Note 32 — ROJO’S NARRATIVE

41. This temerity has been the origin of many evils, which have increased the misfortune of these inhabitants, both secular and religious. They have been reduced to prison on various occasions, with sufficient contempt, occasioning that, together with injury to the natives, notable disturbances, disasters, fires, murders, robberies, and rapines have been experienced through the same agents and other evildoers. They have even been propagated through diverse places and estates with the destruction of their fields and herds; and, on the other side, the English irritated, not only have committed in the vicinity of Manila, many annoyances, burning of villages and buildings, and taking by force of arms (without resistance), all kinds of grain and animals, food, and a very great number of buffaloes, which were destined for the plough and the cultivation of the land, but they have also penetrated into some provinces with very few men, taking therefrom whatever they have wished, as they did in the month of November in the village of Pasig, where especially the food of all the Lake of Bay was gathered, and where trenches had been made in the church and convent. With all kinds of arms they had been occupied by ten thousand Indians, who were defeated at their first arrival by five hundred English. About one thousand five hundred of both sexes and all ages were killed, part of them with gun and cannon, and part precipitated into and drowned in the river Pasig. From that time a detachment of English troops remained in said village.32 For that reason the English have penetrated about all the lake and through the province of Taal and Balayan, and have always brought vast supplies of food for their troops and for the storehouses. All these inhabitants always furnish them (for their money) with flesh, wheat, and palay. In any other way they would have suffered many more miseries. In the month of February, they did the same in Bulacan, which was the province where the above-mentioned Anda had established his fort in the church and convent. They advanced and forced his trenches, where some Spaniards and religious were killed, and four hundred Indians were put to the sword. The only difference was that in this place they did not carry back provisions or fortify themselves, but retired after demolishing the fortifications in the convent. They have also made many extortions in other villages which they would not have done had they not been provoked.33