Gentlemen Rovers

by E. Alexander Powell

Bleeding and exhausted from battle and travel, Walker and his men, after an all-night march through the jungle, limped into the port of San Juan del Sur, and, finding a Costa Rican vessel in the harbor, they seized it for their own use. Still bearing in mind the necessity of getting control of the Transit route, Walker gave his men only a few days in which to recover from their wounds and weariness, and then was off again, this time for Virgin Bay, the halting-place for passengers going east or west. Though in the fight which ensued Walker was outnumbered five to one, his losses were only three natives killed and a few Americans wounded, while one hundred and fifty of the enemy fell before the rifles of the filibusters. This disparity of losses emphasizes, as does nothing else, the deadliness of the American fire.

After the fight at Virgin Bay Walker received from California fifty recruits, thus bringing the force under his command up to some four hundred men, about a third of whom were Americans. The Legitimists, learning that he was planning to again attack Rivas, hastened to reinforce the garrison of that town by hurrying troops there from their headquarters at Granada, which was farther up the lake, planning to give Walker a warm and unexpected reception. But it was Walker who did the surprising, for, having his own channels of secret information, he no sooner learned of the weakened condition of Granada than he determined to direct his efforts against that place, instead of Rivas, and by capturing it to give the Legitimist cause a solar-plexus blow. Embarking his men on a small steamer with the announced intention of attacking Rivas, as soon as night fell he turned in the opposite direction and, with lights out and fires banked, steamed silently up the lake. Dawn found him off Granada, the garrison and inhabitants of which were sleeping off a drunken debauch with which they had celebrated a recent victory. Even the sentries drowsed at their posts. Unobserved, the Americans landed in the semi-darkness of the early dawn, and it was not until they had reached the very outskirts of the town that a sentry suddenly awakened to their presence and gave the alarm by letting off his rifle, the shot being instantly answered by a crackle of musketry as the Americans opened fire. "Charge!" shouted Walker, "Get at 'em! Get at 'em!" and dashed forward at a run, a revolver in each hand, with his followers, cheering like madmen, close at his heels. "Los Filibusteros! Los Filibusteros!" screamed the terror-stricken inhabitants, catching sight of the red shirts and scarlet hat-bands of the Americans. "Run for your lives!" The demoralized garrison made a brief and ineffective stand in the Plaza, and then threw down their arms. Walker was master of Granada. He at once instituted a military government, released over a hundred political prisoners confined in the local jail, policed the town as effectually as though it were a New England village, and when he caught one of his native soldiers in the act of looting, ran him through with his sword.

Walker was now in a position to dictate his own terms of peace, and, four months after he and his fifty-seven followers landed in Nicaragua, an armistice was arranged and the side to which the Americans had lent their aid was in power. A native named Rivas was made provisional president, and Walker was appointed commander-in-chief of the army, which at that time numbered about twelve hundred men. Though insignificant in numbers when judged by European standards, this was really a remarkable force, and perhaps the most effective for its size known to military history. The officers had all seen service under many flags and in many lands—in Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Algeria, Italy, Egypt, Russia, India, China—and the men, nearly all of whom had been recruited in San Francisco, boasted that "California was the pick of the world, and they were the pick of California." There was scarcely a man among them who could not flick the ashes from a cigar with his revolver at a hundred feet, or with his rifle hit a dollar held between a man's thumb and forefinger at a hundred yards. All the strange, wild natures for whom even the mining-camps of California had grown too tame were drawn to Walker's flag as iron filings are drawn to a magnet. Frederick Townsend Ward, the New England youth who raised, trained, and led the Ever-Victorious Army, who rose to be an admiral-general of China, and who performed the astounding exploits for which General Charles Gordon received the credit, gained much of his military training under Walker; Joaquin Miller, "the poet of the Sierras," was another of his devoted followers, while scores of the other men who fought under the blue-and-white banner with the scarlet star in later years achieved name and fame in many different lands.

General Walker reviewing troops on the Grand Plaza, Granada.
From a print in the New York Public Library.

