Antonio Luna

Antonio Luna de San Pedro y Novicio Ancheta was born on 29 October 1866 in Calle Urbiztondo (renamed Barraca Street), Binondo (now part of San Nicolas), Manila. He was the youngest of seven children of Joaquín Luna de San Pedro y Posadas (1829–1891) from Badoc and Spanish mestiza Laureana Novicio y Ancheta (1836–1906) from Luna, La Union (formerly Namacpacan). His father was a traveling salesman of the government tobacco monopoly. The tobacco monopoly was formally established in 1782. After their family moved to Manila in 1861, his father became a merchant in Binondo.

After his education under Maestro Intong, he studied at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1881. He went on to study literature and chemistry at the University of Santo Tomas, where he won first prize for a paper in chemistry titled Two Fundamental Bodies of Chemistry (Dos Cuerpos Fundamentales de la Quimica). He also studied Pharmacy. Meanwhile, his background on swordsmanship, fencing, and military tactics came from his studies under Don Martin Cartagena, a major in the Spanish Army. In addition, he acquired skill to become a sharpshooter. Upon the invitation of his elder brother Juan in 1890, Antonio was sent by his parents to Spain. There he acquired a licentiate (at Universidad de Barcelona) and doctorate (at Universidad Central de Madrid).

His older brother, Juan, was an accomplished painter who studied in the Madrid Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. His Spoliarium garnered one of the three gold medals awarded in the Madrid Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1884. Another brother, José, became a doctor. Yet another brother, Joaquín, fought with Antonio in the Philippine–American War, and later served as governor of La Union from 1904 to 1907. Joaquín would also serve as senator from 1916 to 1919. His three other siblings were Numeriana, Manuel, and Remedios.

Luna was active as a researcher in the scientific community. After receiving his doctorate in 1893, he published a scientific treatise on malaria entitled On Malarial Pathology (El Hematozorio del Paludismo), which was favorably received in the scientific community. He then went to Belgium and France, and worked as an assistant to Dr. Latteaux at the Pasteur Institute and to Dr. Laffen. In recognition of his ability, he was commissioned by the Spanish government to study tropical and communicable diseases. In 1894, he returned to the Philippines where he took part in an examination to determine who would become the chief chemist of the Municipal Laboratory of Manila. Luna came in first and won the position.

He and his brother Juan also opened the Sala de Armas, a fencing club, in Manila. When he learned of the underground societies that were planning a revolution and was asked to join, he scoffed at the idea and turned down the offer. Like other Filipino émigrés involved in the Reform Movement, he was in favor of reform rather than revolution as the way towards independence. Besides affecting their property, the proponents of the Reform Movement saw that no revolution would succeed without the necessary preparations. Nevertheless, after the existence of the Katipunan was leaked in August 1896, the Luna brothers were arrested and jailed in Fort Santiago for "participating" in the revolution. His statement concerning the revolution was one of the many statements used to abet the laying down of death sentence for José Rizal. Months later, José and Juan were freed but Antonio was exiled to Spain in 1897, where he was imprisoned in Madrid's Cárcel Modelo.

His more famous and yet controversial brother, Juan, who had been pardoned by the Spanish Queen Regent Maria Christina of Austria herself, left for Spain to use his influence to intercede for Antonio in August 1897. Soon enough, Antonio's case was dismissed by the Military Supreme Court and he was released.

Luna, repenting for his blunder during the end of the first phase during Philippine Revolution, which ended at the Pact of Biak-na-Bato, then prepared himself for the second phase. Upon his release in December 1897, Luna studied field fortifications, guerrilla warfare, organization, and other aspects of military science under Gerard Leman, who would later be the commanding general of the fortress at Liège. He also read extensively about the discipline when he was at the Ateneo de Madrid. The second phase of the revolution began with the return of Emilio Aguinaldo and the Dictatorial Government of the Philippines by the US Navy to Cavite in 1898. Upon arriving in Hong Kong, he was given a letter of recommendation to Aguinaldo and a revolver by Felipe Agoncillo. He returned to the Philippines in July 1898.

