Walker had seen enough of his new friends to convince him that his ambition had nothing to fear from such rivals. Castellon was an amiable and irresolute gentleman; Munoz was ambitious and vain, but incapable. The native soldiery were ill-trained and fickle-minded. Faction had stifled any faint sparks of patriotism in their breasts. A few hundred of them who bore the proud title of veteranos, had smelt powder and could face an enemy after a march of forty miles under a tropical sun. They wore a tasteful uniform and carried muskets and knapsacks.
But the hundred recruits of Ramirez were a Falstaffian corps of indolent, good-natured rascals, who devoted all the intervals between skirmishing to gambling and gossip. As their country's proverb hath it, "they would gamble away the sun before sunrise." In striking contrast with those children of nature were the men of California, with iron nerves and dauntless courage, in whose characters vice lost half its evil by losing, if not its grossness, all its meanness; men who "deemed no crime, or curse, or vice as dark as that of cowardice." Their manliness was incapable of treachery, falsehood, or the meaner passions, born of a society in which law, the only remedy for wrong, too easily becomes the strongest shield of the wrong-doer. Having summed up their virtues in the comprehensive ones of courage and loyalty, there is little else to be said in their favour. For themselves they would have asked no higher praise, and strict justice can accord them little beyond.
It was a bold move to attack the enemy in his stronghold. Rivas and the adjoining country are the most densely populated parts of Nicaragua. The city of Rivas contains eleven thousand inhabitants, while the department of that name and the adjacent Oriental department number respectively twenty thousand and ninety-five thousand. Four days after leaving Realejo, the party, to the number of one hundred and sixty-five landed at a point on the coast near the town of Brito, and immediately began a forced march to Rivas. Midnight and a severe rain storm overtook them in the midst of a strange country, but they trudged patiently along, ankle-deep in mud, shielding their precious ammunition from the falling torrents. On the second night of their march the weather proved a useful ally, enabling them to surprise and overpower a picket of the enemy at the village of Tola. Next morning they were rewarded by a first sight of Lake Nicaragua in all its matchless beauty. Walker, who had beheld the glories of Switzerland, Italy, and California, pauses in the recital of his dangerous adventures to note the charms of the earthly paradise upon which he had come to launch the horrors of war. Between him and the lake six hundred Legitimist's troops lay at Rivas, awaiting the attack.
No time was lost in forming the plan of assault. To the Falange was awarded the post of honour, the native command of Ramirez being reserved to support them. Kewen and Crocker led the Americans, who, at the word of command, advanced steadily, receiving the enemy's fire with the coolness of veterans, and reserving their own until it could tell most effectively. Then after pouring in a volley they charged with a yell, and drove the advance guard of the Serviles down the narrow streets to the plaza. A stubborn resistance was made at this point. Crocker was dangerously wounded in two places, his right arm was broken by a musket shot, but he carried his pistol in his left hand and continued to fire it into the faces of the enemy, until a third shot laid him dead. Walker, who had joined his countrymen in the charge, now called for the native reserves to decide the issue; but they were nowhere to be seen. The poltroons had fled at the first shot. The enemy perceived the defection and pressed the abandoned Falange so hard that they were driven for shelter to some adobe huts, behind whose walls they held their own for three hours. It was a losing game with so small a force, for every man slain was equal to thrice the number of enemies added. Achilles Kewen was the next officer to fall. The hardy pioneer, Doubleday, was shot in the head, though not fatally. Seeing six of his men dead, and twice as many wounded, Walker ordered a sortie. The enemy had lost a hundred and fifty in killed and wounded, and General Boscha, their commander, deemed it wiser to offer no opposition to the departure of the Americans. The Serviles, with cowardly ferocity, killed the wounded men who had been left on the plaza, and celebrated their victory by burning the bodies. The ghastly bonfire lit up the city as the weary filibusters halted on their retreat near the Transit road to San Juan del Sur. The following morning they resumed the march to that city, where they arrived about sunset, on June 30th, in a most deplorable plight. Some were hatless, some shoeless, and all exhausted with battle and travel, as they marched into the town. There is a whole epitome of filibustering in the fact that at such a time two recruits were found to join the ranks of the Falange. "The Texan, Harry McLeod, and the Irishman, Peter Burns," deserve mention for this characteristic piece of hardihood.
The Vesta was cruising off the coast, awaiting orders from Walker, who therefore impressed a Costa Rican schooner, the San Jose, for the purpose of carrying his command to Realejo, defending his action upon the ground that the same vessel had already been used to carry General Guardiola from Honduras to Nicaragua upon a hostile mission, thus forfeiting her neutral rights. The schooner was confiscated a year afterwards, by Walker, for sailing under a false register, and, being converted into a man-of-war and renamed the Granada, played quite an important part in the climax of this tragedy.
