Tycoon's War

WITH HER IRON PADDLEWHEELS TURNING SLOWLY, THE 1,800-TON SS Uncle Sam glided into the bay at San Juan del Sur. The two-year-old steamer was fast, handsome, and so luxurious by ocean steamer standards of the day that San Francisco’s Daily Alta California called her a “floating palace.”¹ Her anchor dropped into the sparkling blue-green water with a splash, and she came to a dead stop. Formerly owned by Edward Mills and briefly part of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Independent Opposition Line before Morgan and Garrison added her to the Transit Company’s Nicaragua Steamship Line, the Uncle Sam had just completed a scheduled run down from San Francisco in near record time.

It was Wednesday, October 17, five days since William Walker and his little army had captured Granada. News of Colonel Walker’s success was relayed to the hundreds of passengers ferried ashore in San Juan del Sur’s ubiquitous fleet of flat-bottomed iron boats, and it caused great excitement. There was a feeling of pride in Walker and his American cohorts, and envious and admiring looks were cast at sixty-one men who had come down from California with the other passengers. Led by the one-armed Parker H. French, they were here to join Walker’s Americans fighting the Nicaraguan war.

French had promised Walker that he would return with seventy-five recruits for the Falange. He had not quite achieved his target, but the sixty new men he had recruited were not to be sneezed at—they would almost double the strength of Walker’s Falange. French’s men brought with them a large quantity of ammunition and a shiny brass six-pound field gun. Chief among these new recruits was thirty-three-year-old Birkett D. Fry from Kanawha County, West Virginia. A former U.S. Army lieutenant who had served initially as a private in the Voltigeur Regiment during the Mexican War, Fry had been educated at the Virginia Military Institute and West Point. Failing to graduate from either, he’d received his commission in the field. Fry had been working as a lawyer in California since 1849.

As the waiting fleet of blue and white stagecoaches progressively carried the other steamship passengers away across the Transit Road to La Virgen, French and his newly arrived recruits gathered their baggage and their thoughts. They were informed by Democratico tax collector Don Maximo Espinosa that Colonel Florencio Xatruch’s Legitimista troops at Rivas and General Corral at Nandaime with the main army stood between the newly arrived Americans and Colonel Walker at Granada. Inspired by Walker’s use of the lake to take Granada, French convinced Fry and the other new men that they could impress Walker and grab some glory by carrying out a daring surprise attack of their own.

On his last visit to Nicaragua, French had come up the San Juan on river and lake steamers. He now authoritatively informed his companions that troops of the Legitimista army held the fort at San Carlos, at the head of the San Juan. And, he said, the lake steamer carrying the latest batch of Transit travelers from California would have to pass right under the San Carlos fort on its way to delivering those passengers to their river steamer connection at El Castillo. Here, said French, was the ideal opportunity for the sixty newly arrived Americans to take the Legitimista garrison at San Carlos by surprise—the same way that Colonel Walker took Granada by surprise. French’s companions, thirsting for action, thought it a grand idea.

At French’s instigation, he, Fry, and their companions marched to Virgin Bay, boarded the lake steamer La Virgen, along with the hundreds of civilian Transit passengers, and set off for the scheduled thirty-mile cruise across the lake. As the steamboat neared San Carlos, the size and scale of the massive old stone fortress on the hilltop daunted the would-be attackers. And then those with good eyes caught sight of uniformed Europeans, not dark-skinned Nicaraguans, manning the defenses up there.

What Parker French did not know was that after the civil war flared, Legitimista troops had been withdrawn from guard duty on the San Juan River to bolster the armies in the west of the country. To protect passengers and gold shipments, in July the Transit Company had brought down from New York a large group of Italians, Germans, French, and Poles with military experience, to replace the 150-man Legitimista garrison at El Castillo. These Transit Company troops, well armed and outfitted in smart uniforms, had shortly after transferred to San Carlos at the request of Don Patricio Rivas, the Legitimista collector of customs there. Most of these men had later gone to serve under General Corral. It was the remnant of this company of European guards that now garrisoned Fort San Carlos.

The Transit Company guards had also refurbished the artillery at the fort. When Peter F. Stout visited San Carlos as one of the first Transit passengers to go up the San Juan in July 1851, he had seen twenty-five local soldiers and seven old Spanish cannon at the fort, although only one of the guns had been mounted at the time—the other six lay in the mud. Now, the snouts of several guns, including a monster twenty-four-pounder, poked out between the fort’s battlements, and all were capable of blowing the lake steamer out of the water.