Luna was one of the first to see action in Manila on 13 August 1898, when the Americans landed troops in Intramuros. Since June 1898, Manila had been surrounded by the revolutionary troops. Colonel Luciano San Miguel occupied Mandaluyong, General Pío del Pilar, Makati, General Mariano Noriel, Parañaque, Colonel Enrique Pacheco, Navotas, Tambobong and Caloocan. General Gregorio del Pilar marched through Sampaloc, taking Tondo, Divisoria, and Azcárraga, Noriel cleared Singalong and Paco, and held Ermita and Malate. Luna thought the Filipinos should enter Intramuros to have joint occupation of the walled city. But Aguinaldo, heeding the advice of General Wesley Merritt and Commodore (later Admiral) George Dewey, whose fleet had moored in Manila Bay, sent Luna to the trenches where he ordered his troops to fire on the Americans. After the chaos following the American occupation, at a meeting in Ermita, Luna tried to complain to American officers about the disorderly conduct of their soldiers.

To silence Luna, Aguinaldo appointed him as Chief of War Operations on 26 September 1898 and assigned the rank of brigadier general. In quick succession, he was made the Director or Assistant Secretary of War and Supreme Chief of the Republican Army on 28 September, arousing the envy of the other generals who were fighting since the first phase of the Revolution. Meanwhile, Luna felt that bureaucratic placebos were being thrown his way when all he wanted was to organize and discipline the enthusiastic but ill-fed and ill-trained troops into a real army.

On 15 September 1898, the Malolos Congress, the constituent assembly of the First Philippine Republic, was convened in Barasoain Church. Luna would be one of the elected representatives, and was narrowly defeated by Pedro Paterno as President of the Congress with a vote of 24–23.

Seeing the need for a military school, in October 1898, Luna established a military academy at Malolos, known as the Academia Militar, which was the precursor of the present Philippine Military Academy. He appointed Colonel Manuel Bernal Sityar, a mestizo who was formerly a lieutenant serving the Civil Guard, as superintendent. He recruited other mestizos and Spaniards who had fought in the Spanish army during the 1896 Revolution for training. However, the academy had to be suspended indefinitely by March 1899 due to the outbreak of the Philippine–American War.

Convinced that the fate of the infant Republic should be a contest for the minds of Filipinos, Luna turned to journalism to strengthen Filipino minds with the ideas of nationhood and the need to fight the Americans. He decided to publish a newspaper, La Independencia. This four-page daily was filled with articles, short stories, patriotic songs and poems. The staff was installed in one of the coaches of the train that ran from Manila to Pangasinan. The paper came out in September 1898 and was an instant success. A movable feast of information, humor, and good writing, 4,000 copies were printed, which was more than all the other newspapers in circulation put together.

When the Treaty of Paris, under which Spain was to cede the Philippines to the United States, was made public in December 1898, Luna quickly decided to take military action. He proposed a strategy that was designed to trap the Americans in Manila before more of their troops could land by executing surprise attacks (guerrilla warfare) while building up strength in the north. If the American forces penetrated his lines, Luna determined that he would wage a series of delaying battles and prepare a fortress in northern Luzon, particularly the Cordillera. This, however, was turned down by the High Command, who still believed that the Americans would grant full independence.

The Luna Sharpshooters was a short-lived unit formed by Luna to serve under the Philippine Revolutionary Army. On 11 February, eight infantrymen, formerly under Captains Márquez and Jaro, were sent by then-Secretary of War Baldomero Aguinaldo to Luna, then-Assistant Secretary of War. The infantrymen were disarmed by the Americans. So, they journeyed to be commissioned in the regular Filipino army. Seeing their desire to serve in the army, Luna took them in and from their group grew and emerged as the Luna Sharpshooters. The sharpshooters became famous for their fierce fighting and proved their worth by being the usual spearheading unit in every major battle in the Philippine–American War. After the Battle of Calumpit on 25–27 April 1899, only seven or eight of them remained in the regular Filipino army. In the Battle of Paye on 18 December 1899, a Filipino sharpshooter, Private Bonifacio Mariano, under the command of General Licerio Gerónimo killed General Henry Ware Lawton, making the latter the highest ranking casualty during the course of the war.

