As he considered the request and the possible motives behind it, Magellan lost precious time, along with the advantages of darkness and a favorable tide. The shallow water meant that the longboats had to keep away from the beach, which was bad enough; worse, the big ships had to stay even farther back, in deep water. The increased distance from the longboats to the shore meant that Magellan’s men would be completely exposed to Lapu Lapu’s spears for a much longer period of time as they waded to land, and it meant that the ships would be so far from the scene of battle that their crossbows and artillery would be useless.
By the time Magellan ordered his men to charge, the sky had already begun to glow with the approaching dawn. “Forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through the water for more than two crossbow flights before we could reach the shore,” Pigafetta wrote. By this reckoning, the distance was about two thousand feet, nearly half a mile, and a very dangerous half mile that was, because the men were completely unprotected. “The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats.” Meanwhile, the Cebuan king, prince, and soldiers, confined to their light, maneuverable balanghai, looked on, powerless to affect events. They acted under orders from Magellan himself, who had repeatedly warned them to stay clear of the fighting.
As Magellan’s men awkwardly waded through the water to the beach, they were confronted by armed warriors prepared for a battle to the death. The Mactanese emerging from the jungle numbered not in the dozens, as expected, but, according to Pigafetta’s reckoning, fifteen hundred—all from the village Magellan had just destroyed. The ratio of Mactanese fighters to Europeans was thirty to one. Magellan had boasted that just one of his armored men was worth a hundred island warriors; his estimate was about to be put to the test.
“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 General saw that, he formed us in 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 [bearers’] arms.” The artillery failed to have any effect on the enemy; the Europeans’ predicament grew worse, and the battle intensified. “The Captain General cried to them, ‘Cease firing! Cease firing!’ but his order was not heeded. When the natives saw that we were shooting our muskets to no purpose . . . 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.”
The besieged Europeans, protected by their armor, awkwardly made their way through this deadly gauntlet to the shore. “The beach where they landed is very low,” de Mafra recalled, “so they left the skiffs very far from the shore. Reaching it, they saw a big village in a palm grove, but there was nobody to be seen.” Magellan, instead of rethinking the situation, ordered the men to do the one thing that was most likely to incite the Mactanese: “Burn their houses in order to terrify them,” in Pigafetta’s words. Predictably, “When they saw their houses burning, they were roused to greater fury.”
The Europeans set fire to one house, driving fifty warriors armed with swords and shields from their hiding place into the open. “They charged down upon our men,” said de Mafra, “striking them with their swords. In the midst of this skirmish, one of those heathens slashed a Galician [crew member] with his sword, cutting his thigh, and he later died as a result. Our men, wanting to avenge this, charged against the heathens, who beat a retreat, and as our men were chasing them, they came out of a path at the backs of our men, as if it had all been planned as an ambush, and, with earsplitting shouts, pounced on our men and began to kill them.”
As the mayhem grew, the Europeans suffered more casualties. “Two of our men were killed near the houses, while we burned twenty or thirty houses,” Pigafetta reported. Even their armor failed to protect the men against all the arrows flying in their direction. “So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the Captain General through the right leg with a poisoned arrow.” It was only now, too late, that Magellan realized the gravity of his situation. He finally gave the order to retreat, even though his men were stranded far from their longboats. More than forty of the Europeans scattered as best they could, while six or seven diehards, Pigafetta included, stuck by the wounded Captain General as the Mactanese pressed the attack: “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 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 General, so many turned on 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 one hour, refusing to retire farther.”
All this time, no one came to the aid of Magellan and his small band fighting for their lives—no Cebuans in their balanghai, and no reinforcements from the ships. Pigafetta explains that the “Christian king”—faithful Humabon—“would have aided us, but the Captain General charged him before we landed not to leave his balanghai but to stay to see how we fought,” an order that Humabon was only too glad to obey. At last, some Cebuan converts showed up in their balanghai, but by then it was too late. Friendly fire from the ships felled many of them before they came to Magellan’s aid; perhaps the seamen mistook them for adversaries rather than allies. Meanwhile, Magellan was rapidly weakening from the effects of the poisoned arrow in his leg, as the implacable Mactanese closed in and the two sides fought hand to hand.
“An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the Captain General’s face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian’s body. Then, trying to lay his hand on his 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 larger.” The wounded leader “turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats,” Pigafetta took care to note, and without that concern, “Not a single one of us would have been saved in the boats, for while he was fighting, the others retired to the boats.” Meanwhile, the scimitars’ repeated blows took their mortal toll. “That caused the Captain General 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. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated as best we could to the boats, which were already pulling off.”
At that moment, the Cebuan warriors finally came to the Europeans’ aid. They charged into the water, brandishing their swords, and drove off the Mactanese, who displayed little desire to make war on their neighbors. When the water had cleared, the Cebuans dragged the exhausted survivors into their balanghai and delivered them to the armada’s longboats, which remained curiously distant from the scene of battle.