Note 20 — Chapter XVI · “I CAME FROM MARTYRDOM UNTO THIS PEACE”

“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.20 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.