It is not clearly identified if the natives planned to inaugurate a monarchy or a republic because they do not have a word in their own language to describe this different form of government, whose leader in Filipino would be called "pinuno".
However, it turned out that they would set at the supreme of the government a priest and that the leader selected would be José Burgos or Jacinto Zamora, which was the plan of the rebels who guided them; and the means they counted upon its realization.
[4] The event was just a simple mutiny since up to that time the Filipinos have no intention of separation from Spain but only secure materials and education advancements in the country.
The Madrid government without any attempt to investigate the real facts or extent of the alleged revolution reported by Izquierdo and the friars believed the scheme was true.
Forty infantry soldiers and twenty men from the artillery took over command of Fort of San Felipe and fired carronades to announce their moment of triumph.
He traced that the primary cause of the mutiny is believed to "be an order from Governor-General Carlos de la Torre (Izquierdo's predecessor) to subject the soldiers of the Engineering and Artillery Corps to personal taxes, from which they were previously exempt.
Different accounts in the Cavite mutiny also highlighted other probable causes of the "revolution" which included a Spanish revolution which overthrew the secular throne, dirty propagandas proliferated by unrestrained press, democratic, liberal and republican books and pamphlets reaching the Philippines, and most importantly, the presence of the native clergy who out of animosity against the Spanish friars, "conspired and supported" the rebels and enemies of Spain.
In addition, accounts of the mutiny suggest that the Glorious Revolution in Spain during that time added more determination to the natives to overthrow the current colonial Spanish government.
The mutineers thought that Filipino native soldiers in Manila would join them in a concerted uprising, the signal being the firing of rockets from the city walls on that night.
The plan was to set fires in Tondo in order to distract the authorities while the artillery regiment and infantry in Manila could take control of Fort Santiago and use cannon shots as signals to Cavite.
The rebels were formed in a line, when Colonel Sabas asked who would not cry out, "Viva España", and shot the one man who stepped forward.
The mutiny was used by the colonial government and Spanish friars to implicate three secular priests, Mariano Gomez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, collectively known as Gomburza.
[2]: 107 In spite of the mutiny, the Spanish authorities continued to employ large numbers of native Filipino troops, carabineros and civil guards in their colonial forces through the 1870s–1890s until the Spanish–American War of 1898.
The senior friars used an una fuerte suma de dinero or a banquet to convince Governor-General Izquierdo that Burgos was the mastermind of the coup.
However, the Philippine Institute was introduced by the Spanish government as an educational decree fusing sectarian schools once ran by the friars.
This decree aimed to improve the standard of education in the Philippines by requiring teaching positions in these schools to be filled by competitive examinations, an important step welcomed by most Filipinos.
On February 15, 1872, the Spanish colonial authorities charged the Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora with treason and sedition, and subversion; and were sentenced to death by garrote at Bagumbayan, Philippines.
The martyrdom of the three priests, ironically, assisted in the creation of the Propaganda Movement which aimed to seek reforms and inform the Spanish people on the abuses of its colonial authorities in the Philippine Islands.
Together with execution of the three martyrs, Enrique Paraiso, Maximo Innocencio and Crisanto de los Reyes were imposed ten years imprisonment.
Among the priests detained in the days that followed were Fathers Jose Burgos, Jacinto Zamora, Mariano Gomez, and several Filipino lawyers and merchants.