<figure class="image-550">
  <img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-29/general-ola.webp"
       alt="Monument of General Simeon Ola in Guinobatan, Albay, commemorating the Bicolano revolutionary leader and last Filipino general to surrender to American forces" loading="lazy">
  <figcaption>The monument of General Simeon Arboleda Ola in his hometown of Guinobatan, Albay, honors the revolutionary leader born on September 2, 1865.</figcaption>
</figure>


<h2>
A Seminarian Turned Revolutionary
</h2>
<p>
Ola came from a family of comfortable means for provincial Albay, and his parents were able to send him to seminary in Nueva Cáceres (present-day <a href="/articles/3116/the-history-of-naga-camarines-sur-a-journey-through-time" class="news_link">Naga City</a>) to study philosophy. He never finished the course. Locally, he had already risen to the position of <em>teniente de cuadrilleros</em> - a municipal post responsible for keeping order and organizing the town's rondas, or armed patrols - which put him in close contact with both the local Spanish civil-guard apparatus and the parish priest of Guinobatan, Father Carlos Cabido. That relationship would prove decisive: through his position and his standing with Father Cabido, Ola was able to quietly gather firearms and recruits well before he ever fired a shot in anger. He is also remembered for conniving with a jail warden, Sergeant Loame, to release dozens of prisoners - numbering close to a hundred, by some accounts - many of whom went on to join his growing force.
</p>
<p>
When the <a href="/kauswagan/articles/906/about-the-katipunan" class="news_link">Katipunan</a>, the secret society founded by <a href="/articles/3326/andres-bonifacio-life-legacy-and-the-first-president" class="news_link">Andrés Bonifacio</a> in Manila in 1892, spread into the Bicol region in the mid-1890s, Ola abandoned his studies for good and joined its local branch in Guinobatan in 1896. He quickly became its leader in the town, organizing the men he had recruited and armed in the preceding years into a fighting force ready for the province-wide uprising that was building across Luzon.
</p>
<h2>
Baptism by Fire: The Battle of Camalig
</h2>
<p>
Bicol's revolution against Spain did not erupt in earnest until 1898, well after the <a href="/articles/3289/cry-of-pugad-lawin-august-23-1896" class="news_link">Cry of Balintawak</a> and the first uprisings around Manila. On April 2, 1898, Bicolano revolutionary forces under General <a href="/articles/3428/general-vito-belarmino-life-battles-legacy" class="news_link">Vito Belarmino</a> - the Zone Commander of the Katipunero forces in the Bicol Region - engaged Spanish colonial troops at Camalig, Albay, alongside fellow commander <strong>Glicerio Delgado</strong>. It was the first major battle of the Revolution on the Bicol mainland, and it ended in a decisive victory for the Filipino side, touching off a wave of revolutionary fervor throughout the region. In gratitude for Ola's role in the fighting, Belarmino promoted him to the rank of captain.
</p>
<p>
Ola's star continued to rise over the following months. A daring ambush that resulted in the capture of three American soldiers - the first Americans had by then begun replacing the defeated Spanish as the new colonial power - earned him a further promotion to major. He also proved himself an able quartermaster for the fledgling Philippine Republic: he raised some ₱42,000 for the revolutionary cause, a considerable sum, which he turned over to General <a href="/articles/3411/mariano-tr-as-first-vice-president-of-the-philippines" class="news_link">Mariano Trias</a>, Secretary of Finance under the Aguinaldo government. It was an unusual role for a battlefield commander, and it reflects how deeply Ola had embedded himself in both the military and civil structures of the Revolution in Bicol.
</p>



