Part IV · Cebu
Chapter 13
Tupas Will Not Come
Cebu
Legazpi’s fleet reached Cebu at the end of April 1565. Its ruler, Tupas, would not sell food or make terms, and on the next day the Spaniards attacked. The people fled with their boats, and about a hundred houses burned. In the empty town the Spaniards found the Santo Niño and two old guns from Magellan’s time.
27 April 1565
Calms, contrary winds and tides slow the fleet, and it reaches Cebu only on 27 April. It anchors before the town, close to the houses.
Legazpi has already decided what he will do. He will ask for peace, and for food at a fair price. If he is refused, he will make war, and he thinks it is justified. In 1521, he wrote, the king of this very town and nearly all his people had been baptised and become the emperor’s vassals, and then had turned on Magellan’s men and killed them.
The ruler of Cebu now is Tupas, who came after Humabon. News travels fast between the islands, and Cebu will have heard about this fleet, and about the raids on Bohol by men who called themselves Castilians. On the first day his people are cautious but courteous.
28 April 1565
The next morning everything has changed. “After they had placed in safety their wives and children,” Legazpi’s officers wrote, “they said that they did not wish to give us in exchange for our goods anything of what we had asked, namely, their provisions.” They will fight if they must.
“Thus we were forced to accept the challenge.” The ships fire their guns into the town, and soldiers land with arquebuses. The people of Cebu have their own boats ready, and they leave by sea; the Spaniards cannot catch a single one. About a hundred houses burn. Nobody could say whether the fire was started by a shot from the ships or by the people themselves.
The soldiers move into the houses that are still standing. In them they find almost nothing, “except an image of the child Jesus, and two culverins, one of iron and one of bronze.”