tribal inheritance. Paciano was all of the same stern race. Day and night the horror continued; he was trussed up until he fainted again, and then was revived with stimulants for new sufferings, and still he would not sign. Then his mind began to wander; he was plainly unable to sign anything, and the torturers released him. [210]

Meantime José, though undeceived as to his probable fate, fought for his life with the resolute courage of his kin. He knew there was no evidence against him, that before no court with the least respect for justice could he be convicted. But he determined to make that conviction as difficult as possible and as shameful in the eyes of the world. From his prison-house he issued this address:

My countrymen:

On my return from Spain I learned that my name had been in use, among some who were in arms, as a war-cry. The news came as a painful surprise, but, believing the incident to be closed, I kept silence over what seemed to be irremediable. I now notice indications that the disturbances are continuing, and lest any persons, in good faith or bad, should avail themselves of the use of my name, to stop such an abuse and to undeceive the unwary I hasten to address you these lines and make known the truth.

From the very beginning, when I first had notice of what was being planned, I opposed it, fought it, and demonstrated its absolute impossibility. This is the fact, and witnesses to my words are still living. I was convinced that the scheme was utterly absurd, and, what was worse, would bring great suffering.

I did even more. When later, against my advice, the movement materialized, of my own accord I offered not alone my good offices, but my very life, and even my name, to be used in whatever way might seem best, toward stifling the rebellion; for, convinced of the ills which it would bring, I considered myself fortunate if, at any sacrifice, I could prevent such useless misfortunes. This is equally of record. My countrymen, I have given proofs that I am one most anxious for liberties for our country, and I am still desirous of them. But I place as a prior condition the education of the people, that by means of instruction and industry our country may have an individuality of its own and make itself worthy of these liberties. I have recommended in my writings the study of the civic virtues, without which there is no redemption. I have written also (and I repeat my words) that reforms, to be beneficial, must come from above, that those which come from below are irregularly gained and uncertain.

Holding these ideas, I cannot do less than condemn, and I do condemn this uprising—as absurd, savage, and plotted behind my back—which dishonors us Filipinos and discredits those that could plead our cause. I abhor its criminal methods and disclaim all part in it, pitying from the bottom of my heart the unwary that have been deceived into taking part in it.

Return then to your homes, and may God pardon those that have wrought in bad faith! [211]

José Rizal.

Fort Santiago, December 15, 1896.

Still remained for his enemies the necessity of a semblance of charges upon which might be based the semblance of a trial. As a move of obvious desperation they now fell back upon the fantasy that La Liga Filipina was an illegal body and upon the precarious assertion that even if he had no connection with the Katipunan it had been formed as a result of his teachings. Upon these grounds and only these his life was to be sought; the first wholly untrue, the other tenuous and fraught with grave danger to the existence of any system of justice. As for La Liga Filipina, that was as seditious as an average board of trade, and as secret; it had no purposes but economic improvement and Filipino union. But the other charge was a different matter. If it could be held that Rizal’s teachings were such that they instigated an uprising he had always opposed, then any but a paralyzed dumb man could be held responsible for anything that happened anywhere. Suppose, for instance, a British newspaper to criticize severely the British prime minister, and the next day a man attempt the assassination of that minister. Who is to say, if this doctrine be sound, that the newspaper did not instigate the murderous attempt? It is apparent that if such a view were ever deemed valid an end would come to all free discussion or the pretense of a free press; no journal would dare to have an opinion about anything but the weather.

The inhibition would never stop with the press; the most ordinary and the most useful activities of organized society would be put into jeopardy. Suppose, for instance, Rizal had opposed and denounced vivisection, and a weak-minded man anywhere, maddened by the loss of his pet dog, should assault the physician that had cut it to pieces. Who could say that Rizal under this doctrine was not the guilty assailant? Even supposing the man that did the deed never to have read Rizal nor heard of him, Rizal’s influence might have been transmitted through many persons and still be his. It is evident that at once we plunge into limitless possibilities for oppression and wrong. Suppose an American reformer to denounce some official grafter and a fanatic to shoot that grafter. The reformer might be hanged, and the assassin go free.

Of all places in the civilized circuit the Philippine Islands were then the most perilous in which to introduce such a theory. In the Philippines an evil oligarchy maintained itself by terrorizing the population. Before its need and greed, justice was at best farcical. To admit that any man that criticized its methods might be held responsible for the acts of any revolutionist, murderer, or lunatic whatsoever was to place in the hands of the oligarchy the last and worst of weapons. It would need nothing else to render unassailable and unlimited its already despotic power. The courts would be a hangman’s noose.