When Parker French’s followers realized that the San Carlos garrison would be no pushover, it was unanimously agreed that their ammunition supply was insufficient to sustain an attack. So French ordered master Joseph Scott to turn La Virgen around and steer for Granada. French and his party were duly landed at the crumbling stone jetty at Granada. But to the horror of the hundreds of Transit passengers, Captain Scott refused to sail back to San Carlos. Instead, he returned to Virgin Bay, where he made his disconsolate passengers disembark.

French looked at Walker dumbly. It had to be explained to French that to use a boat carrying civilians for a military undertaking meant putting the lives of those civilians at risk. Walker “was not much surprised” by French’s role in the ill-conceived enterprise but was disappointed by the fact that Fry, a man with considerable military experience and knowledge of the law, had agreed to be a part of what today would amount to a war crime. Walker would later say that he was forced to overlook the matter because of “the existing circumstances”—he needed every man he could lay his hands on should the Legitimistas attack Granada, which seemed to be their intention.

Birkett Fry had come to Nicaragua with glowing references from Walker’s recruiting agents in San Francisco. One was attorney A. Parker Crittenden, a “respectable, honest-looking man,” in the judgment of one filibuster recruit. ³ Crittenden had experience with Narciso Lopez, and his failed revolution in Cuba, and had drafted many of the new state of California’s laws. Crittenden was also, along with Edmund Randolph, one of Walker’s closest friends. The other recruiter was Edward J. C. Kewen, brother of the late Achilles Kewen, who had died beside Charles Doubleday at the Battle of Rivas. In a letter carried by French, Crittenden and Kewen had assured Walker that Fry would be “a valuable accession to the enterprise.” The long-faced, bearded Fry himself informed Walker that French had promised him a colonelcy in the Falange. That was why, he said, he had thrown up his good law job and left behind Martha, his wife of two years. Walker would describe Fry as “amiable in manner and honorable in sentiment.” Besides, Walker liked the military cut of the man. Despite the Fort San Carlos incident, he gave Fry his colonel’s commission.

The new recruits were divided into two companies, with their officers chosen from among them. Using the Winfield Scott model then employed by the U.S. Army, a captain and three lieutenants were appointed to each company. The two new company commanders were Captains S. C. Asten and Charles Turnbull. Walker made another of the Uncle Sam recruits, Edward J. Sanders, who, he would later judge, “had much more energy of character” than did Fry, a major. French also asked Walker for a commission, but Walker, unimpressed by the San Carlos incident, gave him Charles Doubleday’s old job as Commissary of War, which kept him under Walker’s watchful eye at headquarters.

Captain Joseph Scott refused to embark Transit passengers for the trip across Lake Nicaragua. He guessed that the Fort San Carlos garrison must have seen the armed Americans on board the vessel before it suddenly veered away and headed for Granada, and he feared that they might fire on the steamer the next time it approached San Carlos’s guns. Scott felt that he could only safely resume the carriage of passengers past San Carlos to El Castillo once hostilities ended. That left the hundreds of stranded eastbound travelers lolling around the La Virgen settlement.

Without warning, a detachment of Legitimista troops from Colonel Xatruch’s garrison at Rivas marched into La Virgen. As they entered the settlement, Legitimista soldiers fired indiscriminately into the hundreds of civilians in the streets. Three Transit passengers, American citizens, fell dead, and a number of others were wounded. As panicking civilians ran for their lives or dragged wounded companions into cover, with women and children screaming in terror, the troops advanced on the Accessory Transit Company’s headquarters at the double. As they passed up the street, several Legitimistas paused to search the pockets of the dead Americans.

Cortlandt Cushing and his staff just had time to close the headquarters building’s doors before the Legitimistas arrived on the front porch. Using the butts of their muskets, the troops broke the door down. Crowding inside, they seized Cushing and looted the building. The Legitimistas then marched out back to Rivas, taking Cushing and their loot with them. Cushing was imprisoned at Rivas by Colonel Xatruch until the Accessory Transit Company paid two thousand dollars in exchange for his release.

Walker quickly seized on the Legitimista outrage at La Virgen, turning it into a propaganda coup. As soon as he had captured Granada, he had closed down Defender of Order, the Legitimista newspaper. Using the newspaper’s office and printing press, he set up his own journal, La Nicaraguense, or the Nicaraguan. Walker’s paper would be published every Saturday under the editorship of Juan Tabor, a Granadino who spoke fluent Spanish and English. Initially, half the paper’s content was in Spanish, half in English; later, it would be two-thirds English. Walker himself would write articles for its pages. The front page of the inaugural edition of the Nicaraguan, published on October 20, featured an indignant report of the Virgin Bay incident, decrying the murder of American citizens and the kidnap of another.

