Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
patience snapped. Conditioned by months of conflict with argument-
ative captains and surly crews to regard tolerance as weakness, he
reacted swiftly and brutally. He ordered a group of islanders aboard
the
Trinidad
to be shot down by crossbowmen. Then he gathered a
force and went in search of his missing boat. Finding it, he punished
the culprits with death, then fired their village. It was a savage act,
even for that brutal age. It reveals a man whose judgement had been
affected by the ordeal of command in impossible circumstances; a
man at the end of his tether.
Six weeks later the captain general's inflexibility, magnified now
to the point of paranoia, cost him his life. He saw himself as one
of the great
conquistadores.
When his convoy reached the Philip-
pines, he planted the Castilian flag at Massava, on Easter day (31
March) and claimed the islands for Spain. But Magellan was not an-
other Cortes or Pizarro with an army at his back and time a-plenty
to impose his will on an alien people. He led a raggle-taggle band of
men, far from being in first class fighting trim, whose dreams were
not of colonial adventure but of getting safe home. Perhaps he be-
lieved that the God who had brought him safely through such ap-
palling hardships had a great work for him to accomplish; that noth-
ing and no one could stand against him and the fulfilment of his des-
tiny. Recklessly and heeding no advice, he set about imposing his
will by force upon the islanders. For their part, the local rulers re-
garded the strange white men with their massive, fire-belching 'ca-
noes' and their impregnable steel tunics as warriors sent by the gods
to help them in their own local warfare. Eagerly the lords of Cebu
and Mactan made alliance with Magellan, accepting a Spanish over-
lordship they had no intention of honouring and a baptism they did
not understand. Then they enlisted his aid against the troublesome
Lapulapu, a rebellious prince of Mactan. Magellan agreed to attack
Lapulapu's stronghold, brushing aside the united protest of all his
officers. On 27 April he led a frontal assault through the shallow wa-
