The British occupation in the eyes of a friar

Vestiges
By José S. Arcilla, S.J.

AN UNSIGNED letter to the Dominican Prior Provincial in Manila adds some details to the story of the British occupation of Manila in 1762-64, not included in school books. The friar could not have known that the Treaty of Paris had been signed to end the Seven Years’ War in Europe, and return the Philippines to Spanish control.

The British, he wrote, had fortified themselves in Fort Santiago in Manila and Fort San Felipe in Cavite. They also set up a third fort along the Pasig River, and a detachment in the town of Pasig. These gave them untrammeled access to Laguna, Tayabas (Quezon, today), and Batangas. But their repeated sorties, surface combats, and looting by Filipino bandits caused much damage.

The Chinese, to the Dominican friar, “more hostile to Spain than the British themselves,” fully cooperated with the British, weighing the odds and waiting which side would win. “With diabolical fury,” he added, they, too, committed horrible acts of “inhuman licentiousness.”

The British met no opposition and, without shedding a single drop of blood, they became masters of the gold and the silver in many churches, as well as what the Spaniards had been earning as their livelihood from selling the products of the provinces.

The indios in Pangasinan and nearby provinces hardened their attitude and took up arms to shake off the Spanish government. Juan de la Cruz Palaris in Pangasinan and Diego Silang in Ilocos led hordes of rebels, saying there were no longer any Spaniards in Manila.

Providentially, Don Simón de Anda, the youngest member of the Manila Audiencia, was able to sneak out and recruited an army that won the respect of the enemy and the rebellious groups. He had sequestered the situado, or the annual subsidy from Mexico that was coming in aboard the galleon Filipino. Helped by the Franciscans in Samar and the Bicol region, loyal indiosshouldered the fortune across the mountains to Bacolor, the center of resistance Anda had organized. Not a moment too soon, for the British, too, wanted to lay their hands on the money.

The Spaniards, hardly inured to fight, generally tepid Catholics, had distanced themselves from Anda, on the pretext that they had pledged their word of honor to support the British. But they had no qualms of conscience reneging on their promise at the clink of silver pesos, and they rivaled one another to fight under the resistance leader and be paid for serving their legitimate sovereign.

Anda’s group harassed the enemy. Had they been competent and properly trained, they could have expelled the enemy altogether or confined them at the two posts of Manila and Cavite. They numbered about 2,500 men against a British force of 800 or 1,000. Besides, the latter were demoralized by the bickering and rivalries among their own leaders. For example, Brigadier William Drake crated all the gold he had confiscated and marked the boxes as “rice.”

The friars could do nothing. They received more respect from the enemy than from a colonial government that, priding itself as Catholic, was imbued with liberal anti-clerical ideas. The friars’ faults were exaggerated, singled out. A friar’s personal comment, to ease pent-up emotions, was aired as treachery and a crime of lèse majesté. Attempts to defend themselves were counter-productive. The people accused them of speaking such as to ruin the Catholic religion in the Philippines.