Ultimatum of Captain Davis--Evacuation of Rivas--Statistics of the
campaign--Henningsen's opinion of his men--Characteristic anecdotes
--Frederick Ward--A filibuster's apotheosis.
The ultimatum of Davis, backed by the power at his command, destroyed
Walker's last hope of retaining his hold in Nicaragua; this too, at a
time when the tide of fortune had begun to show signs of turning. In
despair of ever taking the city by assault, the Allies had sat down to
besiege it, with scant patience. The formidable army of seven thousand
which had invested Rivas in January had decreased within two months,
through death and defection, to a comparatively small force of less
than two thousand, two-thirds of them Costa Ricans and other
foreigners. These were, moreover, short of powder, threatened with
cholera and the rainy season, and so reduced as to be unable to man
effectively the investing works, through which the American scouts
penetrated freely when they pleased. With the garrison, desertion had
done its worst. Walker had still with him 260 of his best fighting men,
with plenty of arms and ammunition and two or three days' provisions.
To cut his way through the hostile lines and reach his schooner would
have been a much less difficult feat than Henningsen's evacuation of
Granada. Capitulation had never been discussed or thought of by Walker,
nor had Commander Davis hinted at his intention of seizing the
_Granada_, until her possession had become of vital importance to the
besieged.
The Leonese in the North had begun to murmur at the cost and misery of
this prolonged, fruitless war, whose advantages, should it end
favourably to the Allies, would most likely be reaped by those whom
they loved no better than they did the Americans of the North. Walker,
had he been allowed to embark his fighting men in safety, might expect
to awaken in those old friends a new and stronger friendship, and
resume the fight against the Serviles from the original point at
Realejo. The possession of over a hundred prisoners, whom he could have
carried with him as hostages, was a sufficient guarantee for the safety
of the sick and wounded whom he would have been compelled to leave
behind. Such, at least, are the arguments embodied in Henningsen's
protest, and the facts conceded by all authorities justify his
conclusions. But half of Walker's ammunition was on board the schooner,
without which it would have been madness to attempt a change of base in
presence of the enemy.
Walker, finding that Davis was firm in his determination, sent General
Henningsen and Colonel Watters to meet the naval autocrat at the
headquarters of the Allies and arrange terms of capitulation. An
agreement was drawn up and submitted to Walker, on the 13th of April,
but he declined to sign it, as it contained no provisions guaranteeing
the safety in person and property of his native adherents who should
have to remain in Nicaragua. Among the latter were many devoted men who
had kept faithful to his fortunes throughout all, and on whom the wrath
of the enemy would fall as soon as the dread filibusters should leave
the country. On the next day an agreement was submitted and accepted by
both parties, the provisions of which were as follows:--
"RIVAS, May 1, 1857.
"An agreement is hereby entered into between General William
Walker, on the one part, and Commander C. H. Davis, of the United
States Navy, on the other part, and of which the stipulations are
as follows:--Firstly. General William Walker, with sixteen officers
of his staff, shall march out of Rivas, with their side-arms,
pistols, horses, and personal baggage, under the guarantee of the
said Captain Davis, of the United States Navy, that they shall not
be molested by the enemy, and shall be allowed to embark on board
the United States vessel of war, the _St. Mary's_, in the harbour
of San Juan del Sur, the said Captain Davis undertaking to
transport them safely, on the _St. Mary's_ to Panama.
"Secondly. The officers of General Walker's army shall march out of
Rivas with their side-arms, under the guarantee and protection of
Captain Davis, who undertakes to see them safely transported to
Panama in charge of a United States officer.
"Thirdly. The privates and non-commissioned officers, citizens,
and _employés_ of departments, wounded or unwounded, shall be
surrendered, with their arms, to Captain Davis, or one of his
officers, and placed under his protection and control, he pledging
himself to have them transported safely to Panama, in charge of a
United States officer, in separate vessels from the deserters from
the ranks, and without being brought into contact with them.
"Fourthly. Captain Davis undertakes to obtain guarantees, and
hereby does guarantee that all natives of Nicaragua, or of Central
America, now in Rivas, and surrendered to the protection of Captain
Davis, shall be allowed to reside in Nicaragua, and be protected in
life and property.
"Fifthly. It is agreed that all such officers as have wives and
families in San Juan del Sur shall be allowed to remain there under
the protection of the United States consul, till an opportunity
offers of embarking for Panama or San Francisco.
