Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

by Laurence Bergreen

  Turning the situation to his advantage, Sula asked Magellan for a boatload of armored warriors to fight against Lapu Lapu’s men. Magellan, never one to back down, declared that he would send not one but three longboats filled with warriors. Thanks to Magellan’s belligerence, Sula came out the clear winner; rather than placing his soldiers at Magellan’s disposal, Magellan now placed his men at Sula’s service.

  And so the battle lines were drawn.

  The decision to fight threw the armada into a state of alarm. Magellan’s inner circle immediately recognized that they had reached another turning point in the expedition. For the first time since their arrival in these lush islands, they seriously questioned Magellan’s judgment, if not his sanity. “A man who carried on his shoulders so momentous a business had no need to test his strength,” Ginés de Mafra observed. “From victory . . . he would benefit little; and from the opposite, the Armada, which was more important, would be set at risk.” Juan Serrano, the captain of unlucky Santiago, passionately argued against entering into a needless battle. Converting natives was all to the good, but their primary mission was to reach the Spice Islands; that was what their orders from King Charles commanded them to do. He reminded Magellan that they had already suffered many casualties and could not afford more loss of life. Assembling a force large enough to face the islanders meant the ships would stand nearly empty and thus become vulnerable to attack; in the worst-case scenario, they might lose the battle and their ships. Even Pigafetta, among the most fervent believers in Magellan, cautioned the Captain General against taking drastic and unnecessary measures against Lapu Lapu. But no matter how many times they all implored him to follow a peaceful and practical strategy, Magellan refused to back down. “We begged him repeatedly not to go, but he, like a good shepherd, refused to abandon his flock.”

  In the face of criticism, Magellan did make two minor concessions. He reduced the number of men to a bare minimum, and he ordered his ships to keep far from shore. These crucial strategic decisions would place the entire enterprise at a tremendous disadvantage as the battle unfolded.

  Without realizing it, Lapu Lapu had done just the right thing to incite Magellan to battle. He could not resist a challenge and thrived on confrontation. Throughout the voyage, he had put down mutinies, braved storms, navigated the strait, and crossed the Pacific, all with single-minded determination. He had even offered his head if a converted islander failed to recover. Each time, Magellan had succeeded, and he was convinced that the battle of Mactan would fit the same pattern. He would emerge victorious, not because of superior manpower or strategy, but because it was God’s will. His officers, however, did not share his faith in divine intervention. They had no choice but to go along with the Captain General, and so they did, for the sake of form. At the same time, they planned to remain at a safe distance. If Magellan wanted to try to take Mactan virtually single-handed, with only a few amateur warriors at his side, so be it. His officers would leave him to his fate.

  The Captain General gave the order to prepare for attack, and his donned armor, this time for actual combat, not for show. Their ranks included Pigafetta; Magellan’s slave, Enrique; and his illegitimate son, Cristóvão Rebêlo; along with a cadre of Cebuans in their own small vessels. The Cebuans were under orders not to fight, but merely to observe the “Spanish lions” hunt their prey.

  “At midnight, sixty 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 balanghai. We reached Mactan three hours before dawn.” Magellan declared that he did not wish to fight, which must have come as a relief to his apprehensive men; instead, he sent a message to Lapu Lapu that if he would simply “obey the king of Spain, recognize the Christian king as their sovereign, and pay us our tribute, he [Magellan] would be their friend; but that if they wished otherwise, they should wait to see how our lances wounded.” This was the same arrangement Magellan had offered the other islanders, who had readily accepted either of their own free will or after a brief show of force. Based on his recent experiences, Magellan anticipated a ragged band of nearly naked warriors who would flee the moment he fired his artillery, and whose flimsy bamboo spears would be useless against impenetrable Spanish armor.

  Lapu Lapu refused to yield and sent back a message boasting of his weapons’ strength; his lances, he said, were made from stout bamboo, and his stakes “hardened with fire.” At the same time, Lapu Lapu asked Magellan to postpone his attack “until morning, so that they might have more men.” At first, Lapu Lapu’s absurd request baffled Magellan’s men, but later it was revealed as a delaying tactic. “They said that in order to induce us to go in search of them; for they had dug certain pits between the houses in order that we might fall into them.”

  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 i
n 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.

