p of Dalahican,
and the city and arsenal of Cavite with the isthmus. The total number
of suspects shipped away was about 1,000. I was informed by my friend
the Secretary of the Military Court that 4,377 individuals were
awaiting trial by court-martial. The possibility of the insurgents
ever being able to enter the capital was never believed in by the
large majority of Europeans, although from a month after the outbreak
the rebels continued to hold posts within a couple of hours' march
from the old walls. The natives, however, were led to expect that the
rebels would make an attempt to occupy the city on Saint Andrew's Day
(the patron-saint day of Manila, _vide_ p. 50). The British Consul
and a few British merchants were of opinion that a raid on the
capital was imminent, and I, among others, was invited by letter,
dated Manila, November 16, 1896, and written under the authority of
H.B.M.'s Consul, to attend a meeting on the 18th of that month at the
offices of a British establishment to concert measures for escape in
such a contingency. In spite of these fears, business was carried on
without the least apparent interruption.

When General Blanco reached Spain he quietly lodged at the Hotel de
Roma in Madrid, and then took a private residence. Out of courtesy
he was offered a position in the _Cuarto Militar_, which he declined
to accept. For several months he remained under a political cloud,
charged with incompetency to quell the Philippine Rebellion. But there
is something to be said in justification of Blanco's inaction. He was
importuned from the beginning by the relentless Archbishop and many
leading civilians to take the offensive and start a war _a outrance_
with an inadequate number of European soldiers. His 6,000 native
auxiliaries (as it proved later on) could not be relied upon in a
_civil_ war. Against the foreign invader, with Spanish prestige still
high, they would have made good loyal fighting-material. Blanco was
no novice in civil wars. I remember his career during the previous
twenty-five years. With his 700 European troops he parried off the
attacks of the first armed mobs in the Province of Manila (now Rizal),
and defended the city and the approaches to the capital. Five hundred
European troops had to be left, here and there, in Visayas for the
ordinary defence. Before the balance of 300 could be embarked in half
a dozen places in the south and landed in Manila, the whole Province
of Cavite was in ar