Excerpt from Antonio Pigafetta’s, Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo

in, in E.H. Blair and J.A. Robertson. The Philippine Islands , vol XXXIII, pp. 175-187

On Friday, April twenty-six, Zula, a chief of the island of Matan, sent one of his sons to
present two goats to the captain-general, and to say that he would send him all that he
had promised, but that he had not been able to send it to him because of the other chief
Cilapulapu, who refused to obey the king of Spagnia. He requested the captain to send
him only one boatload of men on the next night, so that they might help him and fight
against the other chief. The captain-general decided to go thither with three boatloads.
We begged him repeatedly not to go, but he, like a good shepherd, refused to abandon
his flock. At midnight, sixty men of us set out armed with corselets and helmets, together
with the Christian king, the prince, some of the chief men, and twenty or thirty balanguais.
We reached Matan three hours before dawn. The captain did not wish to fight then, but
sent a message to the natives by the Moro to the effect that if they would obey the king
of Spagnia, recognize the Christian king 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 in order to induce
us to go in search of them; for they had dug certain pitholes between the houses in order
that we might fall into them. When morning came forty-nine 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. The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats. When we
reached land, those men had formed in three divisions to the number of more than one
thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with
exceeding loud cries, two divisions on our flanks and the other on our front. When the
captain saw that, he formed us into two divisions, and thus did we begin to fight. 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
[of the bearers]. The captain cried to them, " Cease firing! cease firing l" but his order was
not at all heeded. When the natives saw that we were shooting our muskets to no
purpose, crying out they determined to stand firm, but they redoubled their shouts. When
our muskets were discharged, the natives would never stand still, but leaped hither and
thither, 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 the captain-general, besides
pointed stakes hardened with fire, stones, and mud, that we could scarcely defend
ourselves. Seeing that, the captain-general sent some men to burn their houses in order
to terrify them. When they saw their houses burning, they were roused to greater fury. Two
of our men were killed near the houses, while we burned twenty or thirty houses. 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. The Christian
king would have aided us, but the captain charged him before we landed, not to leave
his balanghai, but to stay to see how we fought. When the king learned that the captain
was dead, he wept. Had it not been for that unfortunate captain, 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 through [the efforts of] your most illustrious Lordship that the fame of so
noble a captain will not become effaced in our times. Among the other virtues which he
possessed, 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 nor the boldness to learn how to
circumnavigate the world, as he had almost done. That battle was fought on Saturday,
April twenty-seven, I52I. The captain desired to fight on Saturday, because it was the day
especially holy to him. Eight of our men were killed with him in that battle, and four
Indians, who had become Christians and who had come afterward to aid us were killed
by the mortars of the boats. Of the enemy, only fifteen were killed, while many of us were
wounded. In the afternoon the Christian king sent a message with our consent to the
people of Matan, to the effect that if they would give us the captain and the other men
who had been killed, we would give them as much merchandise as they wished. They
answered that they would not give up such a man, as we imagined [they would do], and
that they would not give him for all the riches in the world, but that they intended to keep
him as a memorial. On Saturday, the day on which the captain was killed, the four men
who had remained in the city to trade, had our merchandise carried to the ships. Then
we chose two commanders, namely, Duarte Barboza, a Portuguese and a relative of the
captain, and Johan Seranno, a Spaniard. As our interpreter, Henrich by name, was
wounded slightly, he would not go ashore any more to attend to our necessary affairs,
but always kept his bed. On that account, Duarte Barboza, the commander of the
flagship, cried out to him and told him, that although his master, the captain, was dead,
he was not therefore free; on the contrary he [i.e., Barboza] would see to it that when we
should reach Espagnia, he should still be the slave of Donia Beatrice, the wife of the
captain-general. And threatening the slave that if he did go ashore, he would be
flogged, the latter arose, and, feigning to take no heed to those words, went ashore to
tell the Christian king that we were about to leave very soon, but that if he would follow
his advice, he could gain the ships and all our merchandise. Accordingly they arranged
a plot, and the slave returned to the ship, where he showed that he was more cunning
than before. On Wednesday morning, the first of May, the Christian king 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. Twenty-four men went ashore,
among whom was our astrologer, San Martin de Sivilla. I could not go because I was all
swollen up by a wound from a poisoned arrow which I had received in my face. Jovan
Carvaio and the constable returned, and told us that they saw the man who had been
cured by a miracle take the priest to his house. Consequently, they had left that place,
because they suspected some evil. Scarcely had they spoken those words when we
heard loud cries and lamentations. We immediately weighed anchor and discharging
many mortars into the houses, drew in nearer to the shore. While thus discharging [our
pieces] we saw Johan Seranno in his shirt bound and wounded, crying to us not to fire
any more, for the natives would killhim. We asked him whether all the others and the
interpreter were dead. He said that they were all dead except the interpreter. He
begged us earnestly to redeem him with some of the merchandise; but Johan Carvaio,
his boon companion, [and others] would not allow the boat to go ashore so that they
might remain masters of the ships. But although Johan Serrano weeping asked us not to
set sail so quickly, for they would kill him, and said that he prayed God to ask his soul of
Johan Carvaio, his comrade, in the day of judgment, we immediately departed. I do not
know whether he is dead or alive.

Explain
The assigned reading material is an excerpt from the work of Antonio Pigafetta, Primo
Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo, which was published sometime in the 1550s, roughly two
decades after his death. The entire work documents the Magellan expedition of 1519-
1522 which originally was intended to locate the Westward route to the Spice Islands. The
excerpt narrates, among others, the battle of Mactan upto the escape of the Spanish
survivors.

Elaborate
Antonio Pigafetta, born in Italy in 1491, served in Magellan’s expedition in
1519 as the chronicler. He recorded the events that transpired during the
expedition even after the death of the Captain in 1521. He was fortunate to be
one of the 18 men to return to Spain aboard the ship Victoria captained by Juan
Sebastián Elcano in 1522. After the voyage, he related his experiences through
the report Primo Viaggio Intorno Al Mondo which were distributed to the
European nobility. The report was published posthumously (Pigafetta died in 1531)
in the 1550s by Italian historian Giovanni Battista Ramusio. Originally written in
Italian, the document in subsequent publications has been translated. The
excerpt above was the translation of James Alexander Robertson.
Evaluate
For this assessment, apply content and context analysis on the eyewitness
account of the Battle of Mactan by Pigafetta. You are encouraged to use other
references to be able to answer the following worksheet. Write your answer on
the space provided.