THE ARTICLE · 7 MIN
On 27 April 1521, on the island of Mactan, the forces of the chief Lapulapu defeated a landing party under Ferdinand Magellan, and Magellan was killed. The Philippines now marks the day by law. But the familiar story comes mostly from a single source, written by a man on the losing side, and the other early accounts do not agree with him.
Where the story comes from
The main account is Antonio Pigafetta’s, an Italian who sailed with Magellan and was in the fight. The English edition by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (1906) notes that his manuscript was “composed ca. 1525, of events of 1519–1522” — about four years after the battle. Four manuscripts of his account survive, and they differ: “The MSS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale are both shorter than the Italian MS.”
Pigafetta was no neutral observer. Straight after describing Magellan’s death, he writes his praise: “Had it not been for that unfortunate captain, not a single one of us would have been saved in the boats”.
What Pigafetta says happened
A demand for submission. According to Pigafetta, on “Friday, April twenty-six, Zula, a chief of the island of Matan,” sent word that he could not send all he had promised “because of the other chief Cilapulapu, who refused to obey the king of Spagnia,” and asked for a boatload of men to fight him. Magellan decided to go himself, and before the fighting sent word that the islanders must “obey the king of Spagnia, recognize the Christian king as their sovereign, and pay us our tribute”. The “Christian king” was the ruler of Cebu, recently baptised, whom Magellan had named Don Carlo.
The numbers. “At midnight, sixty men of us set out armed with corselets and helmets,” Pigafetta writes, with “twenty or thirty balanguais” (boats) of Cebuano allies. “When morning came forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs,” while “The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats.” The defenders “had formed in three divisions to the number of more than one thousand five hundred persons.”
The death. Pigafetta names none of the attackers. “They shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned arrow,” then “One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass,” which “caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses”.
The date and the dead. “That battle was fought on Saturday, April twenty-seven, 1521.” Pigafetta counts “Eight of our men” killed with Magellan, and notes that “four Indians, who had become Christians and who had come afterward to aid us were killed by the mortars of the boats” — that is, by the expedition’s own guns. “Of the enemy, only fifteen were killed”. Afterwards the people of Mactan refused to hand over Magellan’s body: “they intended to keep him as a memorial.”
How the other early accounts disagree
Partly true The familiar version holds in outline — a landing, a defeat, Magellan killed — but not in its details.
| Pigafetta | Genoese pilot | Maximilianus Transylvanus | Account from Ginés de Mafra’s notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 27 April 1521 | 28 April | — | — |
| Magellan’s force | 60 set out, 49 landed | 50–60 | 40 | 40, of whom 34 landed |
| Defenders | more than 1,500 | 3,000–4,000 | about 3,000 | up to 50 from one house, then a second, uncounted ambush |
| Magellan’s men killed | 8 | 6 | 7 | 12, including Magellan |
- The Genoese pilot, whose account is quoted in the Blair and Robertson notes, “dates the battle April 28”, puts the defenders at “as many as three thousand or four thousand men”, and says Magellan “was killed there, with six of his men”.
- Maximilianus Transylvanus was not there. He wrote from interviews with survivors: “I have taken care to have everything related to me most exactly by the captain and by the individual sailors who have returned with him.” He gives “forty of his men”, “about three thousand” defenders, and “Magellan, and seven of their comrades” lost.
- An account based on the notes of Ginés de Mafra, a sailor on the voyage, was written up by someone else and published in 1920. It has 40 men, of whom Magellan “salió … en tierra con treinta y cuatro” (landed with thirty-four). Up to 50 men burst out of a house where they had hidden, and a second group then attacked from behind (“a manera de celada”, like an ambush), leaving “doce de los nuestros” (twelve of ours) dead, Magellan among them. In this version he “se desangró tanto que cayó muerto” — bled so badly that he fell dead (our translations). The same text calls him “Sebastian de Magallanes”, a clear error.
- Even Pigafetta’s own manuscripts differ. A shorter French manuscript says “one of those Indians hurled a poisoned bamboo lance into his face which laid him stiff and dead” (Robertson’s translation).
- Numbers grew in retelling. Richard Eden’s early English account, the editors note, gave each of the three divisions “two thousand and fiftie men” — 6,150 in all.
