A Servile victory in the North--Walker in the enemy's stronghold--
Negotiations for peace--Execution of Mayorga--Rivas chosen
Provisional Director--Corral's treason and punishment--Newspaper
history.
Corral lay with the main body of the Legitimist army at Rivas, keeping,
through his scouts and spies, a close watch on the movements of his
enemy. One of those spies, having been caught within the Democratic
lines, was tried by court-martial and summarily shot. Corral fancied
that he had his foes in a trap, and he accordingly devoted all his
efforts to prevent their retreat to San Juan, as well as to cut off
reinforcements from California. Matters, indeed, looked desperate with
the Democrats. On the North the Leonese had just been routed in battle
by General Martinez at Pueblo Nuevo, and the victor had only halted for
a time at Granada to receive a triumphal ovation before coming down to
Rivas to join in the extermination of the filibusters.
It had been a gala day in the city of Granada. From early dawn to
midnight her ten thousand citizens filled the streets and plazas with
revelry and congratulations. Salvos of artillery thundered a welcome to
the victors, joy bells rang all day, and _bombas_ and rockets wasted
precious powder in their honour. _Aguardiente_ flowed freely as water,
until the valiant soldiers prayed that Walker might be spared
destruction long enough to meet the heroes of Pueblo Nuevo. Far into
the night lasted the grand fiesta, till the last drunken reveller had
hied him home or lain down in the street to dream of renewed happiness
on the morrow. The tardiest lover had tinkled his farewell on the
guitar. In the grand plaza the guard nodded around the watch fire,
while from distant pickets came at intervals the long-drawn nasal
"Alerte!" of the sentinels. It was a melodious cry, equally unlike the
sharp challenge of the Frenchman or the stern English monosyllables.
Granada slept, the while a little steamer, with lights cloaked and
furnaces hidden, steamed slowly along the shore. Not a sound broke the
stillness of the lake, save the lap of surf or the plash of the
startled saurian. The jaguar prowling among the orange trees on the
shore challenged the unfamiliar noise, and the night birds passed along
the cry of warning which was lost upon the ears of the sleepy
sentinels. They drowsed over their waning fires until the gray of
morning broke on the mountains, and from convent and church tower the
joy-bells renewed the merry peals. Here and there a straggling sentry
discharged his piece in response. Another and another shot were heard;
then, suddenly, a short, sharp volley such as never came from the mouth
of smooth-bore musket. The joy-bells changed to a loud alarm as a
terrified sentinel rushed in from the South suburb, crying, "The enemy
are on us! the Filibusteros!" Close upon his heels came the broken and
demoralized picket, with the advance guard of Americans under Walker
and Valle galloping on their track.
The surprised garrison, after the first panic, rallied and made a short
stand on the plaza, until an impetuous charge of the invaders swept
them away. In less time than has been taken to tell it one hundred and
ten filibusters had carried by assault the city of Granada, without
losing a man--literally, for a drummer-boy was the only victim on their
side.
The surprise was complete, and the consequence of supreme importance to
Walker, who, from the chief city of the Servile party, might dictate
terms to Central America. Corral had been completely outgeneralled,
nobody but Walker himself and his trusted aids, Valle and Hornsby,
having been acquainted with the object of the expedition when it set
out from Virgin Bay.
Walker, as soon as he had organized a provisional government and
convinced his native allies by vigorous measures that the conquered
city was not to be subjected to the usual treatment of plunder and
violence, sent a delegation to negotiate with Corral. The envoys were
met with a polite negative, while the United States minister, Mr.
Wheeler, who had accompanied them in the character of a peacemaker, was
thrown into prison and threatened with other punishments, whence ensued
much diplomatic correspondence and official shedding of ink.
Meanwhile the hope of a peaceable understanding was seriously
jeopardized by the folly of Walker's recruiting agent, Parker H.
French. He had come to San Juan with a body of new men from California,
and after crossing the Transit had seized one of the lake steamers,
with the intention of capturing Fort San Carlos, at the head of the San
Juan River, the same stronghold which in its days of power had been the
key to the Transit route and to lake navigation. French was easily
repulsed, and made his way to Granada to report his misadventures.
Tidings of his deeds reaching Rivas in the meantime, some Legitimist
soldiers, by way of reprisal, attacked and killed six or seven
Californian passengers who were awaiting at Virgin Bay a chance of
passage to the Atlantic coast. Shortly afterwards the commandant of
Fort San Carlos fired into a westward-bound steamer, killing some
passengers who were as innocent of complicity with French or the
filibusters as had been the other victims at Virgin Bay. The protest of
the American minister being treated with contempt, Walker, with
questionable justice, retaliated by ordering a court-martial on the
Legitimist Secretary of State, Don Mateo Mayorga, who had been captured
at the taking of Granada. Such a method of holding a cabinet minister
responsible for the acts of his government was enforcing the principles
of constitutional rule with a vengeance. The court was composed of the
secretary's countrymen, who brought in a verdict of guilty, and Mayorga
was promptly executed. Although personally refraining from interfering
in the case, and only reluctantly sanctioning the sentence of death, it
is evident that Walker had begun to learn the Central American method
of conducting warfare. But the execution, if morally unjustified,
proved to be a wise act politically. Corral at once agreed to treat for
peace, and a meeting between him and Walker was arranged to take place
at Granada on the 23rd of October.
Again the bells of Granada rang out in joy, and the light-hearted
populace welcomed the festival whether of peace or of war. The Falange,
now some tenscore strong, joined with the native soldiery in a military
welcome to their late enemies.
