During this period of brilliant sea victories and successful pirate raids of magnitude, the title of victory flowed very strongly in favor of the Moros. The pirate raids on the Visayas nullified to a great extent the splendid victories of Corcuera and Almonte in Cotobato. The struggles on land rapidly assumed a condition of virtual stalemate. 

Following the successful campaigns of Corcuera in 1637, we find no supporting Spanish expeditions for more than two decades. Hostilities were resumed in 1658, when a strong force took the field against the Moros under the command of don Francisco Estovar, Governor of Zamboanga. The expedition debarked before the Moro town of Mamucan in the Cotobato Valley. Here an action conducted by Don Pedro de Biruga, who, with a force of 180 Spaniards, destroyed the town of Butig, with many vessels and a quantity of rice.

Pressing this victory, the command was divided, one section being given to Don Fernando Bobadilla and the other to Sergeant-major Intamarren. The two divisions entered simultaneously from the two mouths of the Cotobato River, Intamarren proceeding to Tantilla, which he systematically looted, and Bobadilla entering the towns of Lumapuc and Boayen. A heavy concentration of Moro troops resulted in the forced evacuation of the Spaniards with nothing accomplished save the burning of a few unimportant nipa towns.

A period of comparative peace was now settled over the Cotobato Valley with the Spaniards making little effort to break the Sultanate of Mindanao. The burned villages were rebuilt and the desecrated mosques replaced. Moro blacksmiths quietly turned out weapons of matchless steel to combat further invasion of their country. There began a period of watchful waiting, with the Spaniards reluctant to resume the offensive.

In 1649, during the reign of Sultan Salhud Din Karamat, there was great trouble in the Moro provinces. The Spanish garrison at Jolo had been massacred and the capital passed into the hands of the Mohammedans again, not to be relinquished until a century had passed. Alliances between the Sulu and Mindanao potentates had greatly strengthened the Moro front. Spanish penetration of the Cotobato Valley had been definitely hampered, and the garrison in the main fortress at Zamboanga was confined to the walls by the circle of howling Moros who controlled the countryside.

By 1653 there were great unchecked depredations in Mindanao, which contributed to the abandonment of the fort of del Pilar at Zamboanga in 1663. By a decree of may 6, 1662, signed by Governor General Sabiniano Manrique de Lara, the mighty fortress was evacuated and the garrison returned to Manila. The silent fort was destroyed by the Moros, who built in its place a pirate village.

With this thorn in the Moro side removed, the Sulu capital became hysterical with joy. Great pirate flotillas took to the water to sail unimpeded through the Straits of Basilan on great raids to the Visayas. The abandonment of the Zamboanga fortress was not, however, wholly due to Moro activity. Manila was threatened by an invasion of the Chinese pirate Koxinga and all troops were withdrawn to defend the city.

The period from 1650 to 1700 saw the Spaniards definitely on the defensive and waging a desperate war to maintain a suzerainty over the islands in the south. During this period, a strong united offensive on the part of the Moros would have ended the war, as Spain was incapable of maintaining their Mindanao footholds. A concentrated Moro attack upon Manila might have swept the Spanish entirely from the Philippine Islands.

But the Moro incapacity for cooperation again revealed itself this moment of assured victory. The beginning of the new century saw the Spanish cause greatly strengthened by rumbles of dissension among the Moros. In 1701 an unfortunate incident deprived the Moros of the solid front they had presented against the Spaniards.

The Sultan of Sulu departed for a friendly visit to the Sultan of Mindanao, carrying with him an escot of sizty-eight vessels. At the sight of this formidable squadron, Cutay, the successor of Correlat, caused the mouth of the river to be closed against the visiting fleet. This action so affronted the Sultan of Sulu that he forthwith challenged the rival potentate to single combat in full view of the two armies.

Within a circle of cleared area before the cotta of Cutay, the two Sultans fought to the death with kris and spear. Each killed the other and a bloody engagement between the two armies followed the individual combat of the Sultans. The Sulu Moros won the battle and returned to Jolo laden with spoils. 1

The incident is most descriptive of the Moro character. Other opponents lacking, they fought with each other. They fought for the love of combat. They competed eagerly for the privilege of dying on the field of battle. It was a quirk in the Moro character which Spaniards were never able to understand. With the battered Spaniards against the wall, the Moros lost interest in the campaign and turned aside to wage an intertribal war with their own countrymen.

