From César de Bourayne (1807) to the Basilan Adventure (1844-1845

II

COOPERATION AND DREAMS From César de Bourayne (1807) to the Basilan Adventure (1844-1845)

A.

FRANCE’S FIRST COOPERATION WITH THE PHILIPPINES

Figure 15. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Fuendetodos, 1746 – Bordeaux, 1828) L’Assemblée de la Compagnie royale des Philippines, 1815 Huile sur toile, 3,205 x 4,335 cm Legs Pierre Briguiboul 1894 (c) Ville de Castres—Musée Goya, musée d’art hispanique – Cliché François Pons

François de Cabarrus and the Real Compañía de Filipinas

When Spain joined France in supporting the American war for independence, it substantially increased the deficits of the royal finances. To support the borrowings by the Spanish Crown, the Franco-Spanish businessman François de Cabarrus41 aka Francisco de Cabarrús, developed promissory notes that were issued by the Spanish treasury in 1779, then rebuilt the Banco de San Carlos in 1782.42 A year later, he proposed to mitigate the losses of the Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas by linking Spain’s trade with America to that of the Philippines.

In March 1785, King Charles III officially launched the Real Compañía de Filipinas43 (Compagnie royale des Philippines)44 which had a 25-year monopoly of the Philippines’ trade with China and Spain. Its commerce with Spain, however, was conducted only through the Cape of Good Hope. Although Real Compañía de Filipinas’ trade was thriving, it did not abolish the galleon to Acapulco because the company needed the port of Veracruz in Mexico.45 The company established its main offices in Manila and Madrid, and set up a factory in Canton. Manila traders firmly opposed the opening of the Real Compañía de Filipinas, vehemently refused to subscribe to the 3,000 shares allocated to them, and declined to avail of the shipping facilities offered by the company.46

A Renewed Interest in the Philippines: French Expeditions to the Pacific Ocean

The creation of the Real Compañía de Filipinas increased the strategic and commercial allure of the Philippines.

In 1785, Joseph Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux47 was appointed head of the French naval forces in the Indian Ocean. He was instructed to send ships to the South China Sea, to assess the trade of each western nation with China, to explore the sea routes to Macao and Canton, and to try to establish cooperation with the Spanish forces in Manila. Spain was linked to France by the ‘Family Pact’ since branches of the Bourbon dynasty ran both kingdoms and had been allied to the United States in the recent war.

The French naval squadron in the Indian Ocean comprised only four frigates, since a British-French agreement negotiated after the peace of 1783 stipulated that no large warships could be stationed by either nation east of the Cape of Good Hope. Joseph Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux decided to sail to the South China Sea with two ships: his flagship La Résolution, a large frigate captured in 1781 from the British Navy, and the smaller La Subtile commanded by Scipion de Castries.48 Both left their base in Port Louis (Île-de-France, now the capital of Mauritius) in the summer of 1786. They stayed for some time in Pondicherry, on the Indian coast (north of today’s Chennai), which was the other French stronghold in the Indian Ocean, and sailed further to Batavia (now Jakarta). As adverse monsoon winds made it impossible to proceed straight to Macao across the South China Sea, d’Entrecasteaux decided to sail along the East coast of Borneo, then North of Sulawesi, then across the Moluccas archipelago, and northwards to the Carolines, and finally westwards to Macao via the Straits between Taiwan and Luzon.

The frigates then took different routes: d’Entrecasteaux’s La Résolution sailed along the Vietnamese coast, following a French court's decision to initiate a cooperation with the Nguyễn dynasty in order to obtain information on the maritime surroundings of the Annam Empire. Castries’ La Subtile, on the other hand, headed straight to the Philippines.

In Manila, Castries found two French ships, the La Boussole and L’Astrolabe whose expedition were under the command of Jean-François de La Pérouse and dispatched by the French king to complete James Cook’s last discoveries in the South Pacific. After crossing the North Pacific, La Pérouse anchored in Manila in February 1787. Castries decided to help La Pérouse, who had lost twenty-one officers and crew members in Alaska. Castries, thus, transferred his two officers and eight crewmembers to the La Boussole and L’Astrolabe. La Pérouse thereafter cruised north along the China Sea, between Korea and Japan, reached the Kamchatka Peninsula (in the Russian Far East), and returned towards Central Pacific before he disappeared in Vanikoro (currently Solomon Islands) around June 1788.