At the approach of Corral, Walker, attended by his staff, rode out of
the suburbs to meet him. The commanders saluted each other with grave
cordiality, and re-entered the city side by side, proceeding to the
grand cathedral, where Padre Vijil, the curate of Granada, offered up a
High Mass, and _Te Deums_ of thanksgiving were sung. Nor did the good
father fail in his sermon to show the advantages to his beloved
country attending the presence of the strange American of the North.
Handsome Corral was the darling of the Granadinos. He had the
superficial traits which draw popularity--dash, openhandedness,
physical beauty, and a sunny disposition; but he was weak, vain, and
untrustworthy, for all that. We have seen how he coquetted with Walker
while in command of the Legitimist forces, treating for peace and
imprisoning its envoys. Having come to Granada to complete the
negotiations, he now betrayed the rights of his principal, the
President, so called, Estrada, and entered into a sacred compact with
the Leonese, whose acts were sanctioned by their nominal President.
By the terms of the agreement Don Patricio Rivas was appointed
President _pro tempore_, with the following cabinet: Maximo Jerez,
Minister of Relations; Firmin Ferrer, Minister of Public Credit; Parker
H. French, Minister of Hacienda; Ponciano Corral, Minister of War.
Walker was appointed generalissimo of the army, which consisted of
twelve hundred men, distributed throughout the country in small
garrisons. Five hundred men were stationed at Leon and the remainder at
Virgin Bay, Granada, Rivas, and other fortified positions. The general
in chief received a salary of five hundred dollars a month, and his
subordinates were awarded correspondingly liberal pay, or promises to
pay. There were seven surgeons and two chaplains attached to the
forces; the former held no sinecure.
During the progress of the negotiations Corral, with the small subtlety
of miniature politics, had sought to entrap Walker in various ways,
such as requiring him to take the oath upon the Crucifix, and similar
ceremonial punctilioes, to which Walker, as a Protestant, might have
been expected to object, but, like a man of sense, did not. He rightly
judged that the keeping of an oath was of more importance than the form
of taking it; and therein he differed from Corral, who was detected, a
few days after the formation of the government, in treasonable
correspondence with the neighbouring states. A native courier deceived
the traitor, and placed in Walker's hands the fatal letters containing
indisputable proofs of the writer's guilt.
To Xatruch, a Legitimist refugee, he had written, nine days after the
signing of the treaty, begging him to foment hostility against the new
administration. In a similar strain he wrote to Guardiola, the Honduran
Servile leader, conjuring him to arouse the Legitimist element
everywhere against the American intruders: "Nicaragua is lost, lost are
Honduras, San Salvador, and Guatemala if they let this thing prevail.
Let them come quickly, if they would meet auxiliaries." General
Martinez, commanding at Managua, was also implicated in the treason,
but received warning in time to fly the country.
Walker at once requested the President and Cabinet to meet him, and
laid before them the evidence of Corral's guilt. A court-martial was
convened, the members of which were all Americans, such, it is said,
being the wish of the accused, who knew that he could expect no mercy
from his countrymen. From the same motive, he did not deny his guilt,
but threw himself on the mercy of his judges, relying, as it proved,
over-much on the magnanimity which the Americans had heretofore
displayed. He was sentenced to die by the fusillade at noon of the next
day, November the 7th. The time of execution was subsequently postponed
two hours. The friends of the condemned made earnest appeals for mercy
in his behalf, being seconded by the leading public citizens, and
particularly by Padre Vijil, the gentle apostle of peace; but Walker,
though much moved and fully aware of the odious construction which his
enemies would put upon the act, firmly refused the petition. The
treason was too flagrant, the example unfortunately too necessary, and
mercy to such a traitor would have been injustice to every loyal man in
the state.
Corral died at the appointed hour, and the lesson was not wholly lost
upon his accomplices. Walker has been bitterly censured for this piece
of stern justice, especially at home in the United States, where the
act was misrepresented as that of a suspicious tyrant who thus rid
himself of a dangerous rival. But there is not the slightest reason for
regarding Corral's death as aught but the well-merited punishment of an
utterly unscrupulous villain. His whole conduct in connection with the
late war was consistent with his last and fatal treachery. Even the
morality of Nicaragua, loose as it was in matters of public faith,
while lamenting the fate of Handsome Ponciano, confessed that he was
well-named "Corral," the beautiful but deadly serpent of the country.
That impartial justice governed the action of Walker is evident from an
incident which occurred on the very day on which Corral was inditing
his treason to Xatruch and Guardiola. Patrick Jordan, a soldier of the
Falange, while intoxicated, shot and mortally wounded a native boy.
Jordan was tried by court-martial and sentenced to death. Padre Vijil
and many others, including the mother of the murdered boy, begged in
vain for leniency to the culprit. On the 3rd of November, two days
after the commission of his crime, Jordan was shot at sunrise. Walker's
detractors commented characteristically upon this execution, picturing
the impartial judge as another Mokanna, delighting in the suffering of
friend as of foe. The historian, groping in the darkness of
contemporaneous journalism for facts of current history, wherever those
facts bear upon the so-called political issues of the time, finds
himself floundering at every step in sloughs of falsehoods or
quicksands of misrepresentation. The evil, unhappily, is confined to no
party or epoch. Walker being a champion, and a bigoted one, of a
certain party, paid the inevitable penalty, that of being equally
over-praised and underrated, according to the political prejudices of
his critics.
To Don Buenaventura Selva was given the vacant portfolio of war. The
representative of the United States recognized the new administration.
The neighbouring states of Liberal tendencies sent assurances of hearty
friendship; those in which the Servile party was supreme maintained a
diplomatic silence. Peace reigned throughout the length and breadth of
Nicaragua, the peace of her own slumbering volcanoes.