Earlier in May 1899, Luna almost fell in the field at the Battle of Santo Tomas. Mounted on his horse, Luna then charged into the battlefield leading his main force in a counterattack. As they advanced, the American forces began firing upon them. Luna's horse was hit and he fell to the ground. As he recovered, Luna realized that he had been shot in the stomach, and he attempted to kill himself with his revolver to avoid capture. He was saved, though, by the actions of a Filipino colonel named Alejandro Avecilla who, having seen Luna fall, rode towards the general to save him. Despite being heavily wounded in one of his legs and an arm, with his remaining strength Avecilla carried Luna away from the battle to the Filipino rear. Upon reaching safety, Luna realized that his wound was not very deep as most of the impact of the bullet had been taken by a silk belt full of gold coins that his parents had given him, which he had been wearing. As he left the field to have his wounds tended, Luna turned over the command to General Venacio Concepción, the Filipino commander of the nearby town of Angeles. Meanwhile, in recognition of his work, Luna was awarded the Philippine Republic Medal. By the end of May 1899, Colonel Joaquín Luna, one of Antonio's brothers, warned him that a plot had been concocted by "old elements" or the autonomists of the Republic (who were bent on accepting American sovereignty over the country) and a clique of army officers whom Luna had disarmed, arrested, and/or insulted. Luna shrugged off all these threats, reiterating his trust for Aguinaldo, and continued building defenses at Pangasinan where the Americans were planning a landing.

On 2 June 1899, Luna received two telegrams (initially four, but he never received the last two) – one asked for help in launching a counterattack in San Fernando, Pampanga; and the other, sent by Aguinaldo himself, ordered him to go to the new capital at Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija to form a new cabinet. In his jubilation, Luna wrote Arcadio Maxilom, military commander of Cebu, to stand firm in the war. Luna set off from Bayambang, first by train, then on horseback, and eventually in three carriages to Nueva Ecija with 25 of his men. During the journey, two of the carriages broke down, so he proceeded with just one carriage with Colonel Francisco Román and Captain Eduardo Rusca, having earlier shed his cavalry escort. On 4 June, Luna sent a telegram to Aguinaldo confirming his arrival. Upon arriving at Cabanatuan on 5 June, Luna alone, proceeded to the headquarters to communicate with the President. As he went up the stairs, he ran into an officer whom he had previously disarmed for insubordination, Captain Pedro Janolino, commander of the Kawit Battalion; and an old enemy whom he had once threatened with arrest for favoring American autonomy, Felipe Buencamino, Minister of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Cabinet. He was told that Aguinaldo had left for San Isidro in Nueva Ecija (He actually went to Bamban, Tarlac). Enraged, Luna asked why he had not been told that the meeting was cancelled.

Subsequently, Aguinaldo suffered successive, disastrous losses in the field, as he retreated northwards. On 13 November 1899, Aguinaldo decided to disperse his army and begin conducting a guerrilla war. General José Alejandrino, one of Luna's remaining aides, stated in his memoirs that if Luna had been able to finish the planned military camp in the Mountain Province and had shifted to guerrilla warfare earlier as Luna had suggested, Aguinaldo might have avoided having to run for his life in the Cordillera Mountains. For historian Teodoro Agoncillo, however, Luna's death did not directly contribute to the resulting fall of the Republic. In his book, Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic, Agoncillo stated that the loss of Luna showed the existence of a lack of discipline among the regular Filipino soldiers and it was a major weakness that was never remedied during the course of the war. Also, soldiers connected with Luna were demoralized and as a result eventually surrendered to the Americans. Despite Aguinaldo denying the allegation of his being involved in Luna's death multiple times, an original copy of the telegram he sent to Luna was discovered in 2019 showing his order for Luna to visit Cabanatuan.

Did You Know: 153rd birth anniversary of Antonio Luna

Today, Oct. 29, is the 153rd birth anniversary of Antonio Luna, one of the generals who fought for Philippine independence. Born in Binondo, Manila, he obtained his doctorate in pharmacy at the