In the month of May, 1901, the prisons were overflowing with captured insurgents, and the military authorities found an ostensible reason for liberating a number of them. A General Order was issued that to “signalize the recent surrender of General Manuel Tinio1 and other prominent leaders,” one thousand prisoners of war would be released on taking the oath of allegiance. The flame of organized insurrection was almost extinguished, but there still remained some dangerous embers. Bands of armed natives wandered through the provinces under the name of insurgents, and on July 31, 1901, one of Aguinaldo's subordinate generals, named Miguel Malvar, a native of Santo TomÁs (Batangas) issued a manifesto from the “Slopes of the Maquiling” (Laguna Province), announcing that he had assumed the position of Supreme Chief. Before the war he had little to lose, but fishing in troubled waters and gulling the people with anting-anting and the “signs in the clouds” proved to be a profitable occupation to many. An expedition was sent against him, and he was utterly routed in an engagement which took place near his native town. After Miguel Malvar surrendered (April 16, 1902) and Vicente Lucban was captured in SÁmar (April 27, 1902), the war (officially termed “insurrection”) actually terminated, and was formally declared ended on the publication of President Roosevelt's Peace Proclamation and Amnesty grant, dated July 4, 1902. A sedition law was passed under which every disturber of the public peace would be thenceforth arraigned, and all acts of violence, pillage, etc., would come under the common laws affecting those crimes. In short, insurgency ceased to be a valid plea; if it existed in fact, officially it had become a dead letter. Those who still lingered in the penumbra between belligerence and brigandage were thenceforth treated as common outlaws whose acts bore no political significance whatever. The notorious “General” San Miguel, for a long time the terror of Rizal Province, was given no quarter, but shot on the field at Corral-na-batÓ in March, 1903. One of the famous bandits, claiming to be an insurgent, was Faustino Guillermo, who made laws, levied tribute, issued army commissions, divided the country up into military departments, and defied the Government until his stratagem to induce the constabulary to desert brought about his own capture in the Bosoboso Mountain (MÓrong) in June, 1903. A mass of papers seized revealed his pretension to be a patriotic saviour of his people, but it is difficult indeed to follow the reasoning of a man who starts on that line by sacking his own countrymen's villages. Another interesting individual was Artemio Ricarte, formerly a primary schoolmaster. In 1899 he led a column under Aguinaldo, and was subsequently his general specially commissioned to raise revolt inside the capital; but the attempt failed, and many arrests followed. During the war he was captured by the Americans, to whom he refused to take the oath of allegiance and was deported to Guam. In Washington it was decided to release the political prisoners on that island, and Ricarte and Mabini were brought back to Manila. As Ricarte still refused to take the oath, he was banished, and went to Hong-Kong in February, 1903. In the following December he returned to Manila disguised as a seaman, and stole ashore in the crowd of stevedore labourers. Assuming the ludicrous title of the “Viper,” he established what he called the “triumvirate” government in the provinces, and declared war on the Americans. His operations in this direction were mostly limited to sending crackbrained letters to the Civil Governor in Manila from his “camp in the sky,” but his perturbation of the rural districts had to be suppressed. At length, after a long search, he was taken prisoner at the cockpit in MarivÉles in May, 1904. He and his confederates were brought to trial on the two counts of carrying arms without licence and sedition, the revelations of the “triumvirate,” which were comical in the extreme, affording much amusement to the reading public. The judgement of the court on Ricarte was six years' imprisonment and a fine of $6,000.

