A Question of Rifle Technology and Tactics - not necessarily Heroes

(One reason why the Filipinos lost the Phil-American War)
By Tommy Matic IV (Guest Writer)

After Aguinaldo's capture in Palanan, Filipino patriots across the archipelago wondered, with broken hearts and tearful eyes, why they lost their war for independence. Was it treachery by the elites that sold them out? Was it, as General Jose Alejandrino complained, "cavitenism" which ensured that only generals loyal to Aguinaldo were promoted (of course ignoring the meteoric rise to full general status that he and Antonio Luna got for no other reason that they both were educated by the guy who educated the dead Edilberto Evangelista)? Was it because, as Mabini bitterly wrote, the revolution was badly led by a leader who allowed corruption and favoritism to reign? 

Or was it something that Filipinos had not really understood and yet had influenced their fight for freedom from the start, something that Bonifacio had been warned against by Santiago Alvarez, Emilio Aguinaldo, Jose Rizal and Antonio Luna but chose to ignore anyway. Something that even modern Filipinos, even modern Filipino historians seem to know nothing about or utterly ignore. 

Could it be that the Filipinos were beaten because they were unable to keep up with technological advances in weapons development? 

From the start, Emilio Aguinaldo made it a paramount priority to acquire modern rifles for the Filipinos. As a young town mayor he would have had experience with modern rifles, leading his town's cuadrilleros against bandits and tulisanes, maybe even riding alongside the local Guardia Civil to hunt down more dangerous bandits. After his capture of the Imus Friar hacienda, Aguinaldo comments on the penetrating power of the Winchester repeater that he acquired there. In G.Younghusband's The Philippines and Round-About, the young officer's audience with Aguinaldo in 1898 includes Aguinaldo talking about the war with the Mahdists in Sudan, the Omdurmann Campaign (which future PM Winston Churchill participated in) and the qualities of the Lee-Metford Rifle. Aguinaldo was clearly well aware of developments in rifle technology and it's no wonder that the one thing he spent his share of the Biak na Bato money on was thousands of Mauser rifles and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition for them. 

Through two bloody years of revolutionary conflict, the Filipinos had plenty of battle experience - against the Spaniards. The Spaniards used volume of fire tactics: firing as many rounds downrange as they can rapidly then closing with the bayonet. It's an intimidation tactic designed to drive off Moro warriors or insurrectionists. Filipino officers adopted Spanish drill and tactics (logically, what other model would they have?) and were used to doing the same thing - Waiting till the enemy was in body-punching range, engaging with firepower then charging and taking enemy weapons (Agaw-Armas) then retreating to their trenches.

Americans used long range marksmanship fire tactics. While the Spaniards clearly knew how to use their Mauser M93 rifles, as they did to Bonifacio at Pinaglabanan, killing, wounding or capturing some 600 of his 2,500 Katipuneros for the loss of less than ten of their 70 defenders of the Polvorin, as well as during the Spanish American war, costing the Americans more than a thousand casualties at the battle of San Juan/Kettle Hill in Cuba, Spanish tactics (similar to French and Russian, I might add, echoing the Russian saying "the bayonet is a hero, the bullet is a fool") were designed to close with the enemy and use the cold steel. American tactics were designed to kill the enemy at a distance. This is a major reason that the casualty difference between Filipinos and Americans during the war was so great, with 0-5 Americans being killed for every 5-50 Filipinos. Luna aggravated this by launching massive offensives against prepared American defenses at the start of the war that were well beyond Filipino capacity to maneuver and coordinate, costing the lives of thousands of heroic Filipino troops, doubtless including many veterans of the Revolution. Americans were also well supported by their better trained heavy artillery, plus the big guns of their steel warships off the coast (near Manila, Cavite particularly). 

One of the first despairing reactions I had after watching Heneral Luna was to read the official report to the US Adjutant General during the war. Report after report after report stated that only very few Americans were being killed or wounded in each engagement, while comparatively large numbers of Filipinos were killed, wounded or captured. Even in 'victories' like San Mateo where General Henry Ware Lawton was killed, only a few (not more than ten if I remember correctly) Americans were killed. Far more Americans were killed by tropical illness, tropical alcohol and venereal disease - Filipina women likely injured more American soldiers with their *ahem ahem* than Filipino men with bullets and bolos. 

So thanks to Spanish influenced battle tactics of going mano-a-mano, the Filipinos tended to lose far more men to well trained American riflemen. 

Second, Filipinos were very poor on the defensive which is very surprising since many were armed with the best weapon of the war, the German-designed Spanish M93 Mauser bolt-action rifle aka "the Spanish hornet". This was the gun that killed and wounded more than a thousand American soldiers during the battle of San Juan and Kettle Hill during the Spanish American War. So why did Goyo del Pilar not inflict a thousand American casualties at Tirad Pass when he arguably had better ground? 

One reason seems to be a command decision made by Aguinaldo that Luna was pushing for from the beginning - the use of guerrilla tactics. 