When the news of the Legitimistas’ La Virgen raid broke in the United States several weeks later, it was under headlines such as “Massacre of Americans at Virgin Bay.” From one end of the United States to the other, newspaper editors and their readers were outraged by the story. Not only were they up in arms at the murder of Americans, but the raid also put America’s Nicaraguan Transit Route to California under threat. Until now, Transit passengers crossing Nicaragua from coast to coast had been treated as the neutrals they were in this civil war. Now, an American lifeline to and from California was in jeopardy.

With Colonel William Walker portrayed as an enlightened American bringing civilization to the barbarians of Central America, support for him in the United States soared. Conversely, the killings at La Virgen fueled a national distaste for the native people of Nicaragua, no matter what their political persuasion, Legitimista or Democratico. The deprecating nickname of “greaser” from now on took on a more hateful connotation.

A Nicaragua Line ocean steamer from New York dropped anchor at Greytown. The town had been totally rebuilt since being leveled by the bombardment from the USS Cyane a year back, and it was business as usual in the town. Word of the outrage at La Virgen the previous day had yet to come downriver, so, in ignorance of the danger ahead, the ocean steamer’s passengers transferred to waiting Transit Company river steamers to be taken up the San Juan.

Above El Castillo, the passengers joined the largest of the lake steamers, the gleaming, all-white 421-ton San Carlos, a product of the Harlan and Hollingsworth yard in Delaware. The crowded paddle-steamer sallied up the river. She was just passing Fort San Carlos and was about to enter the lake with her westbound passengers when a cannon at the fort on the hill boomed. Just as Captain Scott had feared, the men garrisoning Fort San Carlos had been made jittery by the recent strange behavior of the San Carlos’s sister vessel, La Virgen. To be safe rather than sorry, the men from the garrison opened fire on the San Carlos with their heavy gun. Their aim was sadly perfect—a twenty-four pound cannon ball slammed into the side of San Carlos. In a splintering of wood, the projectile instantly killed an American mother and the infant she was nursing. The foot of another child was taken away by the cannonball. Increasing speed, the steamer escaped onto the lake while the shocked passengers tended to the dead and injured.

The San Carlos continued on to Virgin Bay, where she unloaded her shaken passengers and the casualties. These passengers from New York continued on to San Juan del Sur, but there were still hundreds of eastbound passengers sitting at La Virgen, prevented from traveling to New York or New Orleans. When Walker learned of the shelling of the San Carlos, he ordered the steamer to bring the stranded Transit eastbound passengers up the lake from La Virgen to Granada, putting them under the protection of his army. The westbound passengers reached San Francisco ten days later, and their stories of Legitimista atrocities against civilians in Nicaragua quickly fueled incensed newspaper editorials. The tales also created a rush on Walker’s recruiting agents from vengeful fellow Americans. Walker could not have hoped for better press had he engineered the Legitimista blunders himself.

Just the same, Walker felt it vital to quickly demonstrate that law and order prevailed in Nicaragua, fearing that unless he acted firmly, the Transit Company’s board would now consider the Nicaragua route too dangerous and abandon it. The Transit Route was at the heart of Walker’s plans for Nicaragua. Now, frustratingly close to gaining control of the Transit, he could not afford to have Charles Morgan and Cornelius Garrison close it down. Little did Walker know that at that very moment in New York City, Cornelius Vanderbilt was also frustratingly close to his objective—that of regaining control of the Transit Company from Morgan and Garrison, in a surprise stock market attack akin to Walker’s taking of Granada. And like Walker, the last thing Vanderbilt wanted was the Nicaraguan Transit Route to be shut down. For, once shut down, it might never reopen.

Walker was aware that in the wake of the Cyane incident, the U.S. government was in no position to criticize a tough-minded response to the murder of its citizens in Nicaragua. He also believed that, as mad Mariano Mendez had warned him, the locals had to be ruled with an iron hand; only one law was understood in Nicaragua, the law of fusilado, the firing squad. So, early on the morning of October 22, Walker ordered the arrest of Granada-based Legitimista cabinet minister Mateo Mayorga—the same minister who had praised Emanuel Mongalo and Nery Fajardo in the Defender of Order for torching the Espinosa house during the Battle of Rivas. Simultaneously, Walker issued a proclamation declaring that he held Mayorga personally responsible for the unlawful killing of American civilians in Nicaragua. Accordingly, said the proclamation, Colonel Walker ordered that Minister Mayorga be executed by firing squad, at once.