In Manila, Castries found the Spanish authorities helpful and inclined to cooperate with the French Navy. He was impressed by the workers and the supplies of their shipyard and praised their land forces, in particular, the cavalry. The Spanish Navy

seemed less promising since the warships were old and obsolete. Admiring the Philippine-bred horses, he bought three of them, which he would later offer to ladies in Port Louis. Then, after a few weeks in the “lovely city of Manila”, Castries and his crew left and sailed back to the French bases in the Indian Ocean.

Joining La Pérouse’s expedition as a Russian interpreter was Barthélémy de Lesseps,49 the French Vice Consul in Cronstadt (seaport of St. Petersburg, Russia), who spoke fluent Russian, Spanish and German. Lesseps met La Pérouse’s deputy during a mission to the King’s court in Versailles and La Pérouse decided to bring him since the planned route of his expedition would go through Russian territory. Lesseps was François de Cabarrus’ second cousin, who belonged to the business and diplomatic network in Southern France interested in direct trade between the Philippines and Spain—through the ports of France. Lesseps left La Pérouse in Petropavlovsk (Kamtchatka) in September 1787, and brought to Versailles in October 1788 a secret report on the Philippines.50 In the dossier, Lesseps praised the inhabitants of the Philippines, while deploring the treatment they received from the Spaniards.51 Although the French Revolution caused an interruption on all maritime explorations for more than a decade, the Philippines had slowly become part of the political “worldscape” of the French authorities. The French Revolutionary Wars52 somehow drew a link between the Philippines and France. After the failed invasion of northern Spain by the French Republican armies in 1793 and the beheading of radical revolutionaries in Paris in the summer of 1794, France and Spain signed a peace treaty in Basel, Switzerland in July 1795. François de Cabarrus acted as Spain’s plenipotentiary for the said accord. The hostilities between France and Great Britain escalated when, in January 1795, France invaded the Netherlands and replaced the government of the former Stadhouder Prince Willem van OranjeNassau with an allied Batavian Republic. In retaliation, the British seized part of the Dutch Asian colonies. As the British settled along the banks of the Malacca Strait, French ships started using Batavia as their port of call prior to reaching Macau and Canton.

The Treaty of Amiens, signed in March 1802 ended hostilities between France and Great Britain. However, war resumed in May 1803, due to Great Britain’s increasing concern over Napoléon Bonaparte’s political and geographic reshaping of continental Europe. Because of multiple alliances between the two branches of

the Bourbon family, Spain supported France against Great Britain in December 1804. In May 1805, Lord Horatio Nelson defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet along the Cape Trafalgar,53 next to the port of Cádiz.

The Dutch East Indies islands (today’s Indonesia), escaped the British subjugation, and passed nominally under French supervision. Former Dutch republican Herman Willem Daendels was appointed as the King of Spain’s Governor-General of the Dutch Indies. The Treaty of Paris of 1806 transformed the Batavian Republic into a subordinate kingdom, with Louis Bonaparte, the emperor’s younger brother, as its head. In May 1808, Ferdinand VII of Spain, who deposed his father Charles IV, was in turn, forced into abdication by Napoléon. A Castilian Council consisting of liberal pro-French elite installed Joseph, Napoléon’s eldest brother, as King of Spain. Although Joseph Bonaparte eventually abdicated in July 1813 in favor of Ferdinand VII, the Spanish war for independence and its atrocities would last until April 1814.

The Money from Acapulco and César de Bourayne’s Exploits

At the turn of 19th century, the British became increasingly concerned over the possibility of a French conquest of the Philippines—a fear that was not unfounded. Driven by Louis XVI’s support of Monseigneur Pigneau de Behaine54 and the restoration of the Nguyễn power in Cochinchina, which was located west of the Philippines, the French interest in Southeast Asia temporarily waned during the collapse of the Ancien Régime from 1789 to 1792. However, in 1793, France regained its interest in the Far East, especially on the Philippines. Three draft reports,55 which circulated among the officials of the Ministry for the Navy, analyzed the stakes and opportunities of a French conquest of the Philippine archipelago. The last of the three documents, dated September 1797 after the signing of the Treaty of Basel of 1795, detailed the most ambitious plan — entitled as the Projet d’établissement aux Philippines et à la Cochinchine (Project for a settlement in Philippines and Cochinchina).56

However, the French Expedition to Egypt in 1798 to 1801, and the losses during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, prevented the French Navy from strengthening its presence in the Indian Ocean. However, Spain’s alliance to France, allowed French vessels, whose hub was the Isle-de-France along the Indian Ocean, to stop at the port of Manila frequently.

