What Magellan’s Death Says About His Motives — and Columbus’s
(Enrique’s Profiles, Magellan, Part 4.)
April 27, 1521: Ferdinand Magellan was killed in hand-to-hand combat at the Battle of Mactan (Philippines) halfway through that first circumnavigation. How Magellan went from explorer to front-line soldier in just six weeks after arriving in the Philippines is a question worth asking. Magellan’s death reminds about his motives and the motives of other explorers, Spanish, Portuguese, and later other European powers.
People debate the labels: explorer, navigator, adventurer, discoverer and of course from the opposite perspective, colonizer. But a better term for Magellan and Christopher Columbus is explorer-conqueror. The same goes for Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, and later the likes of James Cook. A perfect quote from the historian Yuval Harari (Sapiens): “…early modern Europeans caught a fever that drove them to sail to distant and completely unknown lands full of alien cultures, take one step on to their beaches, and immediately declare, ‘I claim all these territories for my king!’”
Magellan: Explorer-Conqueror
As for Magellan, he succeeded in the explorer part of his job: He found a strait that led to Balboa’s South Sea, managed to cross the unexpectedly gigantic “sea,” and named things along the way including the “Pacific” sea itself.
But immediately after arriving in the Philippines, Magellan got started on the conquering part of the job title, and that part didn’t go so well.
At Cebu Magellan made an alliance with a local ruler, Rajah Humabon, whom he baptized along with hundreds of others as Christians. (Religion has often been used in history to subjugate populations — and control trade — including in Southeast Asia before the arrival of Europeans.)
Magellan also sided with Humabon against a neighboring chief, Lapulapu on Mactan, a strategy the Portuguese employed successfully in India: siding with one state against another.
For Magellan, the alliance turned out to be a fatal one.
Magellan ordered Lapulapu to pay a tribute to Humabon. When Lapulapu refused, Magellan turned to the Portuguese tactics of Vasco da Gama and Francisco de Almeida in East Africa and India — he responded immediately with force.
Magellan boasted to Humabon that a single armored soldier of his could take on a hundred of the rajah’s warriors, and then put on fighting demonstrations to prove the assertion. Looking back on seven years’ experience in Asia and on his Morocco campaign, Magellan reckoned a small force from his fleet could quickly beat a small island village into submission.
Battle of Mactan (Antonio Pigfetta)
At daybreak on April 27, 1521, Magellan led a force of just 60 well-armed volunteers in three shallops from Cebu to Mactan. Leaving boat crews behind, he and 48 men waded (waddled?) ashore to attack.
Cebu and Mactan today.
We have more than one account of the events that day. Here is the most detailed (and colorful/dramatic) version written by Antonio Pigafetta, chronicler of the Magellan-Elcano expedition.
“The musketeers and crossbowmen shot from a distance for about a half-hour, but uselessly; for the shots only passed through the shields which were made of thin wood and the arms … When our muskets were discharged, the natives would never stand still, but leaped hither and thither, covering themselves… They shot so many arrows at us and hurled so many bamboo spears (some of them tipped with iron) at the captain-general, besides pointed stakes hardened with fire, stones, and mud, that we could scarcely defend ourselves …
“So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow. On that account, he ordered us to retire slowly, but the men took to flight, except six or eight of us who remained with the captain. The natives shot only at our legs, for the latter were bare; and 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.
“Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice, but he always stood firmly like a good knight, together with some others. Thus did we fight for more than one hour, refusing to retire farther. An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain’s face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian’s body.
“Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been 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 resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide.
“When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated, as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off.”
Among those last to retreat were Pigafetta and Magellan’s slave-interpreter Enrique of Malacca, both wounded in the fight. Also killed in the battle was Cristóbal Rabelo, possibly an illegitimate son of Magellan’s.
Massacre at Cebu
Four days later on May 1, 1521, most of the fleet’s officers and pilots were slaughtered in an ambush at Cebu — among them the two officers elected to replace Magellan: Duarte Barbosa, Magellan’s brother-in-law, and Juan Serrano. The fleet would be forced to scuttle one of the three remaining ships, but it continued on, eventually reaching their destination, the Spice Islands. After that, Juan Sebastián Elcano, then captain of the Victoria, decided to sail straight across the Indian Ocean without stopping, to avoid the Portuguese and return to Spain around the southern tip of Africa.
Magellan’s death held off Spanish colonization of the Philippines for forty years.
By John Sailors, Enrique’s Voyage
Notes
[1] It’s important to note Magellan never planned a circumnavigation. He might have mused at the possibility, but after seven years’ service in India and Southeast Asia, he knew how thoroughly the Portuguese controlled the waters and ports along all of India and both coasts of Africa. The Spanish fleet would not survive even halfway.
Enrique’s Voyage Profile: Ferdinand MagellanPart 1. Magellan’s Real Circumnavigation, Enrique of Malacca Taken as SlavePart 2. Magellan Wounded in Combat in Morocco, Defects to SpainPart 3. Magellan Beats Mutinies, Sabotage, Starvation to Cross PacificPart 4. What Magellan’s Death Says About His Motives — and Columbus’s
© 2022, by John Sailors.
