In Cauayan, on September 20, Fathers Perez and Aguirrezabal were beaten and compelled to give up money by five emissaries of Leyba, and the latter priest was cut in the face with a sabre.  The convento was sacked.  On the 25th Leyba arrived and after kicking and beating Father Garcia compelled him to give up $1700.  He then informed the priests that if it were not for Aguinaldo’s orders he would kill all the Spaniards.

On the afternoon of the 24th three priests and a Spaniard named Soto arrived at Ilagan.  The following is the statement of an eye-witness as to what happened:—­

“They led the priests to the headquarters of the commanding officer where the tyrant Villa, always eager to inflict suffering on humanity, awaited them.  The scene witnessed by the priests obeisant to the cruel judge was horrifying in the extreme.  Four lions whose thirst for vengeance was extreme in all, threw themselves, blind with fury, without a word and with the look of a basilisk, upon poor Senor Soto giving him such innumerable and furious blows on head and face that weary as he was from his past journey, the ill-treatment received at Angadanan and weighted down by years, he was soon thrown down by his executioners under the lintel of the door getting a terrible blow on the head as he fell; even this did not satisfy nor tame down those fierce-hearted men, who on the contrary continued with their infamous work more furious than before, and their cruelty did not flag on seeing their victim at their feet.  They could have done no worse had they been Silipan savages dancing in triumph around the palpitating head cut from the body of some enemy.

“The priests who witnessed this blood-curdling scene trembled like the weak reed before the gale, waiting their turn to be tortured, but God willed that cruel Villa should be content with the butchery perpetrated upon unhappy Sr.  Soto.  Villa dismissed the priests after despoiling them of their bags and clothes telling them, to torment them:  ’Go to the convento until the missing ones turn up so that I may shoot you all together.’”

Leyba entered Echague on September 22, promptly going to the convento as usual and demanding money of the priest, Father Mata.  When the latter had given him all he had, he received three terrific beatings at the hands of some twelve men armed with whips and sticks, after which Leyba himself struck him with his fist and his sabre.  He was finally knocked down by a blow with the sabre and left disabled.  It took six months for him to recover.

Shortly after Leyba’s arrival in Nueva Vizcaya on the afternoon of the 25th, five priests were summoned to Solano and there abused in the usual fashion in an effort to extort money from them.  Only one escaped ill treatment and one was nearly killed.