Yet on such preposterous grounds and none other the terrible travesty of justice was now urged along. It is likely that since the days of Caiaphas has been no such desperate hunting for testimony against innocence. “This man spake blasphemy,” cried the high priests, and, when they could find no confirmation of the charge, twisted to a desired meaning the most casual utterance, the cross being made ready in advance. The proceedings were as illegal as unjust. Supposing the offenses charged to have been committed, they were under the civil law of the Islands. The civil law and the civil courts were brushed aside lest even in the Philippines they might fail of legalized murder, or halt it; and the proceedings were held by court martial.

Before this tribunal, organized to slay, Rizal was brought bound, his elbows drawn back with cords so as almost to touch. Thus he must sit throughout each session, though the notion that he might try to escape or to assault any one was obviously fantastic, for he was heavily guarded and the room was filled with soldiery. To a gratuitous malice all this must be ascribed, the malice of immature or perverted minds. The torments he endured from aching muscles and constricted arteries as thus he sat grew almost intolerable while the long sessions dragged on, but it is not recorded that the victim made complaint. He was not allowed an attorney, but a list of army officers was spread before him from among whom he might select counsel—so called. He found in the list a name that had a friendly sound in his ear. It was de Andrade, and proved to be borne by a brother of the young army officer that had been assigned to watch him and had ended by becoming his warm admirer and charmed companion on so many walks in 1887. But the choice of a counsel was mere formality. Luis de Andrade did all he could to win justice for the prisoner, but before such a court he might as well have used question with a wolf. [212]

There was no taking of testimony in any sense that civilized nations have of that term. A few terrified Filipinos were put upon the stand, and answers were extracted from their lips to carefully prepared questions; but cross-examination was not allowed, and the value of their admissions was nothing. The judge-advocate denounced Rizal as a traitor and an enemy to Spain. Extracts were read from his writings that it was pretended had encouraged the existing revolt. The Christmas holidays intervened while the ghastly processes of slaughter were still incomplete. On December 29 the court found him guilty and sentenced him to be shot within twenty-four hours.

To this and nothing else he had looked forward from the beginning of the hearing. Some nights before the verdict, knowing well what it would be, he had written in his cell by the light of his little alcohol lamp his farewell to his country, his family, and his friends. It is that poem now become the national classic of the Philippines, the beautiful and tender elegy that he called “My Last Farewell.” On the last night he folded the manuscript and hid it in the bowl of the lamp.

Of this marvelous production, almost unequaled in literature for its pathetic sincerity and noble feeling, there exist in English two versions. [213] That which seems the more adequately to express the thought of the original we offer here, and his must be a strangely indurated heart that can read it without emotion:

Land I adore, farewell! thou land of the southern sun’s choosing. Pearl of the Orient seas! our forfeited Garden of Eden, Joyous, I yield up for thee my sad life, and were it far brighter, Young, or rose-strewn, for thee and thy happiness still would I give it. Far afield, in the din and rush of maddening battle, Others have laid down their lives, nor wavered, nor paused, in the giving. What matters way or place—the cypress, the lily, the laurel, Gibbet or open field, the sword or inglorious torture— When ’tis the hearth and the country that call for the life’s immolation?

Dawn’s faint lights bar the east; she smiles through the cowl of the darkness, Just as I die.... Vision I followed from afar, desire that spurred on and consumed me! Greeting! my parting soul cries, and greeting again! O my country! Beautiful is it to fall, that the vision may rise to fulfilment Giving my life for thy life, and breathing thine air in the death-throe; Sweet to eternally sleep in thy lap, O land of enchantment!

If in the deep rich grass that covers my rest in thy bosom, Some day thou seest upspring a lowly tremulous blossom, Lay there thy lips—’tis my soul!...

And if at eventide a soul for my tranquil sleep prayeth, Pray thou, O my fatherland! for my peaceful reposing; Pray for those who go down to death through unspeakable torments; Pray for those who remain to suffer torture in prison; Pray for the bitter grief of our mothers, our wives, our orphans; Oh, pray, too, for thyself, on the way to thy final redemption!

When our still dwelling-place wraps night’s dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death’s mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the voice that is singing.