The whole history of the Spanish-Moro wars indicates that at no time did the Moros consider the Spaniards of sufficient importance to honor them with their undivided attention. The Spaniards went at the conquest of Mindanao in a spirit of deadly solemnity. The Moros opposing them accepted the Spaniards as another entry into the game, wandering off in the midst of the Spanish campaigns to engage Portuguese, English and others of their own tribesmen.

The Spaniards had one antagonist in Mindanao; the Moro had many antagonists. The ease with which the Moro wandered from one opponent to another was at once his greatest weakness and his greatest strength.

The Moros fought according to the rules of warfare. They rallied strongly after defeat, seemingly refreshed even by a struggle which went against them. They failed to press the advantages of a victory. They were defeated only to reappear unexpectedly. They struck successfully only to vanish. War was a serious business to Spain; to the Moros, it was an enjoyable game. It was all the most confusing to the Spaniards.

The early part of the seventeenth century saw the Spaniards in a frenzy of fort-building activity. Taking advantage of the Moro dissension, they rebuilt and strengthened the old fort at Iligan, and established new posts at isolated points in the southern islands.

The sufferings of the Spanish garrisons were almost beyond belief. Encompassed within stone walls, these miserable soldiers lived in constant fear of Moro attacks, and they were decimated by malaria. In the 1700's, the men of the garrison at Iligan died of starvation, with relief unable to break through the cordon of hostile Moros. Had the Moros been content to play a waiting game of systematic starvation of the Spanish garrisons, rather than risking all on a hand-to-hand encounter with the kris, they could have won a bloodless victory.

The Spanish activity of this period was not directed against the seat of Moro power in Jolo. They turned rather to the neutral ground on the island of Palawan. A Spanish fort was erected at Labo in Palawan in 1718. Supplies were sent only infrequently to the men of the garrison and the location of the fort itself was in a deadly malarial zone. Most of the garrison died without coming to grips with the Moros at all, and the fort was abandoned in 1720.

The Spaniards were, however, still interested in securing a foothold on Palawan as it offered a course of least resistance with less possibility of Moro attacks. In 1730, Captain Antonio Fabeau, at a remuneration of $50 per month, was sent with troops to Palawan with orders to subdue the country. This announcement was equivalent to waving a red flag. The Moros, who had hitherto ignored Palawan, now descended in force upon the hapless garrison. The fort was repeatedly attacked, and hardly a member of the garrison survived the combination of rotting food and Moro kris.

In 1735 a settlement was established at Tay-Tay in Palawan, but this suffered the same fate as the fortress in Labo.

There has been preserved for us a contemporary account of the horrors of the Spanish outposts. Padre Crevas says in part:

As far as Balabac (Palawan) is concerned, its history shows the colors of a sorrowful tragedy, where the death of its first Governor, Senor Garnier, appeared like a pre-announcement of the many victims this deadly soil was to devour. The position of this little isle between Palawan and Borneo is eminently strategical and thus very wisely the government decided upon its occupation and colonization. We find that not a few of the men maliciously make ulcers or conceal them until the moment of embarking for Balabac, a point which imposes respect upon the soldiers. It is certain that the lack of things most necessary to life have added sometimes its rigors to those of the climate, and when the Elcano arrived from Balabac we found to our sorrow that since the end of December the garrison lacked meat, oil and lard, and only sustained itself with a liter and an eighth of rice daily. Thus it is that the state of entries into hospital and deaths are horrible. I will content myself with saying that in a town composed of two companies of 80 men each, of 150 sailors, 15 artilleries and 50 prisoners, in one year 122 people died.

The closeness with which the Moros confined the Spanish soldiers to the fort is shown by the lack of meat and lard in a country which abounded in deer, pigeons and wild boar.