As interior minister, Don Mateo Mayorga, a lawyer by profession, had been the Legitimista minister responsible for law and order, and this was why Walker selected him to be his sacrificial lamb. No trial or legal process was involved. Even avid Walker supporter, author, and newspaper editor Richard Harding Davis would later remark that “this act of Walker’s was certainly stretching the theory of responsibility to breaking point.”⁴ But neither Mayorga nor anyone else had the opportunity to argue the legality of his summary sentence.

That same day, Mayorga, who, like his fellow Legitimista leaders, had been under house arrest at Granada, was led from his residence by Walker’s officer of the day, Captain Ubaldo Herrera. A detachment of Colonel Valle’s troops formed around the dazed prisoner, who was marched to Granada’s main plaza. The detachment halted in front of a wall outside Granada’s cathedral, a wall pockmarked by musket balls from numerous executions carried out on this very same spot by the Legitimista authorities in the past.

Mayorga was made to sit on a chair in front of the wall, facing the plaza. As Captain Herrera blindfolded the prisoner, a silent crowd of off-duty soldiers and thousands of Granadinos gathered to watch, standing some way back. The men of Captain Herrera’s detachment formed up opposite the seated prisoner. On Herrera’s command, they loaded their muskets. Herrera drew his sword. With weapons loaded, Herrera ordered his men to take aim. The muskets came up to the horizontal. The soldiers sighted along the barrels, aiming for Don Mateo Mayorga’s heart. Herrera dropped his sword, at the same time calling the command to fire. A dozen muskets detonated. Flame shot out the end of the barrels. When the smoke cleared, Mateo Mayorga, his white shirtfront suddenly crimson with his lifeblood, could be seen slumped on the ground, dead.

It was the middle of the day on October 22. Legitimista commander in chief, General Ponciano Corral, paced up and down, anxiously reading and rereading a letter just received from William Walker. Corral was a dashingly handsome man. Tall, curly-haired, and close to fifty years of age, he was, on his mother’s side, the descendant of African slaves. Corral was well liked by his compatriots and had a reputation as a conciliator. But in Walker’s view, Corral “lacked decision and was more fertile in perceiving difficulties that in defying or overcoming them.”

Corral had marched his army from Nandaime, which he considered too difficult to defend, to the picturesque hill town of Masaya, twenty-five miles to the west of Granada. Here, he built barricades at the sloping approaches to the town, at the same time sending urgent orders to Colonel Tomás Martinez at Managua to bring Legitimista reinforcements from the north. The commander in chief would not entertain an advance against Granada until those reinforcements reached him. Most of the remaining members of the Legitimista hierarchy joined Corral at Masaya, among them the Legitimistas’ token president of Nicaragua, the ineffectual José Maria Estrada.

Shortly after the execution of Mateo Mayorga, Pedro Rouhaud, a French resident of Granada, had set off from the capital to find General Corral. It was Rouhaud who brought Corral this letter from Colonel William Walker. In it, Walker informed Corral of the execution of Mayorga and the reasons for it. Most worrying to Corral, Walker’s letter also said that “all the Legitimista families of the city (Granada) would be held as hostages for the future good conduct of (President) Estrada’s officers toward American women and children.”

Corral shared the letter’s contents with his officers. As Walker had expected, it immediately caused consternation among Corral’s subordinates, many of whom had families at Granada. According to the Nicaraguan version of events—Walker failed to mention it in his memoirs—the letter from Walker additionally stated that if he did not receive a favorable response to his request for peace talks by 9:00 that night, he would start executing Legitimista officials being held at Granada.⁵ The fact that Walker had summarily executed Mayorga sent a chill message—he meant business and was likely to carry out his threat to shoot his Granadine hostages.

Heated discussion now took place among the Legitimistas at Masaya. Some of Corral’s officers implored him to enter into peace negotiations to save their family members. Others proposed doing nothing until the expected reinforcements arrived from the north. Some Legitimista soldiers at Masaya were all for continuing the war and even spoke of deposing Corral as commander in chief if he parleyed with Walker, replacing him with the aggressive Colonel Martinez once he arrived with the northern reinforcements.

