The "Blue, White and Blue" has floated over Nicaraguan soil for the last time, save that one brief moment when it shall flutter and fall before the "Stars and Stripes" in the port of San Juan del Norte. So many and such varying stories have been told of the number of men who fought and died under its folds, that a summary of the actual force which during twenty months held possession of a country may not be uninteresting.
It has been estimated by those who estimate by guess, that 5,000 Americans perished in Nicaragua—that is to say, five-sevenths as many Americans as were killed and wounded in the Revolutionary War. It has also been guessed that Walker had from 10,000 to 20,000 men at his command. These guesses have been gravely crystallized into history, where history has condescended to notice the subject at all. The actual records of the adjutant-general, P. R. Thompson, show that exactly 2,843 men were enlisted in all the campaigns. In addition to these, however, must be reckoned native volunteers, civilians who volunteered, and others who were impressed for temporary service—whose combined strength may have swelled the total to about 3,500.
Against them was arrayed a force, in all, of 21,000 Servile Nicaraguans, Costa Ricans, Hondurans, Guatemalans and San Salvadorians, with at least 10,000 Indian auxiliaries. The Allies admitted a loss of 15,000 in all the campaigns. One-third, perhaps, of the Americans died in Nicaragua. I take the assertions of General Henningsen, in the absence of any official figures. Some estimate of their deeds may be gathered from the surgical report, which showed that the proportion of wounds treated was 137 to every hundred men. Those who did not shirk their duty must have carried away many a scar, when they were fortunate enough to carry away their lives, to average the immunity of the cowardly and the false. It is not placing the proportion too high to say that about one thousand five hundred was the number of those who were steadfast and true.
These were mostly Californians, when to be Californian meant to belong to that race of giants who had come from all parts of the earth in search of gold, and then journeyed two thousand miles further in search of adventure. Nine-tenths of them were Americans, of every rank in life, from college to prison graduates, who boasted that "California was the pick of the world, and they were the pick of California"; nor quarrelled with him who chose to put it, "California is the sink of the world, and we are the sewer of California." Young Southerners drifted to Nicaragua, as naturally as young Northerners ran away to sea. A son and a nephew of Senator Bayard ran away from school to join the filibusters, and might have added some military glory to the family name, but that Walker sent them home at the request of the American State department. Henningsen's first aid was a youth of nineteen, named Burbank, who had run away from the Virginia military institute, and would have been entitled, had he lived, to a fortune of 100,000 dollars, which in those days was esteemed wealth. A rather worthless sergeant did actually fall heir to a fortune of that amount, which he was summoned home to enjoy, but purposely missed the steamer and remained to die in Nicaragua.
All the strange, wild natures for whom even California had grown too tame, drifted naturally into the filibuster's camp. "I have heard," says Henningsen, "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 appreciative commander testifies to the invincible heroism and fortitude of those men: "I have often seen them marching with a broken or compound-fractured arm in splints, and using the other to fire the rifle or revolver. Those with a fractured thigh, or 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," he adds, "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." Ten men, all officers, did in the first battle of Rivas actually charge and capture a battery manned by over a hundred Costa Ricans, half of the little band being slain in the heroic feat.
Their enemies bear witness to the splendid courage of the filibusters and their indomitable sang-froid when called upon to face the fusillade which almost always awaited them if captured. Chevalier Belly tells of a filibuster captured, with a broken leg, and condemned to be shot, who curtly replied to the questions of a sympathetic person, as to why he had come to Nicaragua, whether he believed in a future state, and so forth; until losing patience at what he deemed such idle speech, he burst out: "Here, we've had enough of this fooling! If you mean to have this funeral come off bring on your mourners and let us get through with it."
Men who possessed the military genius, which upon a broader field had earned them fame and fortune, lie in unhonoured graves; because on their field bravery and skill meant only increased chances of death. Men of highest education, family, and wealth, lie beside felons and outcasts. Some survived to pursue their adventurous career in other lands, many to die in the American Civil War. One of them, Frederick Townsend Ward, descendant of straitest Puritan ancestry, a native of Salem, Massachusetts, graduated from the filibuster's school to wander over to distant China, where, the Taiping rebellion occurring in the nick of time, he entered the Imperial service, in which he presently attained to the chief command. So well did the doughty filibuster practise the lessons learned in his old school, that he soon became one of the greatest men in the Celestial kingdom, and was loaded with wealth and honours (two million dollars, it is said, of the former, but the native executors produced no assets), and might have risen to any position in that most conservative kingdom, perhaps even to the very throne and office of heaven's vice-gerent, had not an unlucky ball cut short his career at the siege of Ning-Po, and sent him to enjoy the most remarkable honours ever paid to a Yankee living or dead. For the grateful Pagans have erected two temples in his honour, and have solemnly enrolled his name among those of their country's gods. Even to this day there is kept perennially blooming over his tomb a spotless lily, emblematic of I know not what, which is constantly tended and nursed by loving hands, and shall perchance be so tended centuries to come, when Taiping and Filibuster shall have grown dim and hoary traditions in the busy, forgetful world outside the Middle Kingdom. China remembers the services of Ward. With us alter tulit honores, and an Englishman wears the glory of having suppressed the Taiping rebellion. Of a different type was the young Californian, Joaquin Miller, who has lived to embalm in heroic verse the memory of his chief—albeit, Walker, simple and severe, masquerades in a garb which he would have little yearned for or admired.
Thus the poet pictures his hero as "tall, courtly, grand as any king," with
"A piercing eye, a princely air,