Siege of Baler
The Siege of Baler (July 1, 1898 - June 2, 1899) was a battle during the Philippine Revolution in the city of Baler, 230 km northeast of Manila in the east of the island of Luzon . 53 Spanish soldiers defended a fortified church, together with the Spanish priest Candido Gómez Carreño, against around 800 Filipino rebels who, after an unsuccessful but costly attack on June 30, 1898, surrounded the church with a siege ring and trenches and tried to starve the Spanish troops . Due to the siege, the Spanish soldiers did not learn that Spain had lost the Spanish-American War and that, with the Peace of Paris, the Philippines had ceded the Philippines to the USA on August 13, 1898 .
Several attempts to persuade the Spanish soldiers to surrender failed. They did not believe the Filipino rebels or a mediating Spanish officer and believed in a trap. It was only after 337 days that the commanding officer of the Spaniards realized that the newspaper reports describing the handover of the Philippines to the United States were true. The mediating Spanish officer had given the newspapers to the commandant, who at first rejected them as a forgery. After it became clear to him from the details that the newspapers were by no means a fake, he surrendered to the Filipino rebels, who let the Spaniards withdraw with their weapons. Of the original 53 Spanish soldiers, 14 died of disease, two in combat, one deserted and two soldiers were executed after an unsuccessful desertion. Everyone else could return to their Spanish homeland. According to Spanish information, around 700 rebels died during the siege. The siege was recreated in the Spanish film 1898. Los últimos de Filipinas from 2016 and several Filipino films.