The Cagayan Battles are a popular myth on the internet. The tale is thrilling, akin to Rorke’s Drift or Thermopylae. It tells how forty Spanish soldiers took on a horde of over 1,000 samurai and won. It remains popular as one of the few occasions where samurai took on European style troops.

The Spanish recount how their fleet engaged the pirates in two separate actions, defeating them despite the terrible odds. The final battle is claimed to have been onshore where the outnumbered Spaniards defended some hastily constructed fortifications against three pirate attacks before routing their opponents.

Spain was one of the world’s leading powers in the 16th century. The Habsburgs ruled over vast fiefs in Europe along with conquered territories across five continents. The Iberian Union in 1580 saw Portugal and Spain joined, meaning the vast Portuguese empire was now Spanish too. This brought them into conflict with new opponents across the world. Cagayan was nearly at the furthest extent of their realm.

Myth one: The pirates were samurai

One of the biggest claims about the Cagayan Battles is that the pirates were samurai. Samurai without masters were known as rōnin. They often tended to hire their services out or become bandits and highwaymen. Some turned to piracy and became wokou. Wokou were a type of pirate active in east Asia from the 1200s to 1600s.

Former samurai were popular recruits for the wokou ranks because of their fighting prowess but they never made up a majority of the raiding parties. Many wokou had formerly been fishermen, farmers, merchants, craftsmen, or smugglers. Most of them did not wear armour and their favoured weapons were the bow or spear. The former was gradually replaced by gunpowder weapons in the second half of the 16th century.

The reputation for wokou swordsmanship is probably owed to their samurai recruits. Their leaders were also generally armoured and a fearsome sight on the battlefield.

Myth two: The pirates were Japanese

It’s common to refer to the pirates in the Cagayan Battles as Japanese. But in actual fact, the wokou were multinational. It was common for a group to be a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. Wokou based near Japan tended to have a higher proportion of Japanese in their ranks, those near Korea had more Koreans, and so on.

Cagayan was one of the furthest locations from Japan that saw wokou raids so it is more probable that the pirates there were a mixed group, including some local Filipino recruits. It is possible that the wokou commander was Japanese. The Spanish record his name as Tay Fusa which could be a transliterated version of Taifu-sama (chieftain).

Myth three: The Spanish only brought forty soldiers

Another spectacular claim from Cagayan is that it saw forty Spanish soldiers defeat over twenty-five times their number over the space of a few days. This claim is contradicted by a Spanish contemporary account that mentions sixty soldiers, a clear discrepancy. The conflicting accounts show that we don’t know the correct number.

But the real issue with this number is that it ignores the crews of the Spanish fleet. The Spanish fleet consisted of the Sant Jusepe, a galley, and five small frigates. Each of these had a trained crew. These sailors would have been used to fight in boarding actions and defend their ships without soldiers on board. Even still, it was standard practice for naval vessels to carry a contingent of soldiers for boarding actions, the precursors of today's marines.

Without knowing specifics, it’s difficult to state an exact number but it’s likely each frigate had a crew of around 100 sailors. The galley and Sant Jusepe would have had more. The galley, including its rowers, could have had upwards of 200 onboard. This gives a possible Spanish strength from 500–800 minimum, even assuming no extra soldiers were embarked on the expedition.

Myth four: The pirates outnumbered the Spanish

The Spanish accounts of the battles are hyperbolic and exaggerate the numbers they faced. The description of their battle with a pirate ship is thus

“The Japanese put out grappling-irons and poured two hundred men aboard the galley, armed with pikes and breastplates. There remained sixty arquebusiers firing at our men.”

The largest contemporary Japanese vessel at the time was the atakebune. The largest of these usually had a crew of around 150 sailors and soldiers. However, it is possible that the pirates had packed extra crew onboard in preparation for the assault. Even so, this would have put them on an equal footing with the galley’s crew.

It is more likely that the pirates had access to a junk (a traditional Chinese ship) and this is mentioned in one of the Spanish accounts. The second battle with the pirate fleet also mentions being swarmed by sampans, a skiff style boat. Considering each sampan would hold ten to fifteen max, this puts the wokou numbers in the second engagement at 200–300 at most.

Myth five: The Spanish took very few casualties

The Spanish accounts are highly contradictory in this regard. They praise the fighting prowess of their opponents on one hand but on the other, reporting impossible kill ratios. The ship boarding action is recorded with over 200 pirates and only three Spaniards dead.

The numbers do not add up, especially when we consider that there were several engagements. The wokou of the 16th century were a tenacious and well-equipped opponent. They had access to the same type of weaponry as the Spanish. The latter’s governor-general wrote to his king to complain

“The Japanese are the most belligerent people here. They bring artillery and many arquebusiers and pikemen. They wear body armor. All provided from the works of the Portuguese, whom they have shown to them for the detriment of their souls.”

It is highly unlikely that the Spanish emerged from this conflict with only a score of casualties in total, especially when they describe how hard-fought the battles were.

Conclusion

The popular tale of Cagayan as a supreme battle against the odds is nonsense. Nonetheless, it remains a fascinating historical event as it features two very different forces from opposite ends of the world. The wokou might not have been a samurai army but they were still a tenacious foe for the Spanish.

# posted by Akimoro @ 5:32 PM 0 comments