Apolinario Mabini, Ricarte's companion in exile, was one of the most conspicuous figures in the War of Independence. Of poor parentage, he was born at TanaÚan (Batangas) in May, 1864, and having finished his studies in Manila he took up the law as a profession, living in obscurity until the Rebellion, during which he became the recognized leader of the Irreconcilables and Prime Minister in the Malolos Government. In the political sphere he was the soul of the insurgent movement, the ruling power behind the presidency of Aguinaldo. It was he who drafted the Constitution of the Philippine Republic, dated January 21, 1899 (vide p. 486). Taken prisoner by the Americans in December, 1899, he was imprisoned on his refusal to subscribe to the oath of allegiance. On August 1, 1900, he was granted leave to appear before the Philippine Commission, presided over by Mr. W. H. Taft. He desired to show that, according to his lights, he was not stubbornly holding out against reason. As Mabini was not permitted to discuss abstract matters, and Mr. Taft reiterated the intention to establish American sovereignty in the Islands, their views were at variance, and Mabini was deported to Guam, but allowed the privilege of taking his son there as his companion in exile. On his return to Manila in February, 1903, he reluctantly took the required oath and was permitted to remain in the capital. Suffering from paralysis for years previous, his mental energy, as a chronic invalid, was amazing. Three months after his return to the metropolis he was seized with cholera, to which he succumbed on May 13, 1903, at the early age of thirty-nine, to the great regret of his countrymen and of his many European admirers.

The Irreconcilables, even at the present day, persist in qualifying as legitimate warfare that condition of provincial perturbation which the Americans and the Federal Party hold to be outlawry and brigandage. Hence the most desperate leaders and their bands of cut-throats are, in the Irreconcilables' phraseology, merely insurgents still protesting against American dominion. As late as February, 1902, an attempt was made to revive the war in Leyte Island. At that date a certain Florentino PeÑaranda, styling himself the Insurrectionary Political-Military Chief, issued a proclamation in his island addressed “in particular to those who are serving under the Americans.” This document, the preamble of which is indited in lofty language, carrying the reader mentally all round North and South America, Abyssinia and Europe, terminates with a concession of pardon to all who repent their delinquency in serving the Americans, and an invitation to Filipinos and foreigners to join his standard. It had little immediate effect, but it may have given an impulse to the brigandage which was subsequently carried on so ferociously under a notorious, wary ruffian named Tumayo. Thousands, too long accustomed to a lawless, emotional existence to settle down to prosaic civil life, went to swell the ranks of brigands, but it would exceed the limits of this work to refer to the over 15,000 expeditions made to suppress them. Brigandage (vide p. 235) has been rife in the Islands for a century and a half, and will probably continue to exist until a network of railways in each large island makes it almost impossible. But brigandage in Spanish times was very mild compared with what it is now. Such a thing as a common highwayman was almost unknown. The brigands of that period—the TulisÁnes of the north and the PulajÁnes of the south—went in parties who took days to concoct a plan for attacking a country residence, or a homestead, for robbery and murder. The assault was almost invariably made at night, and the marauders lived in the mountains, avoiding the highroads and the well-known tracks. The traveller might then go about the Islands for years without ever seeing a brigand; now that they have increased so enormously since the war, there is not business enough for them in the old way, and they infest the highways and villages. One effect of the revolution has been to diminish greatly the awe with which the native regarded the European before they had crossed swords in regular warfare. Again, since 1898, the fact that here and there a white man made common cause with outlaws has had a detrimental effect on the white man's prestige, and the new caste of bandits which has come into existence is far more audacious than its predecessor. Formerly the outlaws had only bowie-knives and a few fowling-pieces; now they have an ample supply of rifles. Hence, since the American advent, the single traveller and his servant journey at great risk in the so-called civilized provinces, especially if the traveller has Anglo-Saxon features. Parties of three or four, well armed, are fairly safe. Fierce fights with outlaws are of common occurrence; a full record of brigand depredations would fill a volume, and one can only here refer to a few remarkable cases.