Luna was in favor of guerrilla tactics from the beginning with makes perfect sense, militarily. It does not, however, make sense politically or socially. Guerrilla tactics are hit-and-run, playing a long game and place the burden of suffering in war on the civilian population. Aguinaldo did not want to do this to the Filipino people - though as we now know, he was forced to do this in the end, anyway. Guerrilla tactics are also mainly political, attacking "soft" targets such as hospitals, collaborationists, enemy-installed-local leadership, communications personnel and logistics/supply lines (in the Philippine case as John Sayles' Amigo demonstrated, scores of hapless Chinese coolies that the Americans were using as auxiliaries) or high ranking enemy personages. Guerrillas rarely, if ever, engage stronger enemy military units - indeed the whole point of guerrilla warfare is to avoid engaging enemy military units that can do serious damage to guerrillas. The guerrillas aim is to outlast, outfight and outlive the oppressive enemy regime. 

Aguinaldo refused to do this not just because he did not want to burden the Filipino people but because of another, political problem, guerrilla warfare posed: guerrillas are almost inevitably portrayed as stateless criminals, tulisanes and bandidos, by the oppressive enemy regime. Aguinaldo wanted to demonstrate to the world, particularly to the European Great Powers, that the Filipinos were not a primitive race but civilized Europeans, with highly literate administrators and diplomats and a civilized, well drilled army. This was his rationale for fighting 'in a civilized manner' for almost the entire first year of the war until losses were just too great that he was forced to abandon it. Sadly, Aguinaldo's best argument for Filipino civilization was lying dead in Paco cemetery, shot by the Spaniards as a traitor two years previous and Aguinaldo could do no more than inaugurate a national day of memory and mourning on December 30, 1898 for Dr. Jose Rizal. 

The Filipinos initiated guerrilla tactics in November 1899. Aguinaldo disbanded the Army of Liberation and sent most of the soldiers to their home provinces as cadres to form guerrilla bands. This included the elite Tinio and del Pilar Brigades, though as Dr.Villa's diary clearly shows, several companies were brigaded together to form the new Cuerpo de la Guardia Presidencial, replacing the disgraced Kawit Brigade which were punished for murdering Luna by degredation to line infantry status from being the Presidential Guards. If the entire Del Pilar Brigade, several hundred men, were covering ALL the mountain passes with a mobile reserve to plug the gaps, that would have been far more difficult for the Americans to flank and would have allowed them to block the American advance for longer, maybe indefinitely. But all this we know with the benefit of hindsight. Aguinaldo did not know this in November 1899 when he sent most of the army away. All he knew is that he needed to outlast the enemy, however which way he could, and keep the flame of Filipino freedom alive. 

Third problem was the Filipino lack of preparedness and training, which honestly is not the fault of the Filipinos (and if one wants to blame anyone it would really fall on Antonio Luna's feet as chief of the army, not Aguinaldo's - though I blame neither man). This has been a constant complaint through Tarrog's two films - unpreparedness. 

I would counter by stating the simple fact that one cannot "level up" automatically without a cheat code. One cannot gain massive amounts of practical, real world experience without being highly trained by a vastly superior entity. You don't get something from nothing. 

Japan was able to advance from a feudal state to a World Power in about 45 years from the Meiji Restoration and its wars, to beating the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War because Great Britain helped it. The British built their battleships, trained their officers - in fact the Japanese naval aviators that sunk the British battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse dropped a wreath over the sunken warships, honoring their former mentors. 

Conversely, the Boer Republics had about 30 years to prepare for war with the British Empire - they even defeated the British in the 1880's in the first Boer War. They had a highly evolved government that made trade treaties with Germany and bought Krupp Artillery and Mauser Rifles. They had a highly evolved, if small, regular Army. They had an EXTREMELY effective and mobile mounted militia force, the Kommandos - where we get our modern special forces term "Commando" because Winston Churchill, then a young officer and war correspondent, was captured by the Boer Kommandos who blew up the armored train he was riding on. And yet with all these advantages they lost the war to the British Empire. 

The Filipinos did not even have a year to prepare. They did the best with the time and resources that they had. The British embargoed the sale of rifles and ammunition out of their colonies which deeply limited the availability of weapons to the Filipino Republic. Luna did what he could - setting up a military academy under Manuel Sityar, ex-Guardia Civil officer, at Malolos, while training the troops in an increasingly abrasive fashion. While Luna's leadership became clearly toxic, it's almost certainly a toxicity borne of desperation. 

The Mauser M93 is one of the best rifles of all time, certainly the best rifle of the Phil-American War yet the Filipinos performed so horribly with it, even allowing frontal attacks to be performed by the Americans - something that would be suicidal if done to the Boers (as the British demonstrated during 'Black Week' in the concurrent Boer War). Why?

I believe that it is because firearm technology had evolved beyond the capacity for the Filipinos to resupply their ammunition. 