"General Walker and Captain Davis mutually pledge themselves to
each other that this agreement shall be executed in good faith."
Such is the text of the treaty between the representative of the United
States and his captive. The lenity, unheard of before in Central
American warfare, which the Allies thus offered to the men whom they
had vowed to exterminate, shows how highly they valued the services of
Captain Davis. That they did not keep their merciful promise to the
native prisoners, but harried them in the good old-fashioned style as
soon as the gallant captain had sailed away, does not detract from the
merit of their promise. They would have promised anything to be rid of
the troublesome filibustero.
No stipulation had been made for the surrender of the ammunition and
weapons of the besieged. Henningsen, therefore, before the evacuation
began, set his gunners to work destroying all the artillery and
ammunition, consisting of one four-pound brass gun, three
five-pounders, two twelves, and three sixes, and four light iron
twelve-pound mortars, also 55,000 cartridges, 300,000 caps, and 1,500
pounds of powder; no contemptible supply of saltpetre for a garrison
lacking in bread.
The total number of men surrendering was 463, including 170 sick and
wounded. One hundred and two prisoners taken from the Allies were set
free and sent within the enemy's lines. Forty natives who had abided
with him to the end, bade their grey-eyed chieftain a sorrowful adieu
on the bright May morning that was his last in Rivas.
Bravely and deliberately the filibusters marched out of the town,
Walker riding at the head, with blade on thigh and pistol in belt, and
the same impassive visage that he would have worn in mounting a throne
or a gallows. After him, Henningsen, tall, martial, frank of face, then
bearded like a whiskered Pandour, and not without traces of powder from
his morning's work. Gaunt Hornsby, a Northern Quixote in face and
figure, rode beside phlegmatic Bruno Von Natzmer, erst Prussian cornet
of hussars and friend of Baron Bulow, until differences of national
adoption set them lustily to fighting each other; more fortunate than
the Costa Rican baron, he lived to fight another day; Henry and
Swingle, doughty gunners; Watters--Colonel Jack--he of the relief of
Granada; Williamson, West, and a dozen others, brave men and true,
accompanied their leader. Other brave men and true, scores and
hundreds, lay beneath the orange trees of Rivas and Granada and San
Jorge, and a score of hard-fought fields, who never again might follow
a filibuster's flag or awake to martial trump until that of Gabriel
sounds their _reveillé_.
Walker and sixteen of his officers were to go on board the _St.
Mary's_, thence to Panama, and home. It is a striking, and in its way,
an heroic picture, that of the filibuster chief parting from his wild,
wayward, but devoted comrades. First, he must say not adieu but _au
revoir_ to 250 privates and non-commissioned officers, escorted by a
United States lieutenant, who curses his job, to Virgin Bay, thence
homeward as circuitously as may be; also to the sad contingent of sick
and wounded, homeward bound by another course; finally, he gives a look
of pitying scorn upon a battalion of recreant deserters whom, for their
own safety, Captain Davis must despatch to the home which yearns not
for them, by yet another route.
So fared they forth from Rivas and on to their several fates; Walker
to gaze from the decks of the _St. Mary's_ at his beloved schooner
_Granada_, now captured by Davis, as promised, and turned over, as also
(privately) promised to the Costa Ricans, and commanded, not without
much pomp and glory, by a Jamaico negro--horribly satirical sequel to
that slavery decree which was to have regenerated Central America.
Commander Davis, most respectable of naval magnates, passed from Rivas
unto well-earned promotion, chiefly by dint of meritorious longevity,
and died, in the fulness of time, an admiral, having achieved nothing
more important in his long life than the forcible overthrow of the
filibuster chief.
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,
A presence like a chevalier,
Half angel and half Lucifer;
Fair fingers, jewell'd manifold
With great gems set in hoops of gold;
Sombrero black, with plume of snow
That swept his long silk locks below;
A red serape with bars of gold,
Heedless falling, fold on fold;
A sash of silk, where flashing swung
A sword as swift as serpent's tongue,
In sheath of silver chased in gold;
And Spanish spurs with bells of steel
That dash'd and dangl'd at the heel."
It is grand; it is magnificent; but--it is not our Filibuster, who was
more impressive in his stern simplicity.