Says General Charles Frederic Henningsen, the famous English soldier of fortune who was Walker's second in command: "I have heard two greasy privates disputing over the correct reading and comparative merits of Æschylus and Euripides. I have seen a soldier on guard incessantly scribbling strips of paper, which turned out to be a finely versified translation of his dog's-eared copy of the Divina Commedia." The same officer, who had fought with distinction under Don Carlos in Spain, under Schamyl in the Caucasus, and under Kossuth in Hungary, who had introduced the Minié rifle into the American service, and was a recognized authority on the use of artillery, and therefore knew whereof he spoke, also testifies to the heroism and astounding fortitude of Walker's men. "I have often seen them marching with a broken or a compound-fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a fractured thigh, or with wounds which rendered them incapable of removal, often (or rather, in early times, always) shot themselves, sooner than fall into the hands of the enemy. Such men do not turn up in the average of every-day life, nor do I ever expect to see their like again. I was on the Confederate side in many of the bloodiest battles of the late war, but I aver that if, at the end of that war I had been allowed to pick five thousand of the bravest Confederate or Federal soldiers I ever saw, and could resurrect and pit against them one thousand of such men as lie beneath the orange-trees of Nicaragua, I feel certain that the thousand would have scattered and utterly routed the five thousand within an hour. All military science failed, on a suddenly given field, before assailants who came on at a run, to close with their revolvers, and who thought little of charging a battery, pistol in hand." As a matter of fact, at the first battle of Rivas, ten Americans, all officers of the Phalanx, armed only with bowie-knives and revolvers, actually did charge and capture a battery manned by more than a hundred Costa Ricans, half of the little band being killed in that astounding exploit. Some estimate of the deeds of these unsung heroes, so many of whom lie in unmarked graves beneath an alien sky, may be gathered from the surgical reports, which showed that the proportion of wounds treated was one hundred and thirty-seven to every hundred men.

For several months after the taking of Granada and the establishment of a provisional government, the dove of peace hovered over Nicaragua as though desirous of alighting, but in February, 1856, it was driven away, at least for a time, by a fresh splutter of musketry along the southern frontier, where Costa Rica, alarmed by Walker's reputed ambition to make himself master of all Middle America, had begun an invasion with the expressed purpose of driving the gringos from Central American soil. After a few months of desperate fighting, in which the Americans fully maintained their reputation for reckless bravery, the Costa Ricans were driven across the border, and for a brief time the harassed Nicaraguans were able to exchange their rifles for their hoes. The country now being for the moment at peace, Rivas called a presidential election, announcing himself as the candidate of the Democrats. The Legitimists, recognizing in Walker the one strong man of the country, had the political shrewdness to choose him, their former enemy, to head their ticket. Two other candidates, Ferrer and Salazar, were also in the field. The election was regular in every respect, the voting being entirely free from the usual disturbances. According to the Nicaraguan constitution, every male inhabitant over eighteen years of age, criminals excepted, is entitled to the suffrage. When the votes were counted it was found that Rivas had received 867 votes; Salazar, 2,087; Ferrer, 4,447; and Walker, 15,835. By such an overwhelming majority, and in an absolutely fair election, was William Walker made President of Nicaragua—the first and only time an American has ever been chosen ruler of a foreign and independent state.

In all its troubled history Nicaragua has never been governed so justly and so wisely as it was by the American soldier of fortune. Had he been free from foreign interference there is little doubt that he would have made Nicaragua a progressive, prosperous, and contented country, and that he would in time have brought under one government and one flag all the states lying between Yucatan and Panama. But that was precisely what the peoples of those states were fearful of, so that, a few weeks after Walker was inaugurated, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, and San Salvador declared war. This time Walker took the field with three thousand trained and seasoned veterans, while opposed to him were twenty-one thousand of the allies. To describe the campaign that ensued would be as profitless as it would be tedious. The programme was always the same: the march by night through the silent, steaming jungle, and the stealthy surrounding of the threatened town in the early dawn; the warning crack of a startled sentry's rifle; the sudden rush of the filibusters with their high, shrill yell; the taking of the barracks and the cathedral in the Plaza, nearly always at the pistol's point; and the panic-stricken retreat of the little brown men in their uniforms of soiled white linen. Everywhere the arms of Walker were triumphant, and had he not at this time deliberately crossed the path of a soldier of fortune of quite another kind, in a few months more he would have realized his life-dream and have made himself the ruler of a Central American empire.

Upon investigating national affairs after his election, Walker found that the Accessory Transit Company had not lived up to the terms of its concession from the government of Nicaragua. By the terms of its charter it had agreed to pay to the Nicaraguan Government ten thousand dollars annually, and ten per cent of its net profits. The company claimed, and the government as stoutly denied, that the ten thousand dollars had been regularly paid, though the concessionaires admitted that the ten per cent on the profits had not been paid, giving as their excuse that there had been no profits. Upon an examination of the books it was quickly discovered that the company had so juggled with the accounts as to make it appear that there were no profits, when, as a matter of fact, the enterprise was an enormously profitable one. Upon discovering the fraud which had been perpetrated upon the government and people of Nicaragua, Walker demanded back payments to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and upon the company insolently refusing to pay them, he promptly revoked its charter, and seized its steamboats, wharves, and warehouses as security for the debt. Though this action was perfectly justifiable under the circumstances, it was, in view of the instability of Walker's position, an unwise move, for it made an implacable enemy of one of the most powerful and perhaps the most unscrupulous of the financiers of the time.