University:
Arcadia University
Course:
HIS200 | History
Academic year:

2020
Views:

424

Pages:

2
Author:

Kaiden Murphy

Today in Philippine history, June 5, 1899, General Antonio Luna was killed by Aguinaldo's men in Cabanatuan On June 5, 1899, General Antonio Luna was killed in the plaza of a rectory in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. Luna was to attend a council of war called by General Emilio Aguinaldo. Luna arrived with two aides-de camp and a mounted escort of twelve men. After dismounting and dismissing his escort, he proceeded alone to the rectory where Aguinaldo had his headquarters. On mounting the stairs, he was met by a junior officer, who informed him that Aguinaldo had left with his command. Luna felt slighted and expressed himself very strongly on the matter and prepared to take his departure. As he turned to leave the room, a sergeant of one of the two companies that Aguinaldo had left at Cabanatuan, sprang from behind the door, where he had been concealed, and attacked Luna from behind, inflicting a severe wound with a bolo. General Luna, seeing himself surrounded and realizing that he was practically in the same strait as Andres Bonifacio had been at Naic, some three years previously, drew his revolver to defend himself. Not wishing to be overcomed by numbers in a hand to hand struggle in the rectory, he forced his way through his assailants and rushed down stairs into the plaza to summon his escort to his assistance. On arriving in the plaza, he was confronted by one of the companies that Aguinaldo had left in Cabanatuan to arrest him at all costs. The officer in command, judging that Luna, if arrested alive, would only be a source of embarassment to Aguinaldo, ordered his men to fire a volley. Luna fell at the first discharge but did not die before he wounded a number of assailants with his revolver. Aguinaldo’s deadly telegram to Heneral Luna emerges in auction “Aguinaldo could not have been responsible for Luna’s death,” wrote Filipino historian Teodoro Agoncillo in “Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic” (1960). He said the reason behind Heneral Antonio Luna’s death relies on a telegram he allegedly received, which summons him to meet President Emilio Aguinaldo in Cabanatuan. “The telegram is missing, and no one has found a copy [of it].” But recently unearthed from the Estate of Grace Luna de San Pedro, the daughter-in-law of Juan Luna, is a 7 x 12-inch telegram that reads: “PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR, DAGUPAN : Paging for an important meeting, therefore you are ordered to come here immediately. This is in response to your previous telegram about urgent matters to discuss. It is really an emergency.” The document was dated June 4, 1899–the day before Luna faced his death in the hands of the Kawit Brigade. It’s the telegram historians have been looking for for more than a century. And it’s about to be sold at a floor price of P500,000 in the year-end auction of Leon Gallery. This small, handwritten telegram unexpectedly unearthed in the Luna family hoard plays an important role in our country’s history. Luna was committed to protecting the people during the war with the “urgent matters” he wanted to discuss with the president. Aguinaldo, on the other hand, was committed to silencing Luna.

General Antonio Luna was Killed by Aguinaldo's Men in Cabanatuan

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