Emilio Aguinaldo

Biography

Emilio Aguinaldo was mayor of Kawit at 26, the military genius of the 1896 revolution against Spain at 27, and president of Asia's first constitutional republic at 29. Exiled to Hong Kong under the Pact of Biak-na-Bato, he returned aboard an American warship in May 1898, declared Philippine independence from the window of his Kawit home on June 12, and built a functioning government at Malolos — only to watch his ally become his conqueror. When the war he had dreaded broke out in February 1899, Aguinaldo fought it first with a conventional army and then, after its destruction, as the hunted head of a guerrilla state, fleeing north through the Cordillera while lieutenants like del Pilar died to cover him. Captured at Palanan in March 1901 by Funston's ruse, he took the oath of allegiance and called on his commanders to lay down their arms. He lived another sixty-three years — long enough to run for president of the Commonwealth in 1935, to be arrested for collaborating with the Japanese in 1945, and to see the independent Philippine flag he had first raised in 1898 flying officially over Manila. He died in 1964 at 94, the last surviving president of the First Republic.

Key Battles