RIZAL'S GRAND BETRAYAL

Mistaken Freedom

Jose Rizal was so happy with his ended exile and granted freedom. Never he had thought that it was an orchestrated grand betrayal. Leaving Dapitan at midnight boarded on Espana Streamer, at dawn the next day it anchored at Dumaguete, Capital of Negros Oriental. He paid a brief visit to some of his friends residing in that place. In the afternoon, his trip resumed and arrived Cebu on the following day. The entrance to Cebu, which he considered “beautiful”, impressed him. He met an old couple that he had known in Madrid, Attorney Mateos. In the morning of August 3, Rizal went off bound for Iloilo. In Iloilo, he went shopping in the city and visited the Molo Church. Then the streamer proceeded to Capiz, after a brief stopover, it went to Manila.

The espana arrived in Manila Bay early in the morning of Thursday, August 6, 1896. Unfortunately, he missed the ship, Isla de Luzon for Spain because it had departed the previous day at 5 in the afternoon. He took the Spanish Cruiser Castilla instead as ordered by Governor Blanco. He was given a good accommodation and treated as a guest on board not as a prisoner. Rizal stayed on the cruiser for about a month, waiting for the availability of a Spain-bound steamer. While on stay, he read on the newspaper that the Katipunan plot to take over the Spanish rule though revolution was discovered by Father Mariano Gil. There were series of eruptions of revolutions and raging battles around Manila. He was worried for two reasons: 1. He believed that the violent revolution was premature and would only cause much suffering and terrible loss of human lives and properties. 2. It would arouse Spanish vengeance against all Filipino patriots.

Eleven days after the outbreak of the revolution on August 30, 1896, Rizal received two identical letters of introduction, for the Minister of war and the Minister of Colonies recommending him as a volunteer physician to the Army of Cuba. That letter and its invocation of his word of honor could have the factors that made him decline various offers of rescue and escape and sent him to death.

Boarding the steamer, Isla de Panay, Rizal started his trip for Barcelona, Spain. When they had a stopover in Singapore, a rich industrialist and his son, whom he got acquainted with, advised him to stay in Singapore and take advantage of the British protection but Jose Rizal refused them because he had given his word to the Governor General Blanco.

Unknown to Rizal, there was an orchestrated grand betrayal set by man who had given his word of honor. Just after the streamer departed Port Said, Rizal heard of his impending arrest from a fellow passenger. He would be arrested by order of Governor General Blanco and would be send to a prison in Ceuta in the Spanish Morroco. He was dumbfounded at the news and too late to realized that he was fallen to a trap. He immediately wrote his best friend Blumentritt to inform him of his present situation so that anything that would happen to him his friend was forewarned.

The Arrest

On September 30, 1896 at 4:00 P.M., he was officially notified by Captain Alemany, the ship’s captain to confince himself within the cabin as ordered by the authorities from Manila.

Jose Rizal arrived in Barcelona under heavy guard. He was transferred to the custody of the military commander of Barcelona, who incidentally was General Eulogio Despujol, the same person who signed his exile to Dapitan.

On his second day in Barcelona, he was brought to infamous prison-fortress of Monjuich, in the early afternoon of the same day, he was brought to the headquarters of General Despujol, who informed him that he would be shipped back to Manila via ship Colon to face trial.

SOURCE: http://fairykaye.hubpages.com/hub/Jose-Rizal-Grand-Betrayal