Early in 1904 a Spanish planter of many years' standing, named Amechazurra, and his brother-in-law, Joaquin Guaso, were kidnapped and held for ransom. When the sum was carried to the brigands' haunt, Guaso was found with his wrists broken and severely tortured with bowie-knife cuts and lance-thrusts. Having no power to use his hands, his black beard was full of white maggots. In this state he was delivered to his rescuers and died the next day. Since the close of the war up to the present day the provinces of Batangas and Cavite, less than a day's journey from the capital, have not ceased to be in a deplorable condition of lawlessness. The principal leaders, MontalÓn and Felizardo,2 were formerly officers under the command of the insurgent General Manuel Trias, who surrendered to the Americans and afterwards accepted office as Civil Governor of the Province of Cavite. In this capacity he made many unsuccessful attempts to capture his former colleagues, but owing to his failure to restore tranquillity to the province he resigned his governorship in 1903. The MontalÓn and Felizardo bands, well armed, constantly overran the two adjoining provinces to murder the people, pillage their homes, and set fire to the villages. They bore an inveterate hatred towards all who accepted American dominion, and specially detested their former chief Trias, who, since his return from the St. Louis Exhibition, has shown a very pro-American tendency. The history of their crimes covers a period of five years. Felizardo was remarkable for his audacity, his fine horsemanship, and his expert marksmanship. During an attack on ParaÑaque, mounted on a beautiful pony stolen from the race-track of Pasay, he rode swiftly past a constabulary sentinel, who shot at him and missed him, whilst Felizardo, from his seat in the saddle, shot the sentinel dead. The evening before the day Governor Taft intended to sail for the United States, on his retirement from the governorship, MontalÓn hanged two constabulary men at a place within sight of Manila. In December, 1904, all this district was so infested with cut-throats that Manuel Trias, although no longer an official, offered to organize and lead a party of 300 volunteers against them. On January 24, 1905, the same bandits, Felizardo and MontalÓn, at the head of about 300 of their class, including two American negroes, raided Trias's native town of San Francisco de MalabÓn, murdered an American surgeon and one constabulary private, and seriously wounded three more. They looted the municipal treasury of 2,000 pesos and 25 carbines, and carried off Trias's wife and two children, presumably to hold them for ransom. The chief object of the attack was to murder Trias, their arch-enemy, but he was away from home at the time. On his return he set out in pursuit of the band at the head of the native constabulary. The outlaws had about 160 small firearms, and during the chase several fierce fights took place. Being hunted from place to place incessantly, they eventually released Trias's wife and children so as to facilitate their own escape. Constabulary was insufficient to cope with the marauders, and regular troops had to be sent to these provinces. In February, 1905, a posse of 25 Moro fighting-men was brought up from Siassi (TÁpul group) to hunt down the brigands. Launches patrolled the Bay of Manila with constabulary on board to intercept the passage of brigands from one province to another, for lawlessness was, more or less, constantly rife in several of the Luzon provinces and half a dozen other islands for years after the end of the war. From 1902 onwards, half the provinces of Albay, Bulacan, BataÁn, Cavite, Ilocos Sur, and the islands of CamaguÍn, SÁmar, Leyte, Negros, CebÚ, etc., have been infested, at different times, with brigands, or latter-day insurgents, as the different parties choose to call them. The regular troops, the constabulary, and other armed forces combined were unable to exterminate brigandage. The system of “concentration” circuits, which had given such adverse results during the Rebellion (vide p. 392), was revived in the provinces of Batangas and Cavite, obliging the waverers between submission and recalcitration to accept a defined legal or illegal status. Consequently many of the common people went to swell the roving bands of outlaws, whilst those who had a greater love for home, or property at stake, remained within the prescribed limits, in discontented, sullen compliance with the inevitable. The system interrupted the people's usual occupations, retarded agriculture, and produced general dissatisfaction. The Insular Government then had recourse to an extreme measure which practically implied the imposition of compulsory military service on every male American, foreign, or native inhabitant between the ages of eighteen to fifty years, with the exception of certain professions specified in the Philippine Commission Act No. 1309, dated March 22, 1905. Under this law the native mayor of a town can compel any able-bodied American (not exempted under the Act) to give five days a month service in hunting down brigands, under a maximum penalty of ?100 fine and three months' imprisonment. And, subject to the same penalty for refusal, any proprietor or tenant (white, coloured, or native) residing in any municipality, or ward, must report, within 24 hours, to the municipal authority, the name, residence, and description of any person (not being a resident) to whom he gave assistance or lodging. In no colony where the value of the white man's prestige is appreciated would such a law have been promulgated.