The Spaniards proved unequal to the development of the Island of Palawan. At the time of the evacuation of the Philippines by Spain in 1899, we find but two stations on the entire island. At one of these, Balabac, Spain retained a small naval; station with a force of twenty-two marines. The other post on Palawan was a gunboat station at Puerta Princesa manned by two companies of infantry. Two small gunboats made periodic patrols of the island and the station was visited by a mail steamer every twenty-eight days. The post at Puerta Princesa was of modern date, being established only twenty years prior to American occupation of the islands.

With this brief account of the dismal occupation of Palawan, we return to the fort-building era which began in the year 1718. During that year Governor-General Bustamente decided to rebuild the fortress at Zamboanga which had been abandoned in 1663. The erection of new walls was commended to General Gregorio de Padilla y Escalante. The fort was constructed upon the ruins of the old foundation, which was considered capable of sustaining the new structure. The building followed the delineations (sic) of Father Vera who had engineered the original structure, and the walls were fortified with sixty-one pieces of artillery.

Crevas describes this most famous fort of the Philippines for us:

"My first visit was to the royal Fortress of Nuestra Senora del Pilar. On nearing its blackened walls, I remembered those noted men of the company (Jesuit Order) to whom was due the foundation and maintainment (sic) of this presidio and bulwark. We entered into the fort by its only port which looks towards the north where the guard is formed. In the interior court we saw the magazines, barracks, and prisons, and we went around the walls in all its circuit, examining the artillery which is composed of twenty-four cannon and some mortars. The fort is a perfect square, with bastions at each of its corners bearing the names San Luis, San Francisco Xavier, San Felipe and San Fernando.

"Above the Fort, sculptured in stone, the image of Pilar. Beneath the image of the Virgin I could read, although with much labor, the following inscription:

"'Ruling over Spain his Catholic Majesty Don Felipe V, Emperor of the New American World, and governing these Philippine Islands the very illustrious Sr. Mariscal de Camp Don Fernando Bustillos Bustamente y Rueda, Governor and Captain-General, there was established and constructed this Royal Fort of our Lady of Pilar of Zamboanga, the 16^th of April, the year 1719.'

"A little above there is read naother of this following tenor:

"'Governing this presidio, Sr. Don Juan Antonio de la Torre Bustamente, this frontpiece was made in January of 1734 years.'"

The grand fort still stands in Zamboanga in much the same condition as Crevas saw it in 1860. It is the headquarters of the American army in the southern islands and is now known by the less romantic name of Petit Barracks. General Pershing, Wood and others of our finest officers have governed the Moro province from this old Spanish fortress.

The solidarity of the walls of Fort Pilar and the valor of the defendants were soon to be put to a serious test, for on December 8, 1720, there came against the place one Dalasi, the King of Butig, with an armada of one hundred vessels manned by several thousand Moros.

"The Moros vigorously attacked the fortification and with the utmost temerity planted ladders and scaled the first wall, it being not in a position to receive the greater part of the fire of cannon and rifles, when an enormous stone, thrown from the bastions took the life of Dalasi, precipitating him into the moat, when his men retired, covered with blood to their vessels." ¹

The Moros were unable to move the largest of their vessels in time to prevent their capture by a sally party emerging from the fortress. The Spaniards fired (sic) the boats in the river after having sacked their cargo.

Hardly had this attack been beaten off when the Spaniards were called upon to repel a much more potent foe. The Kings of Mindanao and Jolo² presented themselves to the garrison at Zamboanga in the guise of friendship and under color of aiding the Spaniards against the King of Butig.³ Their duplicity becoming known, they threw off their masks and united with the vessels of the slain Dalasi, still standing by under the command of the brother of Dalasi.

The three armadas entered the river and blockaded the fortress. Thousands of Moros decamped from their vintas and hurled taunts against the beleaguered Spanish garrison.

In this emergency, an unknown and nameless Spanish priest made his way to the quarters of the Spanish Governor. We can never know the conversation which took place in the little room high on the fort's walls but we can well judge the heroism of that priest by an examination of the events which followed.