To the more ignorant of his followers Walker's ulterior designs were
naturally inexplicable. They thought that his purpose was merely that
of a freebooter. Hence there arose a legend that he had amassed a
mighty treasure which, like that of Captain Kidd, still lies hidden,
awaiting discovery by some lucky seeker. Long years after his death the
following story was told by a relative of one of the surviving
filibusters, named Samuel Lyons:
"By his bravery and strategy Samuel became one of Walker's most trusted
men, and he was one of the four officers who helped Walker bury his
treasure. There were five mule loads of it--gold and silver, money and
bullion, including a great deal which had been plundered from the
churches, the chapels, and private mansions. At eleven o'clock one
moonlight night Walker and four officers buried the treasure under a
big tree near the brow of a hill. I have heard Samuel tell how they
scraped away the leaves on the ground before they dug the pit. I have a
pretty good idea of the locality myself, but he knows just where it is,
and can find it even if the tree is removed. The treasure was buried
just before the two final engagements which crushed the hopes of
Walker. The next morning after that little moonlight excursion the
first of these engagements occurred, and in it two of the officers who
had seen the treasure buried were killed. After that engagement the
army--if it could be called one--lived on bananas alone for two weeks
in a big banana plantation, and had a hard time of it. Then came the
last engagement, in which Walker, Samuel, and the rest were captured.
There is only one of the four accompanying officers who is not
accounted for; but as nothing was heard of him after that engagement
Samuel has always believed that he was killed then or executed with the
captives who met death in that way. He certainly was not with the party
that so wonderfully escaped with Samuel, and who, I think, were the
sole survivors of that engagement. If he be dead, or rather, if he died
then, Samuel alone has the secret."
Most lovers of the marvellous would be satisfied with this delectable
dish of treasure and gore, but another "survivor," with a still more
able-bodied imagination, gravely corrects the first narrator, by
saying:
"The writer hereof knows something of that treasure, and personally
examined it, and in lieu of five mule loads, there were _five tons
of it_. It is well known that the most horrible chapter in that
most horrible of wars was the burning and pillaging of Granada by
General Henningsen, under Walker's orders, in November, 1856. The
churches--some twenty or more, immensely rich in plate and jewels--were
secretly and systematically despoiled, and their great booty was safely
stowed away on board a Lake Nicaragua steamer before the doomed city
was given up to pillage. What became of that immense spoil has been a
mysterious secret, and was so regarded by the filibusters at the time.
_It was worth millions._ To allay suspicion as to its true disposition
Walker gave out that it was shipped to New Orleans to be disposed of on
account of his government, and that the proceeds thereof would be used
in purchasing military supplies. That spoil was buried, and, to my own
personal knowledge, the officer who had it in charge and commanded the
squad who guarded it now lives in San Bernardino. He informs me (and we
have frequently discussed the matter) that, under the immediate
supervision of Walker, he and five other officers and about twenty men
buried that treasure in the village of St. George, on Lake Nicaragua,
under a room in the house wherein the booty was so sacredly guarded.
Walker exacted the most solemn oath of secrecy, giving substantial
gratuities and promising future rewards to the whole party if they
would faithfully guard the secret of the hidden church-spoil of the
burned city. Inside of a month the whole party who were in the secret,
save my friend and informant and two or three of the officers therein
engaged, were sent away on a feigned expedition; were given out as
deserters; were pursued by a large party of cavalry, and, by Walker's
order, shot to a man when overhauled by the pursuing party. Soon
thereafter, at a desperate battle fought at St. George on January 16,
1857, the last man of the party who assisted in burying the church
spoil, save my friend of San Bernardino, was killed, and in such a way
as to confirm in the mind of my informant the opinion that all had been
killed by Walker's order, and that the General intended to be the only
custodian of the secret of the hidden treasure. Although my informant
was a faithful and trusted officer, high in Walker's favour, still the
prompt and tragic ending of his comrades and sharers in the dread
mystery produced such an impression on his mind that he at once
deserted. He carried the secret with him and yet has it, and he is the
only man living who knows where the Granada booty lies hidden, _and
he don't know_. And why not? Well, the spoil was buried in December;
in January the enemy by a forced march, possessed themselves of St.
George; Walker took position at Rivas, three miles distant, and, within
the next three months, utterly exhausted his army in his vain
endeavours to repossess himself of the insignificant village that
contained this immense wealth. In the terrific conflicts that ensued
the village was razed to the ground. This the writer hereof knows,
because he fought through all of those engagements."
Nothing (save truth) is lacking to make this circumstantial narrative
all that it should be. Like most of the improbable charges made against
Walker, it emanated from his deserters, who have done more than any
others to blacken his memory.