When my tomb, that all have forgot, no cross nor stone marketh, There let the laborer guide his plow, there cleave the earth open. So shall my ashes at last be one with thy hills and thy valleys. Little ’t will matter, then, my country, that thou shouldst forget me! I shall be air in thy streets, and I shall be space in thy meadows; I shall be vibrant speech in thine ears, shall be fragrance and color, Light and shout, and loved song, for ever repeating my message.

Idolized fatherland, thou crown and deep of my sorrows, Lovely Philippine Isles, once again adieu! I am leaving All with thee—my friends, my love. Where I go are no tyrants; There one dies not for the cause of his faith; there God is the ruler.

Farewell, father and mother and brother, dear friends of the fireside! Thankful ye should be for me that I rest at the end of the long day. Farewell, sweet, from the stranger’s land—my joy and my comrade! Farewell, dear ones, farewell! To die is to rest from our labors!

Before his murderers, before the jeers and savage exultations of the well dressed mob clamoring for his death, throughout the hearing, at the moment of the unjust verdict, he had maintained the same attitude of perfect serenity described as wonderful by all that observed it. Other condemned men have simulated this self-possession; this man had it in truth and not in seeming. Calmly he heard his condemnation, calmly he reëntered the prison where for his last night on earth quarters had been made for him in the chapel. A newspaper reporter came to interview him. He was like a prosperous and well bred host entertaining a cultured friend; [214] no eyes, however searching, could discover a joint in that perfect armor of the soul sustained and possessed, without a tremor and without a gloomy thought. To the reporter and to others that had watched him this bearing seemed not bravado but something mystical and inexplicable, but it seemed so only because the source of it was beyond their understanding. He was calm because he had long before in effect given his life to this cause and the shooting of the next day would be only the last incident in a sacrifice already made. Of this there is every indication. What men call the joy of living had since his youth meant to him the joy of serving Filipinas. He seems to have had since the day of his exile to Dapitan a feeling that in other ways his service [215] was at an end, but there remained the service of his death. All the hard tests of life had left him unshaken and uncorrupted, a man truly without fear and without reproach. With the same faultless and unpretentious courage he walked forward to meet the end.

As was to have been expected in the conditions attending his fate, the power that had dragged him down with so much of trickery and deceit attempted to soil with other deceit the name he should leave to his countrymen. To the newspaper reporter he said that “Noli Me Tangere” had been much misunderstood because the authorities had selected from it only passages that seemed to indicate sacrilegious or seditious purpose, whereas when read in their proper places with the context they had no such appearance. This statement was so distorted as to appear as an expression of regret that he had written the book. When he said that the Republicans in Spain had mistaken their strength and their opportunities, this was distorted into a petulant charge that the Spanish Republicans had been the cause of all his troubles. When he spoke with characteristic modesty of his own work as feeble and of small avail, the remark was twisted into a dubiety of his basic faith.

Attempts were made to wrest from him something that could be called a retraction of his political opinions; even the last solemn offices of the church were utilized toward an end so base. All his life he had remained a true Catholic, [216] despite his sharp condemnation of the friars. He now desired to partake of the holy sacrament, and priests were sent to him. What took place when they gathered around him was so perverted that no man may feel sure he has the truth of the story. According to one account the priests refused him the sacrament until they should satisfy themselves of his orthodoxy, and a long examination followed. They demanded a signed statement affirming his belief in revealed religion. He readily consented to give it; he could have given it truthfully at any time. Of this affirmation two irreconcilable versions were subsequently reported, a fact that dealing with a thing so simple must serve to discredit both. As to one, no other evidence is needed than its style and content to show that Rizal never wrote it. As to the other reputed statement, opinions differ; reasonably, one might say, since there is extant no original copy, and no one now pretends to have seen such a copy. The style in the second statement is Rizal’s or an imitation of his; the expressions in it are in line with his general convictions; [217] and if throughout this phase of the story we met with less of manifest treachery and lying the probable authenticity of some such declaration might well be admitted.

On the basis of evidence so untrustworthy the tale was fabricated that he had retracted his political views. It was brazen impudence that put out this fable and simple credulity that believed it. Much that happened in the last scenes of his tragedy is and always will be uncertain, but the one thing about which is no doubt is that he went to his death unshaken in his loyalty to the great causes to which he had dedicated his life and labors, to the rights, emancipation, and progress of his country.

