Chapter 19
Mactan
Mactan, the Philippines
On Saturday, 27 April 1521, Magellan leads about sixty men against Lapulapu, chief of Mactan. Wounded in the leg and outnumbered in the shallows, he is killed covering his men’s retreat, with eight of them.
Why did Magellan fight at Mactan?
Because Lapulapu, a chief of Mactan, refused to obey the king of Spain or accept Rajah Humabon of Cebu as his king, and another chief of Mactan, Zula, asked Magellan for men to fight him. Magellan had made himself the protector of Cebu’s newly Christian king and wanted to show what that protection was worth, although his officers begged him not to go. On the morning of Saturday, 27 April 1521, forty-nine of his men waded ashore, while Humabon’s warriors were told to stay in their boats and watch.
Who killed Magellan?
Lapulapu’s warriors, in the shallows off Mactan on 27 April 1521. Pigafetta does not name the man who struck him. An arrow hit Magellan in the right leg; as he tried to draw his sword, one warrior slashed his left leg with a great cutlass, and he fell face down in the water, where many attacked him with spears and cutlasses. Eight of his men died with him. Lapulapu’s people refused to give up his body, which was never recovered. Lapulapu is honoured today as a national hero of the Philippines.
Friday, 26 April 1521
On Friday, the 26th of April, a chief of Mactan named Zula sends one of his sons to Magellan with two goats. He says he would send more of what he promised, but another chief of Mactan will not allow it. That chief refuses to obey the king of Spain. His name, as Pigafetta writes it, is Cilapulapu. We know him as Lapulapu.
Zula asks for one boatload of men to help him fight Lapulapu the next night. Magellan decides to go himself, with three.
His officers are appalled. The fleet has come to find the Spice Islands, not to fight the wars of island chiefs. “We begged him repeatedly not to go,” Pigafetta writes, “but he, like a good shepherd, refused to abandon his flock.” Magellan has made himself the protector of Cebu’s Christian king, and he means to show the whole region what that protection is worth.
At midnight about sixty men set out in armour and helmets. With them go King Humabon, the prince, some chiefs, and twenty or thirty war boats.
Before dawn, 27 April 1521
They reach Mactan three hours before dawn. Magellan does not attack at once. He sends the merchant from Siam to tell the islanders that if they will obey the king of Spain, accept Humabon as their king and pay tribute, he will be their friend. If not, “they should wait to see how our lances wounded.”
The answer comes back: if the Europeans have lances, they have lances too, of bamboo, and stakes hardened in fire. They ask him not to attack yet, but to wait until morning, when they will have more men. Pigafetta thinks this was a ruse. They had dug pits between their houses, he says, hoping the Europeans would fall into them.
Magellan tells Humabon that he and his warriors must stay in their boats and not take part. They are to watch and see how Spaniards fight.
It is Saturday. Pigafetta notes that Magellan chose to fight on a Saturday deliberately, because it was the day especially holy to him.
Morning, 27 April 1521
At daybreak forty-nine men jump into the water, which comes up to their thighs. Coral reefs keep the boats far from the beach, and the men have to wade more than two crossbow shots before they reach dry land. Eleven stay behind to guard the boats, too far out for their guns to be of any use.
On the shore more than fifteen hundred warriors are waiting in three divisions. With tremendous shouts they charge, two divisions against the flanks and one against the front. Magellan splits his men into two groups.
The musketeers and crossbowmen fire for half an hour, uselessly. At that range their shots pass through the islanders’ thin wooden shields and wound their arms, but do not stop them. “Cease firing! Cease firing!” Magellan shouts. Nobody listens. The islanders see that the guns are doing them little harm and grow bolder. They leap about so that no one can aim at them, and hurl arrows, bamboo spears, fire-hardened stakes, stones and mud.
Magellan sends men to burn the nearest houses to frighten them. It has the opposite effect. Enraged, the islanders charge harder. Two Europeans are killed among the burning houses.
27 April 1521
An arrow, poisoned, Pigafetta says, strikes Magellan through the right leg. He orders the men to fall back slowly. Most of them run. Only six or eight stay with him.
The islanders aim at their legs, which are bare. Fighting all the way, the little group retreats into the water, up to their knees, more than a crossbow shot from shore. The warriors follow them, picking up the same spears and throwing them again and again. They recognise the captain, and so many turn on him that twice they knock his helmet off. “But he always stood firmly like a good knight.”
For more than an hour they fight in the shallows. A warrior thrusts a bamboo spear into Magellan’s face. Magellan kills him with his lance, and leaves the lance in the body. He tries to draw his sword but can get it only halfway out, because his arm has been wounded. Seeing this, the warriors throw themselves on him. One slashes his left leg with a great cutlass. He falls face down in the water, and they rush on him with iron and bamboo spears and cutlasses, “until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide.”
“When they wounded him,” Pigafetta writes, “he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats.”
Afternoon, 27 April 1521
The survivors, all wounded, get back to the boats as best they can. “Had it not been for that unfortunate captain,” Pigafetta writes, “not a single one of us would have been saved.” While Magellan held the islanders’ attention in the water, the others escaped. Pigafetta himself has been hit in the face by a poisoned arrow.
Eight Europeans are killed with Magellan. Four of Humabon’s Christian warriors, who rush in to help at the end, are killed by mistake by the boats’ own guns. Of the islanders, only fifteen die. When the Christian king learns that the captain is dead, he weeps.
That afternoon Humabon sends a message to Mactan. If they will give back the bodies of the captain and the others, the Europeans will pay whatever they ask. The answer is short. They will not give up such a man, “for all the riches in the world.” They mean to keep him as a memorial.
Pigafetta’s tribute to his captain is the most personal passage in the book. “Among the other virtues which he possessed, he was more constant than ever any one else in the greatest of adversity. He endured hunger better than all the others, and more accurately than any man in the world did he understand sea charts and navigation.” No one else had so much natural talent, he writes, or such boldness, “to learn how to circumnavigate the world, as he had almost done.”
What happened next · Volume IIICebu in 1565Forty-four years after Mactan a Spanish fleet came back to Cebu, and this time it stayed. In the town Legazpi’s men found two old guns “brought here at the time of Magallanes.” Read what happened in Legazpi’s Log →