Note 15 — Chapter VIII · Did We Destroy a Republic?

On July 7, 1898, the secretary of the revolutionary junta in Mindanao, in writing to Aguinaldo, closed his letter with the following formula: “Command this, your vassal, at all hours at the orders of his respected chief, on whom he will never turn his back, and whom he will never forswear. God preserve you, Captain General, many years.” P.I.R., 1080. 1. Every now and then we find a queer use of the term “royal family.” This seems to have been common among the mass of the people. Heads of towns and men of position often used the expression “royal orders” in speaking of the orders and decrees issued by Aguinaldo. For example, the officials of Tayug, a town of 19,000 people in Pangasinán Province, certified, on October 9, 1898, that they had carried out the instructions for “the establishment of the popular government in accordance with the royal decree of June 18, 1898.”—P.I.R., 1188. 1.

In October certain of Aguinaldo’s adherents in Tondo wrote to him and protested against the acts of the local presidente, who, they held, had not been duly elected in accordance with the provisions of the “royal order” of June 18, 1898. They closed their respectful protest by requesting that said royal order should be obeyed.—Taylor, AJ., 63.

In 1899 an officer of the army in Union Province wrote: “In accordance with the orders of the secretary of war of our republican government of these islands, issued in compliance with royal decree, article 5, published on March 8.” On September 1, 1898, the local presidente of the town of Mangatarem, writing to the head of the province, said that he had not furnished the estimates required because the elections provided for in “article 7 of the royal decree of the superior government, dated June 18 last,” had not been approved. A young son of a member of Aguinaldo’s cabinet, writing to his father in September, 1899, spoke of the “royal decree of June 18, 1898.”—P.I.R., 1188. 3. In Romblon, in August, 1898, elections were held in compliance with the prescription of the “royal decree of June 18, 1898,” and Aguinaldo approved them, apparently without considering that this was an anomalous way of describing a decree of the dictator of the so-called republic. On March 7, 1899, a general in the revolutionary service stated that an officer had been released from arrest by a “royal order.” The attitude of mind which made men speak of Aguinaldo’s “royal orders” in 1898 did not change when he fled before the advance of the United States army. His orders remained royal orders. They were again and again referred to in this way.