But as General Corral had just learned from a messenger from the north, Colonel Martinez and his reinforcements might never reach Masaya, certainly not in time to save the hostages. When news that Walker had taken Granada had arrived, Martinez’s army had abandoned Pueblo Nueva and fallen back to Managua. Then, just south of Managua, marching to join Corral at Masaya, Martinez had collided with a Democratico column led by General Mateo Pineda and the irrepressible Colonel Mariano Mendez, who were bringing a mixed band of irregulars down from León to link up with Walker at Granada. Those Democratico irregulars now had Martinez’s troops pinned down. Neither force was able to move.

There was another ingredient in the mixture—Corral’s personal ambition. Walker had stated that Corral should be a leading member of any new government that emerged from a peace agreement between the warring parties. Walker’s peace ultimatum presented Corral with the opportunity to step over his party leader, Estrada, to obtain a prominent position in the new government and become the most powerful Legitimista in that new government and, perhaps before long, the new president of Nicaragua.

A little before 9:00 that night, Rouhaud arrived back in Granada and was escorted directly to Walker. As Walker was to put it, Rouhaud bore “gratifying intelligence”—Corral had agreed to personally come to Granada first thing next morning to conduct peace negotiations with Walker.

At dawn on October 23, Colonel Birkett D. Fry and a contingent of mounted American Falange members set off from Granada to meet Corral and escort him into the city. Walker had chosen Fry quite deliberately for this task. With his military bearing and in his U.S. Army uniform, Fry looked suitably martial and official. But more importantly, Walker was sending Fry, a newly arrived senior officer, to meet Corral to give credence to the rumor then abroad that large numbers of new American recruits were reaching Walker with each new arrival of Atlantic and Pacific steamers. And in seeing Fry, Corral would hopefully gain the impression that these new recruits were men of quality.

Colonel Fry and his American escort found Corral and his lancer bodyguard at a property called La Carmen on the Masaya road. The two senior officers exchanged salutes and greetings before the parties combined to ride to Granada. A little after 9:00 A.M., Walker received word that Corral, Fry, and the escort were at the Polvon, the city’s gunpowder mill, on the outskirts of the Granada suburb of Jalteva. Walker mounted up and, accompanied by senior Falange and Democratico officers, rode to meet the Legitimista commander in chief.

When the two mounted commanders came face to face, they formally saluted each other, then rode side by side to the Granadine Plaza. With their subordinates coming along behind, they rode through the Jalteva Plaza and passed by the Jalteva Church. Along Calle Real Jalteva the procession trotted, passing the ruined bell tower of another church, La Merced, destroyed the previous December during the Democratico siege of the city. From the doorways and windows of the white-painted adobe brick houses lining the street, the people of Granada watched the horsemen pass. The women in particular looked dazzlingly colorful in their Sunday-best outfits. With smiles on their faces and tears in their eyes, the people waved and cheered the passing parade of generals and colonels, overjoyed at the prospect of peace after seventeen months of brutal civil war.

When the riders reached the Granadine Plaza, Walker’s entire Democratico army was there, formed up neatly in ranks. At the front of the assembly stood Walker’s 160 Americans in their three companies. At the rear, Valle’s 450 Nicaraguans were formed up by company. In between the Falange and the Democratico battalion stood Walker’s trump card. Here were hundreds more Americans who had seemingly materialized overnight, all standing to attention with muskets on their shoulders and red ribbons on their hats. Corral said nothing, but he could not hide his surprise at the number of men in Walker’s force—close to one thousand, he would have calculated—and the fact that more than half of them were Yankees.

As Corral was ushered into Government House by Walker to commence peace negotiations, he had no idea that the American had employed a ruse learned from Julius Caesar. The Roman general, in his 52 B.C. assault on the rebel Gaul city of Gergovia in France’s Auvergne Mountains, had put helmets on his hundreds of mule drivers and put the mule drivers on their pack mules. Then, forming them up like cavalry, he had sent the muleteers off with one of his legions as if he was mounting a combined cavalry-infantry attack. The rebel Gauls, watching from the city walls, were deceived into sending a large force from their camps outside Gergovia to intercept this army. When the Gauls realized that these were not cavalry troopers and this was a feint, they had gone rushing back to Gergovia, but it was too late—Caesar had overrun their camps behind their backs, using his main force of real cavalry and several infantry legions.