Navarrete’s documents, as cited by Blair and Robertson, name seven men killed with Magellan, one of whom “died April 29”. The fairest summary is that Magellan died with between six and eleven of his men, depending on the count.
Did Lapulapu kill Magellan?
Unverified No early account says so. Pigafetta names “Cilapulapu” only as one of Mactan’s two chiefs and as the one who, by his rival’s account, “refused to obey the king of Spagnia”, and describes the killing by unnamed attackers. On the battle itself, Transylvanus says only that “The King of Mauthan” drew up his men.
Lapulapu’s place in memory was built much later. The National Quincentennial Committee, working with the National Historical Commission of the Philippines, traces how writers of the reform and independence movements celebrated him. In 1895 Emilio Jacinto wrote of the blood of Kalipulako, the king of Mactan, “niyaong pinatay niya ang lilong si Magallanes”, which the Committee translates as “after he killed the liar Magellan”. The 1898 proclamation of independence is more careful. In English translation, Magellan “was killed in battle that took place in said shores to which battle he was provoked by Chief Kalipulako of Mactan”.
What is well supported: Magellan was killed by Mactan’s fighters. What is less certain is what exactly Mactan refused. Pigafetta, reporting what Lapulapu’s rival said, has him refusing to obey the king of Spain; Transylvanus has the king of Mactan refusing “to do homage to one whom he had been accustomed for so long to command” — the ruler of Cebu.
The name
The name appears in several forms. Pigafetta’s text as printed by Blair and Robertson has “Cilapulapu”. The Committee explains that “the “Çi” in the recorded name of the Mactan leader is most likely the ancient honorific title ‘Si.’” Spanish chroniclers wrote other versions, and the Committee notes that “Mariano Ponce, used Kalipulako as his penname”.
The Committee recommended in 2019 writing the chief’s name “as Lapulapu (without hyphen)”, while the 2018 law and the city keep the hyphen: Lapu-Lapu City.
Unverified A popular story says the fish called lapu-lapu was named after the chief. We found no historical source for which name came first.
How Mactan is remembered
Republic Act No. 11040, approved on 29 June 2018, declares 27 April “a special working public holiday throughout the country”, “to commemorate the victory of Lapu-Lapu and his men over the Spaniards in the historic Battle of Mactan on April 27, 1521”. No image of Lapulapu from his own time is known to us. The profile on the Philippines’ 5,000-piso commemorative banknote is, in the Committee’s words, “based on the portrait commissioned by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines from artist Carlo Caacbay”.
Our reading
Mactan is remembered as a clear victory, and it was one. But the details most often repeated — the numbers and the manner of Magellan’s death — rest mostly on one partisan eyewitness writing years later, and the other accounts do not match. Lapulapu’s own hand in the killing rests on no early account at all. No written account from Mactan’s side is known. That gap is part of the history too.
Sources
- Antonio Pigafetta, Primo viaggio intorno al mondo (Ambrosiana manuscript, c. 1525), trans. James Alexander Robertson, in Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson (eds.), The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, vol. 33 (Arthur H. Clark, 1906), including the editors’ notes on the Genoese pilot, the French manuscript, early English translations and Navarrete.
- Maximilianus Transylvanus, letter, trans. James Baynes, in Henry E. J. Stanley (ed.), The First Voyage Round the World, by Magellan (Hakluyt Society, 1874).
- Libro que trata del descubrimiento y principio del estrecho que se llama de Magallanes por Ginés de Mafra, ed. Antonio Blázquez y Delgado-Aguilera (Real Sociedad Geográfica, 1920).
- National Quincentennial Committee (with the NHCP), “Lapulapu versus Lapu-Lapu” (2021) and “Lapulapu in the Eyes of our Heroes” (2019), archived copies.
- Republic Act No. 11040 (2018), via The Lawphil Project.
- Philippine Declaration of Independence (12 June 1898), English translation, Wikisource.
- “History body has last word on Lapulapu”, Philippine Daily Inquirer (2 May 2021), archived copy.
Checked September 2026.
Related: History myths checked · Comeback stories from history
- history
- philippines
- myths
- magellan