  This was not the dignified, pious ending that Magellan had envisioned for himself during those pressured months of preparation in Seville. No paupers would say prayers in his memory, no alms would be distributed in his name, no masses would be said for him in the churches of Seville. Not one maravedí from his contested estate would go to his wife or young son, or to his illegitimate older son, who had been killed in battle at his side in Mactan harbor. He would not be buried in the tranquil Seville cemetery he had picked out for himself; none of the plans he had carefully set out in his will would come to pass. Instead, pieces of his body, driven by the winds and tide, washed up on the sands of Mactan.

  In Magellan’s death, Pigafetta, who had fought at his side, saw a shining example of nobility, heroism, and glorious acceptance of fate. In the most emotional, eloquent entry of his entire diary, he memorialized his slain leader, whom he had revered. “I hope that . . . the fame of so noble a captain will not become effaced in our times. Among the other virtues that he possessed, he was more constant than anyone else in the greatest 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 his 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. . . .” Almost . . . perhaps the saddest and most telling word in Pigafetta’s eulogy.

  “That battle was fought on Saturday, April 27, 1521,” he concluded. “The Captain General died on a Saturday because it was the day most holy to him. Eight of our men were killed with him, 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.” The dead included Cristóvão Rebêlo, Magellan’s illegitimate son and constant companion on the voyage; Francisco Gómez, a seaman; Antonio Gallego, a cabin boy; Juan de Torres, a man-at-arms; Rodrigo Nieto, who had been Cartagena’s servant but had switched his loyalty to Magellan; and Anton de Escovar, who lingered for two days after the battle.

  Pigafetta’s eulogy makes clear that he was genuinely devastated. He had left Europe as a young man of literary inclination, eager to explore the world as Magellan’s guest, and now his Captain General was dead, and the identity of his successor uncertain. What Pigafetta had experienced of the world beyond Europe could only alarm him. Instead of monsters, magnetic islands, boiling seas, and mermaids, he had encountered fierce storms, cruelty and suffering, and widely scattered humans living in conditions unimaginable to him, people who were as likely to kill him as assist him. Most frustrating of all, the armada had come all this way, halfway around the world, sacrificed dozens of men, including Magellan, and had yet to reach the Spice Islands.

  In death, Magellan was not a hero to everyone, not even to those

  had admired his daring and skill. His loyalists believed he had courted death by picking an unnecessary quarrel with the Mactanese, who held all the military advantages. In his misguided quest for glory, Magellan had squandered lives and the resources of the armada; his reckless conduct grieved other crew members, but more than that, it angered them. In de Mafra’s judgment, Magellan’s final campaign amounted to “madcap foolhardiness which the unfortunate Magellan attempted . . . when he could have done some much better things instead.” In the name of King Charles, Magellan had pillaged and betrayed his hosts, and paid the ultimate price.

  The circumstances leading to Magellan’s spectacular, gory death were not, as has often been suggested, an aberration, the result of an unusual tactical error or inexplicable lapse of judgment. Rather, it was the direct outcome of his increasingly belligerent conduct in the Philippines,
where he burned the dwellings of people who could easily have been converted to Christianity by diplomacy rather than force. Through frequent displays of his military might, Magellan convinced the islanders—and himself—that he was omnipotent. It was only a matter of time until he provoked a confrontation with enemies who held a decisive advantage from which faith alone could not protect him. His thirst for glory, under cover of religious zeal, led him fatally astray. In the course of the voyage, Magellan had managed to outwit death many times. He overcame natural hazards ranging from storms to scurvy, and human hazards in the form of mutinies. In the end, the only peril he could not survive was the greatest of all: himself.

  Magellan’s death may also have been the result of one final mutiny by his own disenchanted sailors. Although Pigafetta and other eyewitnesses provide a detailed account of the Captain General’s actions during the fight in Mactan harbor, the whereabouts and actions of his backup is open to question—and to suspicion. During his amphibious landing, Magellan and his coterie expected the gunners aboard his ships to cover them with fire that would disperse the island warriors. Pigafetta, a gentleman, not a soldier or a seaman, believed the tide made it impossible for their ships to anchor close enough to the raging battle to be effective, but even after several hours of fighting, they failed to dispatch reinforcements in their longboats; indeed, the most striking element of Pigafetta’s account of the battle of Mactan concerns the inexplicable isolation of Magellan and his small band. The Cebuans eventually intervened, but not Magellan’s own men, a circumstance that makes no sense, unless the crew members refused to come to the Captain General’s aid or their officers ordered them to stay put. From the standpoint of the men in the ships, this mutiny had the advantage of being easy to disguise; the revolt consisted of what they failed to do rather than what they did. In effect, they allowed the Mactanese to do the dirty work for them; they left Magellan to die the death of a thousand cuts in Mactan harbor.