lthough Corralat, king of
Mindanao, kept quiet during so dangerous a season for reasons of his
own convenience, and had even acted as mediator so that Butria Bongso,
king of Jolo should make peace with our arms, which was done April 14,
1646, none of all that was sufficient to give quiet to that field
of Christendom. Mahometan perfidy took the pretext that the Joloan
Prince Salicala and Paguyan Cachile, prince of the Guinbanos, [21]
and seignior of Tuptup in Borney, should refuse to sign the peace. With
that excuse those princes, aided in secret by those kings, peopled the
sea with boats and caused unspeakable damage to Calamianes, Camiguin,
and Romblon.

313. That was not the only fatal consequence that followed from those
inhuman premises which were set by the Dutch. For if we had thitherto
seen the aliens fighting against the faith, from the year 1649 the
very sons of the Church worked for its destruction. The Dutch incited
the Indians, already Christian and subject, to withdraw themselves
from the mild yoke of Spain, the country which had drawn them from
the darkness of paganism, and kept them on the road to salvation. Nor
were they deaf to the voices filled with the fraud most difficult to
recognize, for since they carried the agreeable sound of liberty, they
secretly induced them to undergo the most tyrannical subjection; and
God permitting by His secret judgments excessive flights to audacity
and shamelessness for the credit of the virtuous and the crown
of the just; the most cowardly of nations were seen with surprise
and the nakedness of the Indians was armed against the invincible
sword of the Spaniards. The insurrection began in the village of
Palapag in the province of Hibabao in the island of Samar, whence the
good outcome of the first action traveling on the wings of unsteady
report, found minds so ready throughout the islands of Pintados, that
(just as if the counsel were common, and they were only awaiting the
signal in order to do it), the temples were burned in many places,
and sacred things profaned. The evangelical ministers fled, and the
rebels retiring to the loftiest mountains, imagined that they could
defend their former barbarity there.

314. Our reformed order had enough things to bewail in those
revolutions; for in addition to the tragedies of Linao, which
are related in volume 3, [22] the villages of Cagayang, Camiguin,
Hingoog, Romblon, Banton, and Cibuyan added wood to the fire of the
se