When he arrived in Manila in 1790, Spanish GovernorGeneral Rafael María de Aguilar attempted to reorganize the city’s defense. In January 1804, Aguilar requested General Charles Mathieu Isidore Decaen, the French governor of Isle-de-France, for expert artillery support; and he recruited Félix Renouard de Sainte-Croix,57 who arrived in Manila in September 1804, as his aide-de-camp. In response, General Decaen appointed Paul du Camper,58 as the agent for France in Manila, and dispatched the frigate La Sémillante, 59 under the command of Captain Léonard Motard.60

The annual budget of 1,921,000 piasters,61 allotted for the Philippines, was not enough to fund the affairs of the archipelago. Hence, 500,000 piasters were granted yearly by the King of Spain and facilitated through the Acapulco Galleon.62 However, due to the war with Great Britain, which deprived Spain of a large portion of its galleon fleet, Mexico was hindered from providing reinforcements to protect the galleon and other vessels and from remitting money to Manila in 1805.

Motard reached Cavite Bay in May 1805, and left for Acapulco on 21 July 1805. However, due to the changing directions of the winds, Captain Motard decided to anchor in the San Jacinto Bay, on the East Ticao Island, the last port before crossing the Pacific,63 where two British ships attacked Motard and his men. Although he was able to repel the British ships and force them

Figure 16. Bourayne’s La Canonnière fighting The Tremendous, 1806 (Château de Versailles, Galerie des Batailles) (c) RMN – Grand Palais / Stéphane Maréchalle

to retreat to Macau, Motard’s frigate sustained too much damage and was unable to continue its journey. Since the British blocked Cavite Bay, Motard returned directly back to the Isle-de-France, passing a new route through Gilolo, Moluccas, Alor, and the Ombay-Wetar Strait. Motard’s diversionary strategy allowed a ship from the Compañía de Filipinas to arrive safely in Manila from Peru, bringing with it 500,000 piasters from Spain.

In 1806, General Decaen sent to Manila the La Canonnière, a frigate in a poor state following its encounter with the British ship The Tremendous in La Réunion Island (see Figure 16). The La Canonnière, which was under the command of Captain César de Bourayne,64 arrived in Cavite in February 1807 for much-needed repairs and replenishment of supplies. However, the ship struggled due to the scarcity of food and equipment.

The new Spanish Governor-General Mariano Fernandez de Folgueras, asked Bourayne to escort the galleon and Compañía de Filipinas’s ship called the Santa Gertrudis to Mexico. Since the galleon slowed down the entire contingent, Bourayne proposed to escort the galleon and the Santa Gertrudis only up to 500 miles off Cape Engano, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where a British attack need no longer be feared. Thereafter, Bourayne proposed to proceed to Acapulco as planned to immediately seek audience with the Viceroy of Mexico,65 and return to Manila with the money. Bourayne left Manila on 20 April 1807, reached Acapulco on 15 August 1807 where he sojourned for three months while waiting for the funds, and returned to Manila with three million piasters66 on the eve of Christmas. His crew, who were then not yet paid, started a rebellion.67 The insubordination only ceased when the Governor-General was able to collect 30,000 piasters (1% of the funds brought by the French) as donation from the Manila traders. Although he was not wealthy, Bourayne gallantly refused to participate in the sharing, accepting only a saber of honor from the hands of Governor-General de Folgueras.

This initial Philippine-French partnership ceased with Napoléon’s eviction of Ferdinand VII, with Governor-General de Folgueras and the Philippine clergy remaining loyal to the Bourbons. In 1808, Governor-General de Folgueras even ordered the imprisonment of Alexandre du Crest de Villeneuve68 and his crew, releasing them only three months later upon the intervention of the French warship Entreprenant under Pierre Bouvet. French vessels stopped using Manila as its port of call until the end of the Napoleonic era.