If from the tangled accounts now available to us we wish to build a surmise, it is likely that Rizal affirmed his religious faith, renounced masonry, [218] was reconciled to the church, received the sacrament, and then had [219] performed the ecclesiastical marriage rites between him and his wife that he had so desired in vain at Dapitan. Even as to this there is no record, but the correlative facts are strong. To his mother and sisters he now said the last farewell; said it with the calm and gentle resignation that from the first had marked his conduct. Even in that crux of his sufferings his command upon himself and all his faculties seems never to have wavered. He knew well that all his effects would be searched and any papers he might leave would be seized and destroyed; yet he desired to give to his countrymen the song of parting he had written for them. At the interview with his mother and sisters they were kept separated from him by a space of some feet under the pretended fear that poison might be passed to him and so might he cheat revenge of blood-drops for which it thirsted. To transmit the poem, therefore, was difficult, but the resourceful mind of Rizal did not fail him now. The little alcohol lamp by which he had written his song and read and studied in his cell had been the gift of a friend in Europe. In the Islands it was something of a curiosity. This he managed to bequeath to his sister Trinidad and when he told her about it he added quickly in English, “There is something inside.” [220]

Even in these last hours efforts were made by his friends to rescue him from the jaws that had opened to rend him. Relatives and friends besieged the governor-general; he would not even admit them to his presence. In Spain fervent appeals were made to the National Government. All scientific and sympathetic Europe was horror-stricken at the impending murder of one of the most learned men of the age. There is a story that the Spanish prime minister wished to yield to these demands. It was the queen regent that he found implacable. Something in one of Rizal’s books had mortally offended her. She, too, was determined to have his blood.

All the hours of that night Rizal spent in prayer, in reading, and in cheerful conversation with his guards and the priests. He did not sleep and had no need of sleep. But his wakefulness was not of his nerves. None of the watchers could detect a troubled look in his eyes or a quaver in the smooth, even tones of his voice. [221] Other men so counting out the last moments of their lives have been mercifully supplied with drugs and drink. The stimulus that sustained Rizal must have been from within. So have testified the witnesses.

It was a beautiful morning, men still remember, calm, cool, and bright, “the bridal of the earth and sky,” typical of the sweet December weather in the Philippines; the air so clear the mountains on both sides stood out marvelously brown and rugged; so clear one could even make out far Corregidor on guard at the entrance of the bay.

As day broke the crowds began to gather in the Luneta. Spaniards of the ruling caste predominated, come to see the death of their enemy and gloat over him; but also there were Filipinos with drawn brows and quivering lips, disquieting to look upon. [222] In many Filipino houses that last night there had been no sleep. Men and women prayed all night for the man about to be slaughtered for their sake.

At seven o’clock the troopers came and tightly bound his arms behind his back. He wore a neat black suit with a sack-coat and a black hat.

Outside, the trumpets sounded and the drums beat. The troopers placed him in the center of a strong guard. Then they led him forth from the prison door.

With the drum always beating at the head of the band, thus he was marched almost a mile through scenes that had been familiar to him in his boyhood. Thirty-seven years and twenty-eight days before, another martyr had gone forth to his death with the same clear-souled, untroubled calm. “This is a beautiful country,” said John Brown, Osawatomie Brown, as with the sheriff he drove to the execution-place; “I never noticed it before.” With the same sense of drawing in for the last time the breath of God’s bounty to men, Rizal looked about him and spoke of the loveliness of the scene. “I used to walk here with my sweetheart,” said he, thinking of Leonora. Above the roofs he saw the Ateneo, where he had spent so many happy days. Since his time the buildings had been altered. “When were those two towers added?” he asked and observed the effect with a critical eye. All the way he went with head erect, unflushed cheek, unruffled mien, as one that goes forth to meet fair weather in the morning.

By his side marched the Jesuit priests, his comforters and supporters, for he always remembered tenderly his days at the Ateneo.

“We are going to Calvary,” he said to them. “My sufferings are little. The Savior suffered much. He was nailed to the cross. In an instant the bullets will end all my pain.” [223]

A crowd lined the street, for the most part silent, but among the Spaniards were some exclamations of joy. One foreigner, a Scotchman, watching the scene, was moved to cry aloud a brief good-by. A little company of Rizal’s former students at Dapitan stood together and wept.

He looked out upon the bay and the ships.

“How beautiful is the morning, Father! How clear is the view of Corregidor and the Cavite Mountains! I walked here with my sweetheart, Leonora, on mornings like this.”

“The morning to be is still more beautiful, my son,” answered the priest.

“Why is that, Father?” asked Rizal, not quite understanding his confessor’s words.