In the dark of the moon, a rope was let down from the fortress walls and the young priest, descending from the safety of the fort, made his way through the tight cordon of Moro pickets. Alone and unaided, he filched a tiny sailing vinta from among the Moro boats drawn up on the shore and sailed five hundred miles to Manila through a sea commanded by the sails of the Mohammedans. It was an impossible, gorgeous feat.

In Manila, this astounding priest demanded aid for the besieged fortress. A Spanish fleet sailed from Manila with a great firing of salutes and a solemn religious parade, but after proceeding as far as Cebu the commanders lost enthusiasm for a brush with the Moros and they tarried in that port without venturing on to Zamboanga. In vain the young priest raged and stormed; his courageous voyage ended in nothing, for the Spanish ships rocked at amchor in the harbor of Cebu and no attempt was made to raise the siege of the fortress at Zamboanga.

The history of the Spanish occupation of the Philippines is filled with reference to the bravery of the militant priests of the Jesuit order. These ambidextrous missioners, Cross in left hand and Toledo blade in right, were in the first wave of every attack on the Moros. ⁴

In the meantime, the siege of Zamboanga was maintained for more than two months, the Moros occupying themselves with vain attempts to charm the artillery fire of the Spaniards. One day, seeing the mouth of a cannon blaze without a shot leaving, the Imams shouted that the God of the Christians was vanquished and the kris men rushed the walls. A rain of iron from the artillery at close quarters, supplemented by the terrible fire of the double-charged arquebuses, cost the lives of hundreds of the Moros during their vain attempt to scale the high walls.

Four savage attacks were launched in as many days before the Moros gave up the siege and withdrew.

The Spaniards now began a series of indecisive campaigns which accomplished no result other than a carrying of the conflict into Moro territory. In 1721, Toribio Cosio, the new Governor-General of the Philippines, sent Antonio de Roxas against the Moros. Roxas was defeated in a series of engagements and returned to Manila after a few months. During the next year Andreas Garcia took over the task of chastising the Moros but his efforts were also unsuccessful. Command was then assumed by Juan de Mesa who accomplished the only result of that period. A strong expedition under his command entered the country north of Zamboanga and captured the fort of Sabanilla which had been lost when Mindanao operations had been abandoned in 1663.

Conducting a retaliatory policy of attack, the Moros organized a force of 3000 warriors and in 1730 the island of Palawan was raided. Hundreds of captives were taken and entire coast line was pillaged. This same force besieged the Spanish fort at Tay-Tay but was unable to make a breach in the walls after twenty days of severe fighting.

The Moros were never able to stand the monotony of siege work. The Spaniards were fairly safe as long as they remained within their stout walls of stone; a procedure which they followed faithfully for a period of more than 300 years.

In 1731 the Moro capital at Jolo fell again into the hands of the Spaniards. In retaliation for the Moro raid on Palawan, Governor-General Valdez sent General Ignacio Iriberri with a strong force of more than 1000 men, and Jolo was captured after a lengthy siege. Iriberri ravaged the islands of Talobo and Capual before retiring to the walls of Zamboanga.

This capture of their capital so enraged the Moros that the succeeding ten years brought a reign of terrors to the islands. By 1735 the Moro raids had assumed such proportions that no community on the sea coast was safe from attack. The Christian population of the northern islands took to the mountains, leaving a desolate coast line. Lookout towers were constructed along all coasts to warn the approach of pirates and the villagers were ordered by the Spanish government to concentrate into groups of no less than 500 inhabitants.

Some of the greatest heroism of the conquest was displayed by the cut-off garrisons of these Spanish outposts. The watchtower at Santa Maria Bay, north of Zamboanga, garrisoned by an adjutant and thirty-seven men, filled the small graveyard with casualties from the deadly malaria and the krises of the Moros before a galley limped in to bear the survivors to Manila. The watchword of the Philippine coast was the dread cry "Hay Moros en la costa," which signified the approach of the dreaded sea-rovers of Sulu.

In 1737, a treaty was ratified between Alimud Din I and Governor-General Valdez y Timon. It provided for "a permanent peace and alliance." The treaty was not observed by either party and was finally abrogated by the ascent of Bantilan to the throne of Sulu in 1748.

