The Battle of Mactan

The Cebuanos

Those people live in accordance with justice, and have weights and measures.

• They love peace, ease, and quiet.
• They have wooden balances, the bar of which has a cord in the middle by which it is held. At one end is a bit of lead, and at the other marks like quarter-libras, third-libras, and libras. When they wish to weigh they take the scales which has three wires like ours, and place it above the marks, and so weigh accurately.
• They have very large measures without any bottom.
• The youth play on pipes made like ours which they call subin.
• Their houses are constructed of wood, and are built of planks and bamboo, raised high from the ground on large logs, and one must enter them by means of ladders.
• They have rooms like ours; and under the house they keep their swine, goats, and fowls.

There are large sea snails [corniolli] called laghan which are beautiful and can kill whales.

• The whale swallows them alive, and when they are in the whale’s body, they come out of their shells and eat the whale’s heart.
• Those people afterward find them alive near the dead whale’s heart.
• Those creatures have black teeth and skin and a white shell, and the flesh is good to eat.
• They are called .

Zula was a chief of Mactan island.

On Friday, April 26, he sent one of his sons:

• to present 2 goats to Magellan
• to say that the other chief Lapulapu had refused to obey the king of Spain and so he could not send him all the articles he had promised

He requested Magellan to send him 1 boatload of men on the next night, so that they might help him and fight against the other chief.

Magellan decided to go with 3 boatloads.

We begged him repeatedly not to go, but he, like a good shepherd, refused to abandon his flock.

The Battle of Mactan

At midnight, 60 of us set out armed with corselets and helmets, together with Raha Humabon, the prince, some of the chief men, and 20-30 balanguais.

• We reached Matan three hours before dawn.

Magellan did not wish to fight then, but sent a message to the natives through the Moro merchant to the effect that if they would obey the king of Spagnia, recognize Raha Humabon as their sovereign, and pay us our tribute, he would be their friend.

• But that if they wished otherwise, they should wait to see how our lances wounded.
• They replied that if we had lances they had lances of bamboo and stakes hardened with fire.
• [They asked us] not to proceed to attack them at once, but to wait until morning, so that they might have more men.

They said that to induce us to search for them.

• They had dug certain pitholes between the houses for us to fall into.
• When morning came 49 of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through water for more than two crossbow flights before we could reach the shore.
• The boats could not approach nearer because of certain rocks in the water.
• 11 men remained behind to guard the boats.

When we reached land, the natives of more than 1,500 had formed in three divisions.

• When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud cries, two divisions on our flanks and the other on our front.
• Magellan formed us into two divisions and we began to fight.
• The musketeers and crossbowmen shot uselessly for about a half-hour because the shots only passed through the shields which were made of thin wood.
• Magellan cried to them, “Cease firing! cease firing!” but his order was not at all heeded.
• When the natives saw that we were shooting our muskets to no purpose, they redoubled their shouts to stand firm.
• When we fired muskets, the natives would never stand still, but leaped about covering themselves with their shields.
• They shot so many arrows at us and hurled so many bamboo spears (some of them tipped with iron) at Magellan, besides pointed stakes hardened with fire, stones, and mud, that we could scarcely defend ourselves.
• Magellan sent some men to burn their houses to terrify them, but made them more furious.
• We burned 20-30 houses at the cost of two of our men being killed.
• So many of them charged down upon us that they shot Magellan through the right leg with a poisoned arrow.

He ordered us to retire slowly, but the men ran away except 8 of us who remained with Magellan.

• The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare.
• So many were the spears and stones that they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance.
• The mortars in the boats could not aid us as they were too far away.

So we continued to retire for more than a good crossbow flight from the shore always fighting up to our knees in the water.

• The natives continued to pursue us, and picking up the same spear four or six times, hurled it at us again and again.

So many turned on Magellan that they knocked his helmet off his head twice, but he always stood firmly like a good knight, together with some others.