The officer in charge of the squad stepped between them, and the father’s reply was not heard.

Thus they moved to the place of execution, the dreadful Bagumbayan Field, the spot where so many others had been slain for defying tyranny, where Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora had given up their lives. To their memory he had dedicated his protest against the beast that had torn them. Now in his own turn he was come to be torn.

A great troop of soldiers had formed a square to hold the people back. Artillery was drawn up as if a rescue were feared, and at one side—strange and incongruous spectacle!—a band to sound the national anthem of triumph over this one man. To the governing class the occasion was all holiday. Hundreds of that class stood there, men and women, and uttered cries of animal pleasure when they saw their enemy come bound and helpless to be killed before their eyes.

Neither they nor the engines of death they had evoked seemed to pierce the serenity that wrapped him around. As they reached the field, he stopped before the captain in command and said quietly:

“Will you shoot me in the front, please?”

“It cannot be,” said the captain. “I have orders to shoot you in the back.”

“But I was never traitor to my own country nor to Spain.”

“My duty is to comply with the orders I have received.”

“Very well, then; shoot me as you please.” [224]

He asked that the soldiers be instructed to aim not at his head but his heart, and that he should not be compelled to kneel but might receive his death standing. These requests the captain granted.

Into the square he marched, between two batteries of artillery, a company of cavalry in front, another behind. With him still went the priests, Fathers Estanislao March and José Villaclara, and behind them the man that had been his counsel in the mock trial, Luis de Andrade. Rizal stepped to the place where he was to die and looked out over the blue sea, bright in the sunlight. And then for the first time the iron composure seemed shaken. It may have been some thought of his lost youth, or the terror of the scene that reached out at him like something coldly palpable. A shiver seemed to go over him; the mortal man that he had so long suppressed in him reasserted itself; and one great sigh seemed to burst from his heart.

“O Father, how terrible it is to die! How one suffers! Father, I forgive every one from the bottom of my heart; I have no resentment against any one: believe me, your reverence!”

The next instant the spasm had passed. The will with which he had ruled himself so long came back to its accustomed empire. He was himself again and stood erect, with no twitching of his lips and no fear in his eyes.

The executioners marched upon the field.

Rizal shook hands firmly with the priests and with his counsel. Father March held to him the cross for him to kiss.

He now turned his face to the east and stood with his back to the firing-squad. Eight native soldiers had been told off to slay their fellow-countryman. Behind them were eight Spanish soldiers with leveled rifles. They were to shoot the executioners if these failed to obey orders.

Rizal stood with his eyes open and turned toward the sky. In his face, it is said, was neither ecstasy nor fear, but only the calm of a perfect resignation. Often he had said: “What is death to me? I have sown the seed; others are left to reap.” [225] The testing of that word had come. It found him ready and undismayed.

At that instant a military doctor, amazed by such a show of fortitude, ran out from the line of officers.

“Colleague,” he cried, “may I feel your pulse?”

Rizal said nothing but thrust his right hand as far as he could from the bands that held it.

The pulse was hardly a beat above normal.

“You are well, colleague,” said the doctor, “very well!” and stepped back to his place.

Rizal made no response and resumed his former attitude. He now twisted his right hand and indicated the spot in his back at which the soldiers should aim.

The captain gave the signal. The eight soldiers fired together.

The body of Rizal was seen to waver and fall. With a last effort of his indomitable will, even in falling he turned so that he should lie with face upward. [226]

In the thirty-sixth year of his age and the twenty-fourth year of his service—poet, patriot, and martyr.

Cheers and laughter arose from the crowd as his blood was seen to be pouring upon the field. Women waved their handkerchiefs and clapped their hands; men shouted with delight. This was the end of him that had unveiled to the world the realities of their social order; that had ridiculed all their structure of rank and caste. He had died like a dog before them.

The band played the national anthem. “Viva España!” shouted the crowd. A photographer made pictures of the scene. It was a great day for Spain. Her supremacy in the Philippines was approved and established for ever. For whomsoever thereafter might venture to question its righteousness, the same fate. Let him also die like a dog to the applause and laughter of the existing order, rock-rooted and eternal.

“Viva España!” How poor are they that will not ponder history! From the hanging of John Brown to the Emancipation Proclamation was three years and twenty-nine days. From the murder of José Rizal to the surrender of Manila was one year, eight months, and seventeen days.

