It was fought between September 1–3, 1896 at Imus, Cavite province in the Philippines, right after Bonifacio's attack on the gunpowder magazine at the Battle of San Juan del Monte in Manila.

The Spanish military commander in the province, Brigadier General Ernesto de Aguirre, felt confident that he could defeat the Caviteño fighters as his units are more properly armed and fed.

[citation needed] The town itself, situated in the center of a large well-watered plain, surrounded by agricultural land with a mere collection of wooded and bamboo dwellings.

Baldomero Aguinaldo rallied forth to Imus with a handful of men armed only with spears and bolos to test the reflexes of the Spanish defenders of the town.

[citation needed] Aguinaldo and his men braced themselves for the assault on the estate house with its fortification-like walls providing the friars and civil guards the protection against rebel attack.

Aguinaldo and some of his men tore a hole through the thin walls and ran straight to the rice warehouses adjoining the estate house where the friars and the civil guards had taken sanctuary and poured petroleum on it.

In the words of John Foreman,[4] After a siege, which lasted long enough for General Blanco to have sent troops against them, the rebels captured Imus estate-house on September 1, and erected barricades there.

One was cut up piecemeal; another was saturated with petroleum and set on fire; and a third was bathed in oil and fried on a bamboo spit run through the length of his body.

[citation needed] During the burning of the bushes surrounding the riverbanks, Aguinaldo realized he did not provide for his men to close down the rear of the bridge to seal the only escape route the Spaniards could take to save themselves.

General Aguirre fell from his horse and in his hurry to escape, left behind his "Sable de Mando" (command sabre) crafted in Toledo in 1869, which Aguinaldo managed to retrieve; the former was later killed by the pursuing Caviteño rebels.

The first revolutionary government then had Baldomero Aguinaldo as president and Candido Tria Tirona as War Secretary and portfolios for finance, natural resources, agriculture and justice.