The proceedings of the constabulary in the disturbed provinces having been publicly impugned in a long series of articles and reports published in the Manila newspaper El Renacimiento, the editors of that public organ were brought to trial on a charge of libel in July, 1905. The substance of the published allegations was that peaceable citizens were molested in their homes and were coerced into performing constabulary and military duties by becoming unwilling brigand-hunters. Among other witnesses who appeared at the trial was Emilio Aguinaldo, who testified that he had been forced to leave his home and present himself to a constabulary officer, who, he affirmed, bullied and insulted him because he refused to leave his daily occupations and risk his life in brigand-hunting. In view of the peculiar position of Aguinaldo as a fallen foe, perhaps it would have been better not to have disturbed him in his peaceful life as a law-abiding citizen, lest the world should misconstrue the intention.

Confined to PangasinÁn and La Union provinces, there is an organization known as the “Guards of Honour.” Its recruits are very numerous, their chief vocation being cattle-stealing and filching other people's goods without unnecessary violence. It is feared they may extend their operations to other branches of perversity. The society is said to be a continuation of the Guardia de Honor created by the Spaniards and stimulated by the friars in PangasinÁn as a check on the rebels during the events of 1896–98. At the American advent they continued to operate independently against the insurgents, whom they harassed very considerably during the flight northwards from TÁrlac. It was to escape the vengeance of this party that Aguinaldo's Secretary of State (according to his verbal statement to me) allowed himself to fall prisoner to the Americans.

The Pulajanes of SÁmar seem to be as much in possession of that Island as the Americans themselves, and its history, from the revolution up to date, is a lugubrious repetition of bloodshed, pillage, and incendiarism. The deeds of the notorious Vicente Lucban were condoned under the Amnesty of 1902, but the marauding organization is maintained and revived by brigands of the first water. Every move of the government troops is known to the pulajanes. The spy, stationed at a pass, after shouting the news of the enemy's approach to the next spy, darts into the jungle, and so on all along the line, in most orderly fashion, until the main column is advised. In July, 1904, they slaughtered half the inhabitants of the little coast village of Taviran, mutilated their corpses, and then set out for the town of Santa Elena, which was burnt to the ground. In December of that year over a thousand pulajanes besieged the town of Taft (formerly Tubig), held by a detachment of native scouts, whilst another party, hidden in the mountains, fell like an avalanche upon a squad of 43 scouts, led by an American lieutenant, on their way to the town of Dolores, and in ten minutes killed the officer and 37 of his men. After this mournful victory the brigands went to reinforce their comrades at Taft, swelling their forces en route, so that the besiegers of Taft amounted to a total of about 2,000 men. About the same time some 400 pulajanes were met by a few hundred so-called native volunteers, who, instead of fighting, joined forces and attacked a scout detachment whilst crossing a river. Twenty of the scouts were cut to pieces and mutilated, whilst thirteen more died of their wounds.

Communication in the Island is extremely difficult; the maintenance of telegraph-lines is impossible through a hostile country, and messages sent by natives are often intercepted, or, as sometimes happens, the messengers, to save their lives, naturally make common cause with the bandits whom they meet on the way. The hemp-growers and coast-trading population, who have no sympathy with the brigands, are indeed obliged, for their own security, to give them passive support. Hundreds in the coast villages who are too poor to give, have to flee into hiding and live like animals in dread of constabulary and pulajanes alike. Between “insurgency” and “brigandage,” in this Island, there was never a very wide difference, and when General Allen, the Chief of the Constabulary, took the field in person in December, 1904, he had reason to believe that the notorious ex-insurgent Colonel Guevara was the moving spirit in the lawlessness. Guevara, who had been disappointed at not securing the civil governorship of the Island, was suddenly seized and confined at Catbalogan jail to await his trial. The SÁmar pulajanes are organized like regular troops, with their generals and officers, but they are deluded by a sort of mystic religious teaching under the guidance of a native pope. In January, 1905, the town of Balangiga (vide p. 536), so sadly famous in the history of SÁmar on account of the massacre of American troops during the war, became a pulajÁn recruiting station. A raid upon the place resulted in the capture of twenty chiefs, gorgeously uniformed, with gaudy anting-anting amulets on their breasts to protect them from American bullets. At this time the regimental Camp Connell, at CalbÁyoc, was so depleted of troops that less than a hundred men were left to defend it. Situated on a pretty site, the camp consists of two lines of wooden buildings running along the shore for about a mile. At one extremity is the hospital and at the other the quartermaster's dÉpÔt. It has no defences whatever, and as I rode along the central avenue of beautiful palms, after meeting the ladies at a ball, I pictured to myself the chapter of horror which a determined attack might one day add to the doleful annals of dark SÁmar.

