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By Root 462 0

they proposed immediate departure. No mention was made of the growing hostility of the native men, a consequence of the seamen’s goatish rampages. Instead they advanced their strongest arguments, and chose their ablest spokesmen to advance them. Serrano, now the armada’s senior captain, pointed out that they had been sent, not as colonizers or priests, but to find the western route to the Spice Islands. That was their sole mission. In fact, their royal orders specifically forbade deviation from it. Others spoke up. At their last council, they recalled, the capitán-general had justified the call at this port on the ground that, in reporting to the king, they could more fully describe the archipelago’s possibilities. They now knew all they needed to know about Cebu. There was no reason to remain any longer. It was time to go.

Once again Magellan disagreed. Having discovered the Philippines, he believed it his duty to assure their loyalty to Spain. To him the Datu Humabon was no longer a native chieftain; he was Don Carlos, a Christian king. Then, to the horror of the council, he revealed that he had given this ruler certain assurances. They were, in effect, a repetition of his guarantee to the brothers Colambu and Siaui. The enemies of Humabon-Carlos, the rajahking, were also Spain’s enemies. Any man who refused to acknowledge his sovereignty—or the divinity of Christ—would be killed and his property confiscated.

Such an enemy, he told the astonished council, existed. His name was Lapulapu, and he was the petty rajah of Mactan, a tiny isle nearby. Traditionally Mactan had fallen within the dominion of Cebu’s rajah, but Lapulapu was an irascible insurgent. He was also particularly hostile toward the men in the Spanish fleet; recently he had ignored a requisition for supplies to feed the visitors. Magellan regarded this refusal as an excellent reason for a trial of strength. He intended to form a punitive shore party, armed seamen who would teach the defiant pagan a lesson, and he had decided to lead it himself.

His officers were appalled. The Spanish monarch had expressly ordered the capitán-general to remain with the fleet, aloof from all landing parties. Indeed, it was a basic principle of both the Spanish and Portuguese governments that the leaders of naval expeditions should never risk their lives in such hazardous adventures. Duarte Barbosa reminded his brother-in-law that the last man to ignore that rule, Juan Díaz de Solís, had been killed at the Río de la Plata. Magellan waved him off. Since his triumphant debut as a faith healer he had felt invincible. In the coming fight, he told the council, he would rely on the cross of Jesus and the support of his patroness, Our Lady of Victory. Armed as he was by them, he could not fail.

NOW IN LATE APRIL of 1521, on the eve of this wholly unnecessary battle, Magellan was everything he had never been. He had never before been reckless, imprudent, careless, or forgetful of the tactical lessons he had learned during Portuguese operations in East Africa, India, Morocco, and Malaya. But he had not been a soldier of Christ then. Here, shielded by divine intervention, he scorned the precautions observed by mortal men preparing for action. Professional fighting men value deception, secrecy, surprise. He announced to Spaniards and Filipinos alike that he would invade Mactan on Saturday, April 27—he believed it was his lucky day—and he invited the people of Cebu to come watch. Before going into action professional fighters study the terrain, and, if the operation is to be amphibious, the tides. Because he disdained all he had learned, he was unaware of Mactan’s encircling reef, which at low tide—at the hour he had chosen for his attack—would prevent his ships from providing covering fire. Professionals court allies. He loftily declined the rajah-king’s offer of a thousand veteran warriors, rejected Crown Prince Lumai’s suggestion that he take the enemy from the rear with a diversionary landing, and rebuffed the Cacique Zula, a Mactan rival of Lapulapu, who proposed that he attack