Since boyhood, Walker had been versed in Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, having recited every word of Caesar’s war memoirs, the Commentaries, to college administrators when he was only twelve. The deception at Gergovia must have impressed him in his youth and influenced him now. Overnight, he had sent his officers around the hundreds of American Transit passengers who had arrived from San Francisco aboard the Cortes and Uncle Sam and who were waiting impatiently in Granada for the Transit Route to the east to reopen. The officers had reminded the travelers that the only way they would get out of this place was if the civil war concluded. And, they said, the only way the civil war could be concluded quickly was if Colonel Walker could convince the Legitimistas that he had many more American troops serving under him than actually was the case. This ruse, the officers had said, would steer the Legitimistas into signing a peace treaty when General Corral came visiting next morning. To end the war and get the hell out of this place, the vast majority of American Transit travelers had gladly collected a musket and a red ribbon from the Granada armory and had fallen into line in the plaza that morning behind the real soldiers of the Falange. All they had to do was stand in place, look fierce, and not drop their muskets.

The ruse worked; Corral genuinely believed that Walker had been reinforced by hundreds of American recruits. Besides, Corral was ready for peace and was looking for an excuse to do a deal with Walker. Vain and ambitious, he had not forgotten Walker’s earlier communication suggesting that Corral should be a member of any new government of national unity. Other senior Legitimistas had warned him that Walker’s stipulation that he himself be made commander in chief of the new Army of the Republic of Nicaragua was full of danger. But Corral was confident he could control Walker. The meek and mild American, it seemed to Corral, was a tractable little man with puffed-up ideas about being a soldier. Besides, Walker was an outsider; Corral was confident that he could soon freeze Walker out of local affairs. After all, everyone knew that this Yankee newspaper editor could not even speak Spanish.

Corral sat down at Government House together with his secretary, Walker, a translator, and Father Vijil, who acted as moderator. On the table, Corral laid a prepared and detailed agenda. Even Walker seemed surprised that Corral had come with his peace terms mapped out. Corral also produced his written authority from President Estrada to act on behalf of the Legitimistas and commit them to peace terms without the need for their ratification—what Corral and Walker agreed here today would be accepted by the Legitimista leadership.

On the other hand, Walker made it clear that any treaty agreed between them would have to be ratified by the Democratico political leadership at León. Corral had no problem with that, seeing Walker as merely a middle man, and “treated with him simply as the colonel commanding the forces occupying Granada.” That suited Walker. He allowed Corral to dictate the course of the meeting, later saying he let Corral “develop freely the terms he desired.” For his part, Walker was mostly silent, “saying little by way either of objection or amendment.” In the end, “the treaty, as signed, was nearly altogether the work of Corral.” This way, no one could later accuse Walker of dictating terms to the Legitimistas. As it happened, Walker found Corral’s terms easy to work with, and easy to work around if necessary.

The treaty drawn up on October 23 provided for a new government, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Nicaragua until national elections could be held, those elections to take place no later than fourteen months from the date of the treaty. Corral nominated Don Patricio Rivas to fill the post of provisional president. Rivas, a Legitimista and former head of state of Nicaragua in 1839 and again through 1840-1841, was considered a moderate. Currently, Rivas was the Legitimistas’ collector of customs on the San Juan River.

The treaty also placed Walker in command of the Army of the Republic, with the contracts of all foreign troops serving on both sides recognized by the new government. All officers on both sides were to retain their ranks and rates of pay. Corral specified that Legitimista commanders Colonel Martinez and Colonel Xatruch be given charge of the Managua and Rivas garrisons of the new Army of the Republic of Nicaragua (ARN). At Corral’s suggestion, too, Walker’s Americans were to be absorbed into the new Army of the Republic, with the Falange Americana ceasing to exist as a separate entity. The debts of both sides in the civil war would become the debts of the new government. The Legitimista stronghold of Granada would continue to be the Nicaraguan national capital, and the blue and white Nicaraguan state flag used by the Legitimistas would be retained as the flag of the republic, with the Democratico flag consigned to history.

On the face of it, Walker had conceded a great deal to the Legitimistas, to the detriment of the Democraticos. He asked for just one thing—that the clause in the 1838 Nicaraguan Statute, which provided for the naturalization of foreigners to make them citizens of Nicaragua, be recognized and validated by the treaty, and Corral agreed. On behalf of the Legitimistas, Corral signed the treaty at the meeting. Walker immediately sent a copy to Provisional Director Escoto at León for ratification by the Democratico leadership.