In this critical hour of his fortunes, Walker's firmness was put to a severe test. A couple of dissolute Americans, who had been living for some time at San Juan, either through drunken folly or private spite, or for the purpose of plunder, set fire to the barracks on shore, for a time placing the whole town in danger of destruction. Walker, foreseeing that the act would be at once attributed to his men, took measures to punish the offenders. One of them escaped from the party detailed to execute him. The other, a gambler named Dewey, took refuge in the hold of a small boat attached to the stern of the San Jose. The desperado was well armed, and any attempt to capture him would have proved fatal to one or more of his assailants. So all the night Walker and a guard of men kept watch over the boat, ready to shoot or seize the villain if he tried to escape. At daybreak the schooner put to sea, towing astern the boat in which Dewey lay sheltered behind a poor native woman, his wretched mistress. The gambler, as everybody on board knew, was a dead shot, while his guard lay under the disadvantage of fearing to injure the woman if they fired. At last he rose to cut the boat's painter, and at that moment a rifle ball ended his career. The poor woman was wounded also, but not mortally. Walker takes pains to recount minutely the details of this incident, in order to vindicate the character of his followers. So severe a punishment was not lost upon those of his men who might be inclined to take a baser view of filibusterism than their leader did.
On the same day they met the Vesta at sea, and embarking on board the old brig, arrived at Realejo on July 1st. Walker was justly incensed at the defection of his native allies at Rivas, and positively refused to continue in the Democratic service without better guarantees of support on emergency than the jealousy of the native commanders seemed likely to allow. The Falange remained several days at Leon, where the firmness of their leader alone averted a collision between them and the troops of Munoz, who had set the example of hostility and distrust towards the new-comers. At last, finding the Cabinet unable to agree upon a fixed policy (though a modified contract had been drawn up, by the terms of which the Falange were to be enlisted in the army of Nicaragua to the number of three hundred, and receive one hundred dollars a month per man, and five hundred acres of land each at the close of the war), Walker withdrew his men from Leon to Realejo. There he embarked them on the Vesta, with the pretended purpose of departing for Honduras, and entering the service of President Cabañas. Nothing however, was farther from his intention. The Meridional department, commanding the Transit route, was the point at whose acquisition he steadily aimed. To maintain his foothold in Nicaragua he well knew he must keep open his communication with the United States and the recruits who were sure to flock thence to his standard.
Castellon was perplexed, fearing equally to part with his valuable allies and to displease Munoz by retaining them. The fortune of war decided the question. The Legitimists under Corral and His Hondureño ally, Guardiola, were drawing close to Leon. Santos Guardiola (his name is still muttered with a curse throughout the length and breadth of the isthmus) was a native of Honduras, who joined the Guatemalan enemies of his country, and, by his unparalleled cruelties to young and old, men and women alike, acquired the dread name of "The Tiger of Honduras." He was sprung from the stock which produces nine-tenths of the murderers and thieves of Central America, the offspring of Indo-African amalgamation known as "Sambos."
A deadlier foe, the cholera, was also beginning to ravage the Democratic department. To meet Corral and his forces, Munoz went forth with six hundred men, and a sharp engagement occurred at Sauce, in which the enemy was repulsed, but Munoz was slain. The loss of that commander influenced Castellon more than the temporary victory, and he continued to beg Walker to return. But Walker had already secured the co-operation of an influential partisan, Don Jose Maria Valle, who readily enlisted a hundred and sixty men for the enterprise against the Meridional department, and, with the easy loyalty of his nation, proposed that Walker should pronounce against Castellon and set up an independent government. Walker was honourable enough to reject the ungrateful suggestion, although he did not hesitate to disobey the Provisional Director's commands when they crossed his own policy. Accordingly, on the 23rd of August the Vesta sailed once more for the Meridional department, and arrived at San Juan del Sur on the 29th. The Legitimists fled at his approach. While the Americans were there the steamer from San Francisco arrived and departed, carrying back with her, as a recruiting agent, the afterwards notorious Parker H. French.
After a stay of four days Walker set out for Rivas, where Guardiola and six hundred Serviles lay waiting to regain the laurels lost at Sauce. The Americans, after a few hours' march, halted for breakfast at Virgin Bay, on the lake, and were at once attacked by Guardiola's whole command who had made a forced march towards San Juan, and then, doubling, followed the Americans to Virgin Bay. Attacked on front and flank, Walker made a good disposition of his little force. Previous experience had taught him that no superiority of discipline, skill, and courage sufficed to counterbalance the numerical odds of eight to one on an open field. He was now to try the effect of pitting the same against a proportion of only five to one, with the ground in his favour. The Falange, as usual, bore the brunt of battle; but the natives, being better officered than before, fought well. Guardiola was driven back at every point, notwithstanding that his men showed desperate courage. But no courage could withstand the deadly marksmanship of the Americans, who, with rifle or revolver, always engaged at close quarters and never wasted a shot. The combat, which hardly deserves the name of a battle, lasted only two hours; sufficiently long to inflict on the enemy a loss of sixty killed and a hundred wounded. At its conclusion Guardiola withdrew his demoralized forces and fled to Rivas. Walker, Doubleday, and a few others were wounded, but none of the Americans, and but three of their native allies, were killed.