Older weapons, flintlocks, rifled muskets all the way to the breechloading rifles - Springfield Trapdoor, Remington Rolling Block, Martini-Henry, Winchester Repeater - used black powder cartridges. This is the same black powder - gunpowder - that fills your firecrackers at New Year. Filipinos could make this - General Jose Ignacio "Intsik" Pawa set up a system to refill and reuse old Remington cartridges and General Daniel Tirona (yes THAT Daniel Tirona, of Tejeros infamy) was in charge of directing auxiliaries (including little children) to pick up used brass cartridges and bring them back for refilling. 

Now of course this is dangerous - just using a cartridge weakens it and eventually the thing will either crack and jam or explode in your rifle, but desperate times call for desperate work-arounds. The Remington Rolling Block was the standard rifle of the native units of the Spanish Colonial Army - the six fixed native infantry regiments (68th through 74th) and the three tercios (regiments) of Guardia Civil, as well as the Guardia Civil Veteranas which were part of the permanent garrison of Manila (Intramuros). This meant that most of the weapons the revolutionaries had were Remingtons, stolen, bought, agaw-armas from the native Filipinos in the Spanish army. The Filipino revolutionaries could refill Remington cartridges - they had no way to do the same for Mauser cartridges. 

The Mauser is a much more advanced weapon. It uses what used to be called "guncotton", highly flammable, extremely powerful, it became known as "smokeless powder". Remember that New Years gunpowder reference? Remember how much smoke gunpowder creates during New Year and how it hurts and irritates the nose and eyes? Imagine that exploding right next to your face in the breech of your musket - that was how soldiers fought for hundreds of years. Breechloaders closed that breech but then the powder exploded out of the muzzle of the rifle, spitting out lots of black smoke and kicking the rifle backwards into you, the firer. Many soldiers commented that black powder breechloaders kicked like a mule or carabao, many had dislocated shoulders from the recoil. 

Not so with the Mauser. The Mauser is a far smaller caliber, far higher velocity weapon as were all future rifles of this type like the Krag which the Americans used, and the Springfield 03 which the Americans developed in response to the war here in the Philippines. The Mauser is far more accurate, far longer ranged and far more powerful, capable of going through several bodies before losing too much velocity. That's all thanks to smokeless powder. 

Filipinos had no way to make smokeless powder. They could not therefore train too much with their precious and dwindling supply of ammunition. And they had very limited amounts of ammunition to fight with. 

If smokeless powder ammunition ran out the Filipinos either had no ammunition or would be forced to use black powder to refill Mauser cartridges. Once again remember Chinese New Year - after the fireworks and fire crackers stop, what do you find on your windows and walls the next morning. Soot - plenty of it. This was another problem with black powder. Black powder sticks to things and it will stick to the inside of your firearm. Imagine taking a beautifully designed and extremely precise piece of machinery and putting peanut butter in it. It won't work right? Worse, the black powder would fill up the breech and rifling, leading to gun jams, misfires and drastically lowering the accuracy and velocity of the weapon. Using black powder will basically ruin your Mauser rifle. 

Another problem was most Filipinos did not know how to use their rifle sights. This by the way, like the indolence of the Filipinos, is at its root a Spanish bad habit. American historians mentioned that the Spaniards REMOVED THE SIGHTS OF THEIR RIFLES in Cuba because it would rip their uniforms. So this bad habit was passed on to the Pinoys, though most likely not in elite units like the Kawit Brigade (Presidential Guards) or Goyo del Pilar's Brigade. 

This is likely why Filipino marksmanship was so uneven. Only a few sharpshooters received marksmanship training under Luna's initiatives while individual commanders like Goyo del Pilar and Licerio Geronimo did the best to give their units better rifle training. The majority were forced to make do. Filipinos had to choose between dying from long range rifle fire or closing to engage in close combat.

Major Peyton C. March in his account notes that Goyo del Pilar's command was "entirely equipped with Mausers" and that the "smokeless powder made it hard to spot their positions". This carefully and jealously hoarded cache of ammunition was issued to Goyo's men to help better their chances of giving the Americans a bloody nose. Like Aguinaldo and Luna, Goyo and his immortal 60 Tirad Pass defenders 'did the best with the instruments that they were given' (as the Duke of Wellington remarked at the 'infamous' quality of his army before facing Napoleon at Waterloo) and their courage, their standing their ground like 'the Demons of Camerone' or 'Leonidas' 300' (which by the way, was Major March's invention - he was the one who called Tirad Pass, 'the Philippine Thermopylae') should be HONORED, not spat on, by this generation of Filipinos. 

We may not have a lot but let us do the best with what we've got.
#TUKLAS
(CARD OF THANKS: The publisher expresses his profound appreciation and gratitude to Mr. Tommy Matic IV for giving his consent and allowing the foregoing article which was originally posted in "Philippine Camelot: Asia's First Republic & War of Independence" page of  FACEBOOK to be republished in this website. Sgd: Macario A. Capili)