Note 1 — American Intervention

In the month of May, 1901, the prisons were overflowing with captured insurgents, and the military authorities found an ostensible reason for liberating a number of them. A General Order was issued that to “signalize the recent surrender of General Manuel Tinio1 and other prominent leaders,” one thousand prisoners of war would be released on taking the oath of allegiance. The flame of organized insurrection was almost extinguished, but there still remained some dangerous embers. Bands of armed natives wandered through the provinces under the name of insurgents, and on July 31, 1901, one of Aguinaldoʼs subordinate generals, named Miguel Malvar, a native of Santo Tomás (Batangas) issued a manifesto from the “Slopes of the Maquiling” (Laguna Province), announcing that he had assumed the position of Supreme Chief. Before the war he had little to lose, but fishing in troubled waters and gulling the people with anting-anting and the “signs in the clouds” proved to be a profitable occupation to many. An expedition was sent against him, and he was utterly routed in an engagement which took place near his native town. After Miguel Malvar surrendered (April 16, 1902) and Vicente Lucban was captured in Sámar (April 27, 1902), the war (officially termed “insurrection”) actually terminated, and was formally declared ended on the publication of President Rooseveltʼs Peace Proclamation and Amnesty grant, dated July 4, 1902. A sedition law was passed under which every disturber of the public peace would be thenceforth arraigned, and all acts of violence, pillage, etc., would come under the common laws affecting those crimes. In short, insurgency ceased to be a valid plea; if it existed in fact, officially it had become a dead letter. Those who still lingered in the penumbra between belligerence and brigandage were thenceforth treated as common outlaws whose acts bore no political significance whatever. The notorious “General” San Miguel, for a long time the terror of Rizal Province, was given no quarter, but shot on the field at Corral-na-bató in March, 1903. One of the famous bandits, claiming to be an insurgent, was Faustino Guillermo, who made laws, levied tribute, issued army commissions, divided the country up into military departments, and defied the Government until his stratagem to induce the constabulary to desert brought about his own capture in the Bosoboso Mountain (Mórong) in June, 1903. A mass of papers seized revealed his pretension to be a patriotic saviour of his people, but it is difficult indeed to follow the reasoning of a man who starts on that line by sacking his own countrymenʼs villages. Another interesting individual was Artemio Ricarte, formerly a primary schoolmaster. In 1899 he led a column under Aguinaldo, and was subsequently his general specially commissioned to raise revolt inside the capital; but the attempt failed, and many arrests followed. During the war he was captured by the Americans, to whom he refused to take the oath of allegiance and was deported to Guam. In Washington it was decided to release the political prisoners on that island, and Ricarte and Mabini were brought back to Manila. As Ricarte still refused to take the oath, he was banished, and went to Hong-Kong in February, 1903. In the following December he returned to Manila disguised as a seaman, and stole ashore in the crowd of stevedore labourers. Assuming the ludicrous title of the “Viper,” he established what he called the “triumvirate” government in the provinces, and declared war on the Americans. His operations in this direction were mostly limited to sending crackbrained letters to the Civil Governor in Manila from his “camp in the sky,” but his perturbation of the rural districts had to be suppressed. At length, after a long search, he was taken prisoner at the cockpit in Marivéles in May, 1904. He and his confederates were brought to trial on the two counts of carrying arms without licence and sedition, the revelations of the “triumvirate,” which were comical in the extreme, affording much amusement to the reading public. The judgement of the court on Ricarte was six yearsʼ imprisonment and a fine of $6,000.