That afternoon, with General Corral still in Granada, the alarm was raised when the lake steamer Central America came plowing across the lake from the direction of San Carlos. Neither Walker nor Corral was expecting the boat, and both immediately suspected the other of treachery. But it turned out that Captain Joseph Scott was at the steamboat’s helm, and he had come on his own initiative to collect the stranded Transit passengers. The news that the Legitimistas had signed the peace treaty had spread fast, with the result that the Legitimista garrisons at San Carlos and El Castillo had simply melted away. The San Juan River was once more open to safe navigation by Transit passengers.

Walker delayed giving approval for the passengers to embark on the Central America until Corral departed Granada later that afternoon. Still unaware that he had been deceived by Walker’s Caesarian stratagem, Corral set off back to Masaya taking a copy of the treaty with him. He went away delighted with the outcome of the negotiations and fully believing that he’d had the better of Walker. As he departed, the Legitimista general rode past leading Legitimista socialite Dona Irena Ohoran, a close friend, in the street; Walker briefly lived at her house in the first days after the fall of Granada. Grinning, Corral held up the leather case containing the treaty document and, in the language of cock-fighting, Nicaragua’s national pastime, said to Dona Irena, “We have beaten them with their own game-cock!” Walker was the cock.

Once Corral left the city, it was no longer necessary to keep up the deception about the additional American “troops,” and Walker gave Captain Scott permission to take the Transit passengers on board the Central America. After twenty dramatic days in Nicaragua, during which they had seen five of their fellow passengers killed and others injured by the Legitimistas, the travelers gratefully departed. Without incident, the heavily laden Central America steamed across the lake, by Fort San Carlos, and down the San Juan. When these passengers reached New York in early November, they would gush their stories to the press. Soon all of America would be reading about the barbarism of the Legitimista troops at Virgin Bay and San Carlos, and of the brilliance of Colonel William Walker, the quiet American who took Granada, fooled the Legitimistas, and forced the warring parties to the peace table to end Nicaragua’s civil war.

One of those passengers didn’t continue east—C. J. Macdonald, a Scotsman who had been living in California for some years, informed Walker that he was remaining in Nicaragua to act as the business agent of San Francisco’s Cornelius K. Garrison. And on the afternoon of the twenty-third, the one-armed Parker French came to Walker to say that Macdonald, on Garrison’s behalf, was prepared to loan $20,000 worth of gold to the new Nicaraguan government from the latest California gold shipment, against moneys due to the government by the Transit Company. This proposal took Walker by surprise. He had been under the impression that Garrison and his partner Charles Morgan had been locked in a battle with Cornelius Vanderbilt for the control of the Transit Company’s stock. “The advance by Macdonald, however,” Walker said later, “indicated another plan on the part of Garrison and Morgan.”

Before Walker had set off for Nicaragua in May, he’d approached Garrison in his San Francisco office. “It was generally said that the company was indebted to the Republic by a large amount,” Walker had told the banker, before “proposing an advantageous mode of settling this debt.” But at that time, Garrison had not been interested in anything Walker, the then failed Sonoran filibuster, had to say, telling his visitor “that his principals had instructed him to have nothing to do with such enterprises as he supposed Walker to contemplate.” Now, just five months later, how different both their situations were. And here was Garrison offering to loan the Walker enterprise $20,000.

After viewing Macdonald’s written authority from Garrison to act as his agent in Nicaragua, Walker approved the arrangement. French drew up an agreement, which was sent with the remainder of the gold shipment to New York. There, Garrison’s partner Charles Morgan would endorse the arrangement and pay restitution to the gold’s owners, using the funds of his new New York City bank, Charles Morgan and Company, of which Garrison was the San Francisco agent. The $20,000 in gold went into the coffers of the Commissary of War. At least now Walker could pay his troops and purchase arms and ammunition.

That same day, Walker wrote to his “intimate friend” A. Parker Crittenden in San Francisco, “saying that any arrangements he might make to get five hundred men into the country would be fully approved.” He urged Crittenden to approach Cornelius Garrison, for, in the wake of the unsolicited gold offer, Walker believed “that Garrison might be brought to cooperate largely in the policy of introducing the American element into Nicaragua.”

On October 29, General Corral marched his Legitimista army into Granada from Masaya to combine them with Walker’s men. Although the treaty had yet to be ratified by the Democratico leadership at León, the next day a lake steamer brought the proposed new president, Don Patricio Rivas, from San Carlos to Granada. Don Patricio, a man of slight build, with thinning brown hair and a pencil-thin mustache, had the air of a bureaucrat. As he disembarked from the steamer at the Granada jetty, he was jointly received by Walker and Corral, who conducted him to the Cabildo, the City Council House on the Granadine Plaza. There, Rivas knelt on a cushion in front of a crucifix, and before Father Vijil and the assembled dignitaries, he swore to abide by the treaty of October 23 and to faithfully perform the duties of provisional president of Nicaragua.