<h2>
From Revolution to a New War
</h2>
<p>
The <a href="/articles/3297/treaty-of-paris-1898-spain-cedes-philippines-to-us" class="news_link">Treaty of Paris of December 1898</a> transferred sovereignty over the Philippines from Spain to the United States, and by February 1899 the uneasy relationship between Aguinaldo's First Philippine Republic and the incoming American administration had collapsed into open war. In Bicol, as elsewhere in the archipelago, Filipino revolutionary forces that had just finished fighting Spain now turned their guns on a new occupying power.
</p>
<p>
Ola threw himself into this second war with the same energy he had shown against the Spanish. Fighting alongside Colonel Engracio Orense's forces, he took part in the battle of Binogsacan, fought right in his home town of Guinobatan. From there his campaign radiated outward across Albay: raids and engagements at Oas, Ligao, and Jovellar kept American garrisons and their Filipino auxiliaries - the Philippine Scouts and the Philippine Constabulary - off balance for years. On August 12, 1902, he struck an American detachment at Macabugos, Ligao, an ambush that made him, in the words of one American commander, a marked man.
</p>
<p>
By the time General <a href="/kauswagan/articles/1283/today-in-philippine-history-september-27-1865-miguel-malvar-was-born-in-santo-tomas-batangas" class="news_link">Miguel Malvar</a>, the ranking revolutionary general in Batangas and the officer credited by the American colonial government with the largest formal command still in the field, surrendered on April 16, 1902, the United States formally declared the Philippine-American War over that July. But the fighting did not actually stop everywhere. Guerrilla resistance persisted in pockets across the archipelago - in Samar, where Vicente Lukban held out until captured in February 1902, and in Bicol, where Ola simply kept fighting.
</p>
<h2>
Reconcentration and the Final Campaign
</h2>
<p>
Ola's ability to melt into the countryside, resupply from sympathetic townspeople, and strike isolated garrisons frustrated a succession of American commanders. Between March and October 1903, colonial authorities resorted to a tactic already used against other holdout leaders elsewhere in the islands: reconcentration, or hamletting, in which the rural population of the affected districts was forcibly moved into the <em>poblaciones</em>, or town centers, and away from the outlying barrios that had been feeding, sheltering, and reinforcing the guerrillas. The human cost of the policy fell heavily on ordinary Bicolano civilians, but it also steadily cut Ola off from his support base.
</p>
<p>
By local accounts, the American campaign to bring in Ola alone eventually involved twelve companies of Philippine Scouts and twelve companies of Constabulary troops, under three successive American commanders, at a cost estimated in the millions of dollars - a striking expenditure of effort against a single guerrilla band, and one that later Bicolano writers would point to as evidence of just how seriously Ola was taken by the colonial government. Wounded in the leg during one engagement, Ola retreated with his remaining officers and men to a hideout in Malangaton, in the barrio of Mapaco, Guinobatan, from where he continued to direct what fighting remained. As late as July 15, 1903, his forces ambushed a detachment of the 31st Philippine Scout Garrison under Sergeant Nicolas Napoli at Jovellar.
</p>
<p>
Even so, the toll of years of raiding, of internment, and of a rural population exhausted by war was catching up with him. American authorities first tried negotiation, sending emissaries - among them Ramon Santos and Major Jesse S. Garwood of the Constabulary - to persuade him to lay down arms; Ola turned them down and kept fighting. It was only as his own men grew battle-weary, and as word reached him that most of his townsmen had already surrendered and were living under tolerable conditions, that he grew open to ending the campaign.
</p>
<h2>
Surrender at Malangaton
</h2>
<p>
On September 25, 1903, a larger peace panel - including Ramon Santos, Eligio Arboleda, Epifanio Orosco, and Americans Frank L. Pyle, John Paegelow, J. B. Allison, and Joseph Rogers - made its way to Ola's camp at Malangaton, Mapaco. There, Simeon Ola formally surrendered to the Provincial Governor of Albay, A. U. Bett, and to Colonel Harry H. Bandholtz of the Philippine Constabulary, on the condition that his surviving officers and men - 28 of them, by contemporary accounts - be granted amnesty. It was nearly a year and a half after Malvar's surrender in Batangas, and it made Ola, in the eyes of his family and many Bicolano historians since, the last Filipino revolutionary general still in the field.
</p>




General Simeon Ola of Guinobatan: Birth and Legacy

The story of General Simeon Ola: born in Guinobatan, Albay on September 2, 1865, he fought Spain and the U.S. before surrendering as the last holdout general.

September 2, 1865: Simeon Ola was born in Guinobatan, Albay