Note 6 — Chapter VIII · THE GRAPES OF WRATH

Across this repulsive story glowers a face permanently evil in history. The governor-general that connived at these barbarities where he did not order them was Emiliano Weyler, immortal in the records of Cuba as “The Butcher,” accused of deeds there so horrible they can never be put into print, accused in the Philippines of huge peculations as well as stupid cruelties, a man that seemed to delight in cruelty as other men delight in kindness. It was he that thought, “in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things,” of the expedient of overawing Calamba and the courts with artillery and martial law upon the heads of the litigants; it was he that had made the most show of a violent hatred of Rizal and furnished the proof that the persecution of Francisco Mercado was revenge upon Francisco Mercado’s son. When Weyler transferred his rule of blood and iron to Cuba, he left in the official archives evidence of the real nature of the proceedings. He can have had no suspicion that he was preparing evidence of his own iniquity to be given to the world through the nation he most hated. His papers were still in the archives August 13, 1898, when Manila surrendered to Dewey and Merritt. Among them was a copy of a letter he had sent at this time to certain of the friar landlords, expressing his full sympathy with them and (with a characteristic touch) the pleasure he had in serving them against the tenantry.6