Matters became so serious that in March, 1905, the divisional commander, General Corbin, joined General Allen in the operations in this Island. Full of tragedy is the record of this region, and amongst its numerous heroes was a Captain Hendryx. In 1902, whilst out with a detachment of constabulary, he was attacked, defeated, and reported killed. He was seen to drop and roll into a gully. But four days later there wandered back to the camp a man half dead with hunger and covered with festering wounds, some so infected that, but for the application of tobacco, gangrene would have set in. It was Captain Hendryx. Delirious for a while, he finally recovered and resumed his duties. A couple of years afterwards he was shipwrecked going round the coast on the Masbate. For days he and the ship-master alone battled with the stormy waves, a howling wind ahead, and a murderous rabble on the coast waiting for their blood. On the verge of death they reached a desolate spot whence the poor captain saved his body from destruction, but with prostrate nerves, rendering him quite unfit for further service. And the carnage in the SÁmar jungles, which has caused many a sorrow in the homeland, continues to the present day with unabated ferocity. By nature a lovely island, picturesque in the extreme, there is a gloom in its loveliness. The friendly native has fled for his life; the patches of lowland once planted with sweet potatoes or rows of hemp-trees, are merging into jungle for want of the tiller's hand. The voice of an unseen man gives one a shudder, lest it be that of a fanatic lurking in the cogon grass to seek his fellow's blood. Near the coast, half-burnt bamboos show where villages once stood; bleached human bones mark the sites of human conflict, whilst decay and mournful silence impress one with the desolation of this fertile land. The narrow navigable channel separating SÁmar from Leyte Island is one of the most delightful bits of tropical scenery.

The Constabulary Service Reports for 1903 and 1904 show that in the former period there were 357 engagements between brigand bands and the constabulary (exclusive of the army operations), and in the latter period 235 similar engagements. More than 5,000 expeditions were undertaken against the outlaws in each year; 1,185 outlaws were killed in 1903, and 431 in 1904, 2,722 were wounded or captured in 1903, and 1,503 in 1904; 3,446 arms of all sorts were seized in 1903, and 994 in 1904. The constabulary losses in killed, wounded, died of wounds and disease, and deserted were 223 in 1904. In Cavite Province alone, with a population of 134,779, there were, in 1903, over 400 expeditions, resulting in 20 brigands killed, 23 wounded, and 253 captured. At this date brigandage is one of the greatest deterrents to the prosperous development of the Islands.

The Adjutant-General's Report issued in Washington in December, 1901, gives some interesting figures relating to the Army, for the War of Independence period, i.e., from February 4, 1899, to June 30, 1901. The total number of troops sent to the Islands was as follows, viz.:—

Some were returning from, whilst others were going to the Islands; the largest number in the Islands at any one time (year 1900) was about 70,000 men.

The total casualties in the above period were as follows, viz.:—

In the same period the following arms were taken from the insurgents (captured and surrendered):—

The Insurgent Navy, consisting of four small steamers purchased in Singapore and a few steam-launches, dwindled away to nothing. The “Admiral,” who lived on shore at Gagalan?gin (near Manila), escaped to Hong-Kong, but returned to Manila, surrendered, and took the oath of allegiance on March 3, 1905.

Sedition, in its more virulent and active forms, having been frustrated by the authorities since the conclusion of the war, the Irreconcilables conceived the idea of inflaming the passions of the people through the medium of the native drama. How the seditious dramatists could have ever hoped to succeed in the capital itself, in public theatres, before the eyes of the Americans, is one of those mysteries which the closest student of native philosophy must fail to solve.

The most notable of these plays were Hindi aco patay (“I am not dead”), Ualang sugat (“There is no wound”), Dabas n?g pilac (“Power of Silver”), and Cahapon, Ngayon at Bucas (“Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow”). In each case there was an extra last scene not on the programme. Secret police and American spectators besieged the stage, and after a free fight, a cracking of heads, and a riotous scuffle the curtain dropped (if there were anything left of it) on a general panic of the innocent and the arrest of the guilty. The latter were brought to trial, and their careers cut short by process of law.