DREAMING OF BASILAN: FRANCE IN THE SULU SEA, WITH THÉODORE DE LAGRENÉ (1844-1845)

Trade between the Philippines and France resumed after the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in 1814. France dispatched numerous merchant ships, mostly from Bordeaux, and four major scientific missions to the archipelago. The scientific expeditions occurred in 1817 under the command of Achille de Kergariou;69 in 1824 to 1826 under Hyacinthe de Bougainville70 and Paul du Camper, General Decaen’s former agent in Manila; in 1832 under Cyrille Laplace;71 and in 1836 under Auguste-Nicolas Vaillant.72 In addition, Pierre-Henri Philibert73 was sent to Manila in 1819 by the French admiralty to recruit Filipino workers for the French Guyana after the abolition of the slave trade. The Spanish Governor-General opposed the objective of the mission. However, this did not deter France from deciding to open a consulate in Manila in 1824, thereby being the first foreign country to do so.

Opportunities offered by the archipelago caught the interest of some French nationals. Such was the story of Paul Proust de la Gironière,74 a surgeon in the French Navy. According to his book published in 1855, de la Gironière settled in the Philippines between 1820 and 1839. When his wife and son died, he sold his sugar plantation in Jala-Jala and returned to France where he was bestowed the Légion d’honneur. De la Gironière remarried in Nantes and had two children. However, twenty years after returning to France, he decided to go back to the Philippines. He bought a new plantation in Calauan, situated in the south of Laguna de Bay and died there three years later. Paul de la Gironière’s book75 greatly helped promote the knowledge of the Philippine archipelago in France. During the first half of the 19th century, the relations between the Philippines and France intensified beyond military cooperation. France regarded Southeast Asia as significant to the resumption of her global diplomatic ambitions. The collapse of the Napoleonic Empire depleted French coffers and reduced her foreign policy to a bare preservation of the pre-revolutionary borders.

At peace with the British, Spanish, and Dutch during the reign of King Louis-Philippe between 1830 and 1848, France then decided on the costly process of subjugating Algeria. Succeeding in her engagement in Algeria, France then became prosperous enough

to prepare for long distance colonial expansion, as shown by its blockade of Argentina ports76 in 1838 to 1840 and the establishment in 1843 of two stations in the South Pacific Ocean—in Tahiti and in the Marquesas islands.

Great Britain, France’s main historical competitor and now ally, emerged victorious from the First Opium War (1838-1842). The Treaty of Nanjing sanctioned the ceding of Hongkong to Great Britain, and allowed the opening of five Chinese ports—Canton, Shanghai, Ningbo, Amoy (now Xiamen), and Fuzhou—to Western trade. In view of these recent developments, King Louis-Philippe sent his first legation to China in December 1843.77 The legation was escorted by three warships from the South China Sea division, which used Manila as its stopover port.

Reinforced by a frigate and two corvettes from Brest (major military port in Brittany), the fleet was under the command of Vice Admiral Jean-Baptiste Thomas Médée Cécille.78 Heeding the advice of then Foreign Minister79 François Guizot,80, the delegation included a high-ranking diplomat, Théodore de Lagrené,81 former minister plenipotentiary to the newly independent Greece. The delegation was successful, having obtained for France the signing of the Whampoa82 commercial treaty in October 1844, and the issuance in December 1844 of an imperial edict on religious freedom aiming to protect Catholic missionaries.

Jean Mallat, Advocate of Basilan

Aside from his role as extraordinary plenipotentiary, Lagrené received secret instructions from Foreign Minister Guizot to scout for and establish a permanent base in the South China Sea for the French Navy. The British already controlled Lower Burma and the Malacca-Singapore Strait, and the mouth of the Sarawak river since 1842, thanks to James Brooke. The Dutch managed the Netherlands Indies while the Spaniards had been in the Philippines for centuries for as long as the Portuguese were in Macau.

The establishment of French bases in the Far East proved challenging. While the islands of Natuna and Anambas 83 (northeast Batam) were free from foreign control; however, their locations are too

Figure 17. « Habitants des Montagnes, archipel de Solou [Mountain people, Sulu archipelago, Basilan Island] », in Jean Mallat, Archipel de Solou, face p. I. The people depicted in the painting are obviously not Muslim, proof that Mallat had probably never himself been to Basilan Island. Basilan’s indigenous and mountain people were Yakan, a tribe already under process of Islamisation in the 1840s, and some northern groups of which had also already been previously Christianized by Jesuit missionaries, who remained in Basilan till the second half of the 18th century.