The body was cast into an undesignated grave, and great care was taken to obliterate all marks by which it might be identified; for this hated enemy there should be nothing but loathing and contumely, alive or dead. The perpetrators of this last outrage believed they had managed with skill and success. Little they knew the people with whom they dealt. Into the unmarked grave were covertly introduced objects that would allow of a future identification, [227] and the dust that malice and bigotry sought to dishonor was destined to a final burial with the proud mourning of a nation and the respectful sympathy of the world.

Not even yet was satiated the hot thirst for blood that seemed to rage in this abnormal community. The jails had been stuffed with other members of the Liga Filipina, men that like Rizal had committed the crime of desiring their country’s good. On January 11, 1897, two weeks after the sacrifice of Rizal, fourteen of his companions were led forth to Bagumbayan Field and shot, as he had been shot. Two of these were priests of the church; among the laymen were members of ancient Filipino families, and men of conspicuously blameless walk and notable attainments. Father Inocencio Herrera and Father Prieto Gerónimo led the procession of the condemned whose names were now to be added to the long roll of those that had made that one field a shrine of liberty hardly to be equaled in men’s acquaintance. Others whose blood was shed with theirs that day on that sacred spot were Domingo Franco, Moisés Salvador, Numeriano Adriano, Antonio Salazar, José Dizon, Luis Enciso Villareal, Faustino Villareal, Ramón A. Padilla, Manuel Avella, Roman Basa, Cristobal Medina, and Francisco Roxas. It was a flag dripping with blood that Spain raised to the world that morning.

Of these some had endured such torturings that death must have come as a relief. Neither age nor worth to be spared, was the ancestral precept for all such butcheries. Moisés Salvador was more than seventy years old. He had been tortured until he could no longer stand and must be carried out and laid prone on the ground when his time came to be shot. Francisco Roxas the thumb-screw, or whatever other deviltries, had made insane. He knew nothing of what was going on about him but imagined himself to be in church. When he knelt before the firing-squad he spread his handkerchief upon the ground as he would upon the church floor and began to say his ordinary prayers. [228]

“Viva España!” There never was a grimmer irony of fate. Even as the crowds raised that cry above the blood of Rizal, in all the Far East there was no more Spain. The band that played triumphant the national anthem was in reality sounding a funeral dirge. The shots that struck down Rizal to the cheers of “broadcloth ruffians” shattered the Spanish empire. Until that December 30, 1896, there remained just basis for the ancient boast about the flag whereon the sun never set; as Rizal tottered and fell it passed among the curios of history. On the day the murderous court martial pronounced Rizal’s death the Filipinos began to slip from the city and join the forces of Bonifacio. Among them that evening went Paciano, men said with pinched lips and clenched jaws, to fight with conspicuous valor while the Spanish flag flew in his country. [229] Silently they went and by thousands. The insurgent lines swept up as close as Cavite, so strong had the uprising grown. There, in the face of all the vigilance, all the spying, all the rules and regulations, they stood in their trenches with arms in their hands. Guns came from the thickets, the roofs, the carabao stalls. Soldiers that enlisted without rifles fought with bolos until in the first encounter they could wrest guns from the Spaniards. From the waterfront of Manila one could see their flag flying. Inadequately armed, badly fed, ragged and untrained, they went into battle and overwhelmed the Spanish regulars, because they had been fired with a vision of freedom and a holy wrath against the System that had struck down their champion. Back went the Spanish regulars to the gates of Manila, as one hundred years before the household troops of every king in Europe had bent before the citizen soldiery of France, fighting for the republic.

In a short time there was left no last doubt of the seriousness of the revolt; with reason this time the Spanish colony cowered. The thirty-fourth since the beginning of Spanish dominion in the Philippines, it threatened at last to sweep that vicious anomaly into the sea. A man had arisen capable of verifying the most sanguine of Bonifacio’s prophecies, a college-bred farmer, without military training but with a strange gift of military prescience, able with an equipment of native genius to outwit, outmanœuver, and outlast the best of the Spanish commanders. Against the skill and restless energy of Emilio Aguinaldo they seemed to make no permanent progress, and one reading the records of those days is irresistibly reminded of Francis Marion and the Carolinas. If the regulars drove him hence to-day, he would attack them there to-morrow. A union of Filipino hearts such as Rizal, living, had hardly dared to dream of had been cemented by his death. For the first time the possibility of ridding all the Islands of all Spanish power laid hold upon determined and reasoning men, and there began a life and death struggle between light and darkness, the nineteenth century and the sixteenth.

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