Note 5 — Chapter VIII · THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Of a sudden appeared at Calamba a battery of artillery and a company of soldiers, who ostentatiously took possession of the town as if it had been in a state of armed revolt. At this the inhabitants blinked and gasped, for nowhere on earth lay a more peaceable community. They were not left long in doubt as to what was toward. The commandant of the troops issued a curt order to Mercado and the other tenants involved in the litigation to remove within twenty-four hours all their buildings from the land they had occupied. An appeal was pending, a fact that in all civilized countries would have been sufficient to stay proceedings until the appeal could be decided. It was of no such validity here. To comply with the savage order was physically impossible; there were not hands enough in Calamba nor in all the country around. At the end of the next day the agents of the authorities set fire to all the houses, and among them perished from human sight and treasuring the house where José Rizal was born.5