How did the American trick fall on the leader of the Philippine revolutionaries?

The United States has reached what it is now in terms of influence, hegemony, and a great appetite for dictation and subjugation of others, after a long march during which it displaced its European rivals that revolve around it now.

Its war with Spain in particular is a shining example of its first conquest and expansion projects in which it expelled ancient colonists to replace them, while pretending to "liberate" other peoples from the yoke of European "colonial powers".

This happened before things developed in recent decades, and the United States turned to its new game of subjugating others and seizing their wealth, urging the guise of volunteering to deliver "democracy" to them with iron and fire.

Filipino revolutionaries fought Spain over 300 years of colonialism, and the revolution movement became more active in the late nineteenth century, and its fires were fueled by reformist writers led by Jose Rizal.

In 1896 an armed revolt broke out in the Philippines against the Spanish, and Rizal was shot and killed for sedition on December 30, 1896, even though he was calling for reform, not revolution.

The killing of this reformist sparked a revolution led by the young General Emilio Aguinaldo, while the United States was stalking Spain in Cuba and the Philippines to expel it from there and show it who was the master in the region.

War between the United States and Spain was declared in April, and US Commodore George Dewey, sailing from Hong Kong, defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, but could not occupy Manila until land forces arrived three months later.

Meanwhile, on June 12, 1898, the Filipinos declared independence from Spain and installed Emilio Aguinaldo as president of their provisional republic.

While the Americans controlled the capital, Manila, the rest of the country submitted to the Filipino revolutionaries.

The Paris Treaty of 1898, signed by representatives of Spain and the United States in December, transferred Philippine sovereignty from Spain to the United States, but the leaders of the nascent Philippine Republic refused to recognize US sovereignty over their country, and the United States, for its part, rejected the Philippines' demands for independence.

Fighting broke out on the outskirts of Manila on the night of February 4, 1899, and the Filipinos were crushed by American forces, and their president declared war against the United States.

Fighting continued between American and Filipino forces, and on March 31 the Americans captured the rebels' temporary capital, Malolos.

The United States went on with its tricks and deceptions, and in March 1900 asked a group of Filipinos subject to it to form a government for the country for the "happiness, peace and prosperity of the people of the Philippine Islands", and Washington ignored the republicanism headed by Aguinaldo.

The organized rebellion effectively ended with Aguinaldo's arrest on March 23, 1901, a hoax hatched by American Brigadier General Frederick Funston.

Having learned the location of Aguinaldo's secret headquarters from a captured courier, Funston personally proceeded to carry out the mission in the mountains of northern Luzon, where he and a handful of his officers posed as prisoners of war, marching under the guard of a column of Maccabee scouts, disguised as rebels. And these Maccabees, mercenary forces that Spain used to use to subdue the Filipinos, and the United States inherited them from them after their expulsion.

The trick fell on Aguinaldo, who welcomed the disguised, thinking that they were the reinforcements he was waiting for, then he was surprised by the American military commander asking him to surrender.

The United States eliminated the organized revolution, but the guerrilla warfare continued against it, so Washington responded brutally and randomly to it, and on April 16, 1902, the rest of the Filipino fighters against it were "bandits".

With all this, the resistance of the Filipinos continued until 1913, after which the United States tightened its control over the Philippine archipelago until 1946.

It is estimated that about 20,000 Filipino fighters were killed in the main battles of that great war, and more than 200,000 Filipino civilians died as a result of fighting, starvation, or disease.

As for the Americans, 1,500 out of 4,300 missing soldiers were killed in the battle, and twice that number died due to diseases.

About 1,500 died in the battle, while nearly twice that number of Americans died of disease.