near the British and Dutch colonies. Inhospitable living conditions in Pulau Condor forced the British to abandon the island after five years of settlement; and Cu Lao Cham, present-day Hội An in Vietnam, did not seem a favorable location either. To remain within the vicinity of China, the only vantage position left for France would thus have been located in the Philippine archipelago, but in a place remaining outside Spanish sovereignty: Basilan Island.84

The choice of Basilan—called the Tajima Island in old western maps— was not accidental. On 23 April 1843, during an exploratory mission to Sulu by the corvette La Favorite, the first commercial agreement was entered into between the Sultan of Sulu Jamal-ul Kiram I and France, represented by Lieutenant Commander Théogène François Page. In his report,85 Page mentioned that Basilan was more or less a no man’s land, not being controlled by the Sultan of Sulu, his extended male relatives, or the Spaniards. Westerners observed that Basilan had agricultural potential, as the island annually exported to Sulu some thirty big prahu86 of rice grown by hinterland Yakans.87

Figure 18. Text of the commercial agreement between France and the Sultanate of Sulu dated 23 April 1843 (Archives du Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères- La Courneuve)

Another reason for Basilan’s appeal was based on the works of Dr. Jean Mallat88 who sojourned for eight years in the Far East, including Manila, before returning to France. Mallat published two preliminary works on the Basilan Island89 and the Philippines,90 which earned him full support from the Minister of Navy Rear Admiral Baron Armand de Mackau, and connections to the highest echelons of the State.91 The problem, however, was that Mallat’s information on Basilan were contradictory, having been gathered from various sources that were neither verified on site nor properly discussed. Explaining, for instance, “an attack from the people of Basilan on the people of Zamboanga was rare, especially on Westerners,” he wrote “as a precaution, in collecting water in the (Malosa) river, it is advisable to bring weapons and not to get close to the village to avoid an attack.”

Unaware of the inaccuracies of Mallat’s accounts on Basilan, de Mackau requested him to join de Lagrené’s mission as a scientific and linguistic support for the secret operations in the Sulu archipelago. Together with the commercial delegation interested in textile trade,92 Mallat boarded the L’Archimède, which reached Macau in August 1844. Mallat was designated as the “colonial agent”, provided with a comfortable salary, and was promised 200 hectares (roughly 494 acres) in the new occupied territories.93

Escalating Conflict

In October 1844, Admiral Cécille sent Mallat to Basilan aboard the corvette Sabine under the command of Captain Guérin. Unfortunately, Mallat could not speak Malay94 and had to require the assistance of a certain Hermann to interpret. Hermann was a fourteen- or fifteen-year old Dutch subject95 from Batavia whom Mallat hired in Macau96 while the latter was “busy in being taught the Malay languages.”97 On 24 October 1844, the French anchored in the perilous Malosa Bay in Basilan, a place that was prone to piracy—and where the French committed the first of their many mistakes thereby exposing the limits of Mallat’s abilities.

During the first two days upon arrival in Malosa Bay, the French and the local inhabitants exchanged pleasantries and presents. A meeting in an islet called “Gowenen” (Gounan, in the middle of the bay) was arranged between Rajah Usuk, an ethnic Tausug local chief, and Captain Guérin. Adverse weather

Figure 19. Map of Basilan, extract from the map ‘Archipel des Soulou’, in J. Mallat, loc. cit., 1843, last page.

Figure 20. À S.A.R. Monseigneur le Prince de Joinville, Hommage respectueux de l’auteur, son très obéissant et fidèle serviteur J. Mallat [To H.R.H. the Prince of Joinville, respectful regards from the author, his very obedient and faithful servant…]

Figure 21. Map of the Malosa Bay, in J. Mallat, loc. cit. last page, mentioning (box, top right) “from the map drawn in 1764 by the British captain Walter Alves”98

conditions prevented the meeting from taking place, making the French impatient. Captain Guérin, Mallat and several of their crew members attempted to enter the mouth of the river, but their main boat ran aground. Instead of turning back, they took a dinghy and asked the men in a Malay prahu manning the entrance of the river if they could meet with the Rajah. The locals responded that the Rajah was indisposed; however, if Captain Guérin himself would venture upstream, the Rajah would receive him. Declining the proposal, the Captain sent four men, including the interpreter, on the dinghy. The group, under the supervision of Sub-lieutenant de Meynard, was tasked to conduct a reconnaissance of the river and collect water samples, which were needed by the French authorities in evaluating the feasibility of establishing their base in the island. The Tausugs resented the trip, viewing it as both insulting—owing to Captain Guérin’s refusal to meet personally with the Rajah—and threatening.