• Thus we fought for more than one hour, refusing to retreat
• A native hurled a bamboo spear into Magellan’s face, but Magellan immediately killed him with his lance which stayed in the native’s body. Magellan could not retrive it as he was wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear.
• When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him.
• One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass which caused Magellan to fall face downward.
• They immediately rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed him
• Magellan turned around many times to see whether we were all in the boats.

We then retreated, as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off.

• Raja Humabon would have aided us, but Magellan told him not to leave his balanghai, but to stay to see how we fought.
• When the king learned that Magellan was dead, he wept.
• Had it not been for Magellan, not a single one of us would have been saved in the boats, for while he was fighting the others retired to the boats.

I hope that the fame of Magellan will not become effaced in our times.

• 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.
• And that this was the truth was seen openly, for no other had had so much natural talent [183]nor the boldness to learn how to circumnavigate the world, as he had almost done.
• That battle was fought on Saturday, April 27, 1521.
• He wanted to fight on Saturday, because it was the day especially holy to him.

The Aftermath

Our casualties were:

• 8 of our men were killed with Magellan in that battle
• 4 natives, who had become Christians and who had come afterward to aid us were killed by the mortars of the boats.

Of the enemy, only 15 were killed, while many of us were wounded.

In the afternoon, Humabon sent a message with our consent to the people of Mactan, to give us Magellan and the other dead men and we would give them as much merchandise as they wished.

They answered that they:

• would not give them up for all the riches in the world.
• intended to keep him as a memorial

On that day, the four men who had remained in the city to trade, had our merchandise carried to the ships.

Then we chose 2 commanders:

1. Duarte Barboza, a Portuguese and Magellan’s relative
2. Johan Seranno, a Spaniard

Henrich our interpreter, was wounded slightly.

He would not go ashore any more to attend to our necessary affairs, but always kept his bed.

Barboza cried out to him that although Magellan was dead, he was not free.

On the contrary Barboza, would see to it that when we should reach Espagnia, he should still be the slave of Doña Beatrice, Magellan’s wife.

He threatened to flog Henrich. And so Henrich arose and went ashore to tell Humabon that we were about to leave very soon and Humabon could gain the ships and all our merchandise.

So they arranged a plot. Henrich returned to the ship where he showed that he was more cunning than before.

On Wednesday morning, May 1, Humabon sent word to the commanders that the jewels which he had promised to send to the king of Spagnia were ready, and that he begged them and their other companions to come to dine with him that morning, when he would give them the jewels.

24 men went ashore, among whom was our astrologer, San Martín de Sivilla. I could not go because my face was swollen by a poisoned arrow.

• Jovan Carvaio and the constable returned.
• They told us that they saw the man who had been cured by a miracle.
• He took the priest to his house.
• But they left that place because they suspected some evil.
• We suddenly heard loud cries so we immediately weighed anchor and fired many mortars into the houses and drew in nearer to the shore.
• We saw Johan Seranno in his shirt bound and wounded, crying to us not to stop firing, for the natives would kill him.
• He told us that all the others were dead except Henrich.
• He begged us to redeem him with some of the merchandise.
• But Johan Carvaio, his boon companion, and others would not allow the boat to go ashore.
• We then immediately departed. I do not know whether he is dead or alive.

Cebu is a large island with dogs, cats, rice, millet, panicum, sorgo, ginger, bananas, oranges, lemons, sugarcane, garlic, honey, cocoanuts, nangcas, gourds, flesh of many kinds, palm wine, and gold.

• It has a good port with two entrances—one to the west and the other to the east northeast.
• It lies in x degrees of latitude toward the Arctic Pole, and in a longitude of 164 degrees from the line of demarcation.
• We heard of Moluccas there before the death of Magellan.
• Those people play a violin with copper strings.

18 leguas from Cebu is another island called Bohol where we burned the ship “Conceptione,” for too few men of us were left [to work it].

• We stowed the best of its contents in the other two ships, and the laid our course toward the south southwest, coasting along the island called Panilongon, where black men like those in Ethiopia live.