During this desperate period, the Spaniards were not idle. Frantic expeditions were hurled into the field to stem what was rapidly turning into a rout of the Spanish arms. The conquest of Mindanao and Sulu had assumed for the Spanish the proportions of a major war.

With decisive victory in sight, the Moros turned aside to engage in the inevitable tribal dispute. The Spaniards were so completely whipped that Prince Malinog of Cotobato found time to rise against the authority of Manlana, the Sultan of Mindanao. With the city of Supanga as his capital and with more than thirty cities behind him, Prince Malinog prepared for a bitter struggle for the Sultanate.

With intense enthusiasm the Moros rushed to take sides in this internal battle of kris against kris. The Spanish struggle of almost two centuries duration was laid aside, and for the moment the Sultan of Mindanao became an ally of the Spanish forces.

The Spaniards took this opportunity to go into the field with a strong party under Don Pedro Zacharias. With two galleys and other small vessels, which were joined in Zamboanga by a felluca, a piroque and several canoes, Zacharias started for Tamontaca, where the expedition was organized.

The fort of Malinog, defended by eight cannon and 300 men, was captured by Zacharias, thereby incurring the favor of the Sultan of Mindanao. Zacaharias then took the capital of Malinog, where he found a defense of six forts and thirty cannon. In the grand assault he was aided by the forces of the Sultan of Mindanao. Kris supported Toledo blade in the torrid battle which ended in the elimination of the usurper Malinog.

The Spanish aid applied to the reduction of Prince Malinog tempered the fiery spirit of the Sultan of Mindanao and he was disposed, for a short time, to look with favor upon the Spaniards. During the lull in hostilities which followed, the Spaniards pressed for an agreement of friendship and permanent peace. But the psychological moment had passed. The Moros were not ready to sign an agreement with the hated Spaniards, and disagreements between the Mohammedan priests and the hot-blooded Jesuits soon made all thought of alliance an impossibility. Has the Spaniards allowed for some toleration and non-interference with the religion of the Moros, they might have secured the lasting cooperation of the Sultan of Mindanao.

With the year 1750 a century of conflict drew to a close. The contributions of Corcuera and Almonte, more thean a hundred years before, still remained the bright spot of the conquest. The Cotobato Valley remained isolated and unconquerable. The islands of Sulu were untenable to Spanish occupation. The Palawan had proved to be a death trap to the conquistadores.

To show for the work of a century, Spain had a powerful fortress at Zamboanga and a precarious grip on the Moro capital of Jolo.

The conquest of Mindanao and Sulu had not developed into a duplicate of the Mexican and Peruvian campaigns where each ship to Spain had borne a load of plunder extracted from the native population with small loss in men. We find that in 1738 the fixed annual expense of the fort of Zamboanga was $17,500, with an incidental disbursement of $8,000 additional. These figures did not include the costs of armed expeditions dispatched from the walls against the Moros. No tribute from the Moros enriched the coffers of Spain.

The conquest of the Moros was proving to be a decided expense in men and money, a situation most distasteful to the thrifty Spanish temperament. Spanish prestige in the East was suffering, and the Crown at Madrid was showing unmistakable signs of great displeasure.

Spanish governor-generals succeeded each other with sputtering rapidity. It seemed unbelievable that a scattered band of Mohammedans could stand up against the forces of Spain.

Mexico and Peru were prostrate, and the Spaniards had passed into California. Cortez had been in his grave for two hundred years. In the Western World an American nation had grown up and there were rumblings of a rebellion against England which was to culminate in the Revolutionary War.

In Mindanao and Sulu conditions were strikingly the same as Magellan found them. The Sultan still sent his privateers after slaves for the royal harem. Krismen still ravaged the coasts without restraint. The Imams still chanted their prayers to Allah. The krismen still held the soil of Sulu.

The long feud with Spain was but one minor phase in the embattled existence of the Moros. They were witnessing the growth of nations and the fall of nations. The world changed about them but they changed not at all. They carried on through the golden age of Spain and they survived to witness the decline of Spain.

Mighty krismen of Mindanao!

Filipiniana Reprint Series © 1985 Cacho Hermanos, Inc.

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