Standing behind Rivas, Corral indicated to Walker that the pair of them should next kneel beside the new president and also take an oath, which Corral had prepared. Corral had said nothing of this previously to Walker, who immediately suspected that Corral was trying to embarrass him. Walker had received a report from a Spanish-speaking informant about Corral’s comment likening Walker to a Democratico fighting cock. But Walker didn’t object. Kneeling on one side of President Rivas, he, like tall, erect Corral, read aloud a short oath that bound them to the treaty.

Later that same day, President Rivas announced the appointment of Corral as both his minister for war and the new government’s minister general. The former post made Corral Walker’s superior, while the latter gave Corral broad powers in other spheres. In turn, Minister Corral issued a proclamation naming William Walker commander in chief of the Army of the Republic of Nicaragua, with the rank of general of division.

The following day, October 31, Corral invited General Walker to the executive chamber at Government House. Producing a crucifix, Corral advised him, through an interpreter, that for his appointment as commander in chief of the army to be confirmed, it was necessary to take yet another oath. If Corral had been expecting Walker the Protestant to refuse to again kneel before the crucifix, he miscalculated. Without hesitation, Walker dropped to his knees and took the oath.

This same day, General Jerez arrived in Granada from León leading a delegation of seven senior Democraticos and bringing the news that the Democratico cabinet had ratified the peace treaty brokered by Walker. The deal was official. Nicaragua’s civil war was at an end.

After briefly living at Dona Irena Ohoran’s house, Walker took up residence in Granada with the wealthy Vieja family in their two-story townhouse on the Granadine Plaza. There, on November 1, he received a visit from President Rivas. Don Patricio had moved into Government House across the plaza, but so too had War Minister Corral, and to many observers, it seemed that Corral had Rivas entirely in his power. But overnight, Rivas received warnings from friends that it was not a good idea to be seen to be leaning too far toward the Legitimistas if the peace was to last. So Rivas had come to Walker to ask his advice on the makeup of his new coalition cabinet; he went away with the American’s list of recommended ministers.

Corral readily accepted Walker’s proposals that Legitimista-leaning Granada moderate Don Fermin Ferrer, whom Walker had appointed prefect of Granada, be minister of public credit, and Parker H. French, as a so-called neutral, be minister of hacienda, or secretary of the treasury. The only sticking point was the appointment of a minister for foreign relations. Walker proposed Democratico general Maximo Jerez for the post. So far, no Democratico had been appointed to the cabinet as the peace treaty required. Corral had to give ground. By the end of the day, Rivas was able to convince him to accept Jerez as foreign minister. But at the first meeting of the cabinet, Corral refused to shake Jerez’s hand. It was not an auspicious beginning to the new coalition government.

Benito Lagos was a prisoner in Managua Prison. A Democratico, he had been imprisoned by the Legitimistas after they occupied Managua early in 1855; he was charged with “political crimes.” Even after the peace treaty was ratified, Colonel Tomás Martinez, former Legitimista commander in the north and now military governor of Managua, was slow to release political prisoners. On November 3, Benito Lagos found himself hustled to Colonel Martinez’s office.

Martinez, a squat man with a mustache and thick beard, lay a small package of letters on his desk in front of the prisoner and made him a proposition. If Lagos would carry those letters north to Honduras, using his status as a leading Democratico to pass through Nicaragua’s Democratico north unchallenged, Martinez would give him his freedom. Lagos didn’t have to think twice—he immediately agreed to undertake the mission. Martinez gave him a good horse and pointed him toward Honduras.

Upward of two hundred Democratico soldiers chose to remain in the new national army, and they formed the ARN’s Nicaraguan Battalion, under the command of Colonel Valle. A small number of foreigners, mostly Frenchmen and Germans, serving in the Legitimista army also chose to stay in the army, creating the French Company and the German Company. To a man, the Americans of the former Falange Americana also stayed on; Walker formed them into three ARN units—the First Rifle Battalion, the First Light Infantry Battalion, and a small cavalry unit, the Mounted Rangers.

On the morning of November 5, the now General Walker was at his desk in his new office on the second floor of Government House when Colonel Valle came through the doorway with his characteristic stiff-legged limp and a fierce scowl on his face. Valle slapped a package of letters down on the commander in chief ’s desk.