Two Malay boats then approached the dinghy, and a local dignitary asked for Meynard’s gun. When Meynard refused, he and a crew member99 were struck down with a kris, while the interpreter and the ship’s boy were taken hostage in the chaos that ensued.100 Unable to wait for the arrival of the corvette La Victorieuse under

the command of Rigault de Genouilly that would enable him to negotiate from a stronger military position, Captain Guérin sailed at once to Zamboanga to seek the assistance of Zamboanga Governor Cayetano Suarez de Figueroa.

The Sulu archipelago, especially Basilan, was known for its economic activities that consisted primarily of raiding and slave trade conducted by the Balangingi population of its southern shores.101 Acting as the intermediary, Governor de Figueroa was able to bring Rajah Usuk and Captain Guérin to the negotiating table. Rajah Usuk demanded from Captain Guérin 2,900 piasters as ransom money, 10 guns, a hundred razors, and other sundries. The French initially refused to capitulate to all of the Rajah’s demands. However, they eventually paid the ransom and recovered their men who were treated surprisingly well.102 Apparently, Rajah Usuk only received 25% of the sum and some rifles, as it was customary to share the ransom with the local participants.103 After a brief stop in Basilan, and without encountering any aggression due to the acumen of her captain, the La Victorieuse joined the Sabine in Zamboanga. The captains of the two ships decided to make a blockade of Basilan104—against the advice of Governor de Figueroa, who could not prevent the operation for lack of proof of Spanish sovereignty over the island. Governor de Figueroa immediately informed Manila of the French’s action, sending to Basilan a few falhoas105 from the Marina Sutil as demonstration of Spanish warship over the area.

The French then notified the Sultan of Sulu of the blockade. The Sultan explained that his sovereignty over the island was but nominal. Meanwhile in Basilan, two French boats rowing upstream in the Malosa river were fired upon by a cannon located at the fort. In retaliation, the French fired their cannons, wounding a dozen men, including Rajah Usuk.

Arriving in Manila at the end of December 1844 with the Cléopâtre and the steamer Archimède, Admiral Cécille and Ambassador de Lagrené found themselves in the middle of a diplomatic deadlock. Spanish Governor-General Narciso Clavería y Zaldúa explained coldly that Basilan was part of the Philippines but that the Spanish had to abandon their garrisons on the island in 1762 due to the British attack in Manila and they never returned.

After Lieutenant Commander Page completed his mission in Basilan in 1843, Governor-General Clavería y Zaldúa ordered

Zamboanga Governor de Figueroa to go to Basilan and counter French influence. Governor de Figueroa secured for Spain an informal alliance with a number of northern datus who were willing to use the Spanish flag. However, the alliance—called the “Balagtasan League” (covering Lamitan, East Isabela)—was formed without signing any formal document.106

In December 1844, although Ambassador de Lagrené and Governor-General Clavería y Zaldúa agreed to entrust to their respective governments the legal determination of the sovereignty over Basilan, Governor-General Clavería y Zaldúa asserted Spanish right by sending the frigate La Esperanza to Zamboanga. On the other hand, Admiral Cécille waited in Manila for the construction of two barges capable of transporting troops along the shallow banks of Basilan’s rivers. On 8 January 1845, Admiral Cécille and his fleet dropped anchor in Malosa Bay. A few days later, the French were able to repel two falhoas that were attempting to force their way through the blockade. The French limited the blockade to Malosa Bay when the captain of the La Esperanza protested.

Friendlier than Maloso’s datus, the same Balagtasan datus that had struck an agreement with the Spanish the year before explained to Admiral Cécille on 13 January 1845 that they were loyal neither to Spain nor to the Sulu Sultanate and that they merely used the Spanish flag on their way to Zamboanga and displayed another one when they went to Sulu. The Balagtasan League was composed of Panglima “Tiran” (Tairan), his brother- in- law Arak Tao Marayo, and Imam Baran.107 This hierarchical structure was characteristic of the Samal-Balangingi raiding groups where the Panglima was the local chief (who was, most of the time, a Samal tributary of a Tausug datu), and the imam or hatib was both the chaplain and judge accompanying the raiding or commercial fleet.108

On 22 January 1845, the Balagtasan, Bulansa,109 Bagbagon,110 and Pasanban (Pasangan, today’s Isabela) chiefs finally signed a treaty with the French. When asked why they preferred the protection of the French to that of the Spaniards’, these local chiefs111 answered that with the treaty, the Spaniards would not bother them. The Spanish were already permanently established a few miles from their island, while the French presence remained minimal.