The simple plot of Hindi aco patay is as follows, viz.:—MaÍmbot (personifying America) is establishing dominion over the Islands, assisted by his son MacamcÁm (American Government), and KatuÍran (Reason, Right, and Justice) is called upon to condemn the conduct of a renegade Filipino who has accepted America's dominion, and thereby become an outcast among his own people and even his own family. There is to be a wedding, but, before it takes place, a funeral cortÉge passes the house of Karangalan (the bride) with the body of Tangulan (the fighting patriot). MaÍmbot (America) exclaims, “Go, bury that man, that Karangalan and her mother may see him no more.” Tangulan, however, rising from his coffin, tells them, “They must not be married, for I am not dead.” And as he cries Hindi aco patay, “I am not dead,” a radiant sun appears, rising above the mountain peaks, simultaneously with the red flag of Philippine liberty. Then KatuÍran (Reason, Right, and Justice) declares that “Independence has returned,” and goes on to explain that the new insurrection having discouraged America in her attempt to enslave the people, she will await a better opportunity. The flag of Philippine Independence is then waved to salute the sun which has shone upon the Filipinos to regenerate them and cast away their bondage.

The theme of Cahapon, n?gayon at Bucas is somewhat similar—a protest against American rule, a threat to rise and expel it, a call to arms, and a final triumph of the Revolution. About the same time (May, 1903) a seditious play entitled Cadena de Oro (“The golden chain”) was produced in Batangas, and its author was prosecuted. It must, however, be pointed out that there are also many excellent plays written in Tagalog, with liberty to produce them, one of the best native dramatists being Don Pedro A. Paterno.

There will probably be for a long time to come a certain amount of disaffection and a class of wire-pullers, men of property, chiefly half-castes, constantly in the background, urging the masses forward to their own destruction. Lucrative employments have satisfied the ambition of so many educated Filipinos who must find a living, that the same principle—a creation of material interest—might perhaps be advantageously extended to the uneducated classes. All the malcontents cannot become State dependents, but they might easily be helped to acquire an interest in the soil. The native who has his patch of settled land with unassailable title would be loth to risk his all for the chimerical advantages of insurrection. The native boor who has worked land for years on sufferance, without title, exposed to eviction by a more cunning individual clever enough to follow the tortuous path which leads to land settlement with absolute title, falls an easy prey to the instigator of rebellion. These illiterate people need more than a liberal land law—they need to be taken in hand like children and placed upon the parcelled-out State lands with indisputable titles thereto. And if American enterprise were fostered and encouraged in the neighbourhood of their holdings, good example might root them to the soil and convert the boloman into the industrious husbandman.

The poorest native who cannot sow for himself must necessarily feed on what his neighbour reaps, and hunger compels him to become a wandering criminal. It is not difficult partially to account for the greater number in this condition to-day as compared with Spanish times. In those days there was what the natives termed cayinin. It was a temporary clearance of a patch of State land on which the native would raise a crop one, two, or more seasons. Having no legal right to the soil he tilled, and consequently no attachment to it, he would move on to other virgin land and repeat the operation. In making the clearance the squatter had no respect for State property, and the damage which he did in indiscriminate destruction of valuable timber by fire was not inconsiderable. The law did not countenance the cayinin, but serious measures were seldom taken to prevent it. The local or municipal headmen refrained from interference because, having no interest whatever in public lands, they did not care, as landowners, to go out of their way to create a bad feeling against themselves which might one day have fatal consequences. Although no one would for a moment suggest a revival of the system, there is the undeniable fact that in Spanish times thousands of natives lived for years in this way, and if they had been summarily evicted, or prosecuted by a forest bureau, necessity would have driven them into brigandage. High wages, government service, and public works are no remedy; on the contrary, if the people are thereby attracted to the towns, what will become of the true source of Philippine wealth, which is agriculture? Even in industrial England the cry of “Back to the soil” has been lately raised by an eminent Englishman known by name to every educated American.