Battle of Alapan

The Battle of Alapan was fought on May 28, 1898 and was the first military victory of Emilio Aguinaldo after his arrival to the Philippines from Singapore. By May 1898, the newly armed Philippine Revolutionary Army of 12,000 troops had arrived from Hong Kong and fought against a small garrison of Spanish troops in Alapan, Imus, Cavite, The battle raged on for 5 hours, from 10am to 3pm. After the victory at Alapan, Aguinaldo unfurled the Philippine flag for the first time,and hoisted it at the Teatro Caviteno in Cavite Nuevo (Present day Cavite City) in front of Filipino revolutionaries and more than 270 captured Spanish troops, A large group of American troops of the US Asiatic Squadron also witnessed the Unfurling ceremony.

Background


The previous year, marked the end of the first quarter of the Philippine Revolution with the signing of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato. The agreement stated that the Spanish government agreed to pay an amount of $800,000 Pesos in three installments. The first was received upon the exile of Aguinaldo and 25 other revolutionaries to Hong Kong. The second installment to be received once 700 arms had been surrendered, and the final installment received upon the declaration of general amnesty. The first two conditions were carried out, and Aguinaldo was exiled to Hong Kong; however, due to the continuous insurgency in the central Luzon region, general amnesty was never declared, and the Spanish government did not pay the final installment. Once in Hong Kong, Aguinaldo bought a number of firearms and prepared for the continuation of the revolution. In May 1898, with the outbreak of the Spanish–American War, Aguinaldo sought help from the USA, since US admiral George Dewey was en route to Manila Bay, Aguinaldo arrived on May 19, 1898, with a flag of his own design, sewn in Hong Kong by Marcela Agoncillo, and her daughter, with the help of Delfina Herbosa de Natividad, niece of Dr. Jose Rizal. Upon returning to the Philippines, Aguinaldo attacked a garrison of some 270 Spanish troops near Alapan.

The battle
The battle began at around 10 am. With more than 12,000 Filipino revolutionaries under his command, Gen. Aguinaldo attacked a garrison of 270 or more Spanish troops under the command of General Leopoldo Garcia Pena, the commander of Spanish troops in Cavite, he had over 2,800 men under his command, loosely scattered across Cavite. Upon hearing of Aguinaldo's return a column of 500 infantrymen from Manila was rushed to reinforce Gen. Pena, but they were killed by another force in Laguna under the command of Paciano Rizal and Pío del Pilar. Meanwhile, in Cavite, the combined force of over 6,000 men under Artemio Ricarte, Luciano San Miguel, Mariano Noriel and Juan Cailles pressured Pena's troops around Cavite. At Alapan, Aguinaldo's men fought at rather close range, armed with bamboo cannons, Mauser rifles and Bolos. The Filipinos attacked the garrison with full force despite heavy Spanish resistance. Aguinaldo's men had far more ammunition than the Spaniards stationed there; after 5 hours the Spaniards ran out of ammunition and surrendered. By the evening of May 31, the entire province of Cavite was under the revolutionaries.



Flag unfurling ceremony
After the battle, Aguinaldo, marched up to Cavite city together with the 270 Spanish captives including General Garcia-Pena himself, and unfurled what was to be the Philippine national flag. A personal account of Aguinaldo's battalion describes the battle and the ceremony in detail, "There it was that the first engagement of the Revolution of 1898 took place. The battle raged from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon, when the Spaniards ran out of ammunition and surrendered, with all their arms, to the Filipino revolutionists, who took their prisoners to Cavite. In commemoration of this glorious achievement, I hoisted our National Flag in the presence of a great crowd, who greeted it with tremendous applause and loud, spontaneous and prolonged cheers for independence." Within a few weeks, Cavite had been captured.