Three of the French warships left for Sulu on 4 February 1845. Admiral Cécille requested the Sultan of Sulu to rent the Basilan

island. Three days after the French arrived, the British corvette Semarang, which came from Brunei to assist James Brooke in resisting his Bruneian opponents, anchored in Sulu on the pretext of rescuing British crew who were taken into slavery.112 The Sulunese resented French presence, and went into lengths to poison, using the fruits of the manchineel tree,113 the spring where the sailors replenish their water tanks. Because of this acrimony, the French reluctantly requested the mediation of William Wyndham,114 an English trader who had settled in Sulu and conducted business in Manila, Borneo, and Singapore.115

After a heated debate within the Rumah Bichara (the Council of Dignitaries), and a lot of bargaining between the French and the Sulunese, the price was fixed at 100,000 piasters for the first year and 80,000 piasters for every succeeding year for a 100-year lease period, under an impossible condition that the agreement be approved by the French authorities within six months. A memorandum of understanding was signed on 19 February 1845. In the meantime, the French granted asylum to 23 slaves, who were mostly Tagal, Spanish and Dutch, who had swum to their ships.116

Figure 22. Mohammed Yamalul Alam, Sultan of Sulu (circa 1870s). (Photo/Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais)

Meanwhile, the ultimatum sent to Rajah Usuk on January 26, to produce 20,000 piasters as compensation for the families of the two murdered men, to deliver their assassins to the French, to release all Filipino and Western prisoners and slaves in his captivity, and to cease piracy remained, predictably, unheeded. On February 27, declining the Spaniards’ support, the entire French fleet assembled in Malosa to punish Rajah Usuk for his “treachery.” One group that went upstream lost three men. The remaining 400 soldiers were able to cross the mangrove and swamps, destroyed the small fort, burned about 150 houses, a whole flotilla of prahu and the materials of a small shipyard117 in the vicinity, cut banana and coconut trees, and ransacked rice granaries—thereby destroying the livelihood of Rajah Usuk’s subjects. While the French were engaged in Malosa, the Spanish frigate La Esperanza attacked Balangingi Island, then the den of Samal slave raiders, without significant success.

Much Ado about Nothing

After the destruction of Malosa, Admiral Cécille dispatched the steamer L’Archimède back to Suez post-haste. He instructed Captain Edmond Pâris and diplomatic attaché Alphonse MareyMonge to travel immediately from Suez to Paris because of the six-month deadline for the approval of the French authorities on the lease of Basilan.

When Foreign Minister Guizot received Ambassador de Lagrené’s report in June 1845, the military and diplomatic conditions had already changed: France was involved in South America118 and Madagascar,119 while Emir Abd-el-Kader led a major insurgency in Algeria. Foreign Minister Guizot remained skeptical of the project, while the Minister of Navy was supportive of the same. On 30 June 1845, the French Council of Ministers gave its approval for the establishment of its base in Basilan. However, on July 26, King Louis-Philippe decided to forego with the plan as constructing and maintaining a permanent outpost in Basilan would have required a strong military and naval support in the area and especially since the monarch was then in search of a Spanish spouse for his youngest son.120 The royal decision was transmitted to Ambassador de Lagrené on 5 August 1845, and to Admiral Cécille on 12 August 1845. He was instructed to convey France’s decision to the Spanish Governor-General and to the Sultan of Sulu.

When the French left Basilan at the end of February 1845, the Spaniards arrived. Concerned with the growing appeal of the Sulu archipelago to European powers, the Spaniards built a small fort called “Isabela” in Pasangan (the core of present-day Isabela City), and entered into an agreement with the Balagtasan League that had previously signed a treaty with the French.

The French operation in Basilan provided the impetus for putting the island under relative control of Manila, effectively preventing further attempts of colonization by other Western countries. Governor-General Clavería y Zaldúa, who had previously failed to purchase war steamers from the British, obtained three of them in subsequent years. These steamers were used in 1848, under the Governor-General’s command, to rid the Balangingi Island of Samal pirates.121 One of the steamers was the Elcano, which later sailed to Cochinchina.