 In early September 1856, Colonel Jose Dolores Estrada was leading a band of 157 men to the San Jacinto Ranch, 20 miles north of Tippi Tapa, where he knew that William Walker had a filibuster garrison. The majority of the men in Estrada's company were indigenous Madagalpa Indians, extremely tough but untrained with firearms. He stopped his men at San Jacinto to rest and prepare fortifications around the property. Maybe a week ago before this, Estrada's scouts had spotted one of Walker's loyal Nicaraguan officers, Captain Ubaldo Herrera. They shot him off his horse while he was hurting cattle, killing him. When Walker received word of this, he was very upset by the loss of one of his most loyal locals, so he sent an attachment out to find those responsible, and Estrada suspected this much when he ordered his men to build fortifications around San Jacinto. It was a wise man to make these preparations, because Lieutenant Colonel McDonald, I don't know his first name, was marching his company, a filibuster south from his post at Tippi Tapa, in search of a rarest killers. He had 40 men with him, including his second in command, Captain Jarvis, but they figured that the group of enemies they were looking for probably consisted of only a dozen or so soldiers. They came upon the San Jacinto Ranch on the morning of September 5th, only to find that their expectations of the enemy numbers were grossly underestimated when a volley of musket balls was fired at them. But although they had the advantage of numbers, the untrained Montagalpa Indians couldn't hit a single target, so the volley served only to alert McDonald's company of the force they were up against. The filibusters halted their charge after the volley was launched at them, but Captain Jarvis ran ahead of them and urged them forward. Four of Estrada's men appeared and started firing as well. One of them, a private named Exacto Rocho, drew a pistol on Captain Jarvis. They aimed at each other and fired at the same time. Both went down. Rocho was killed instantly, and Jarvis would die within the hour, though he would be the only American fatality in the skirmish. The Americans retreated back to Tippi Tapa. Nine days later, on September 14th, Estrada's scout rode his horse back to the San Jacinto Ranch and cried, the enemy are coming! The filibusters had sent a large company this time. And the scout informed Estrada that 300 Yankees were quickly advancing toward Estrada's men. He quickly organized his men for their defense. The filibusters from Tippi Tapa were this time led by Lieutenant Colonel Byron Cole. There were actually only about 70 filibusters. Estrada's scout had grossly overestimated their numbers. With them was their adopted mascot, a shaggy dog the Americans had named Warrior. I'll admit when I was first reading this story, the only thing I cared about was whether or not Warrior was harmed, and I'll go ahead and let you know that the dog would survive the battle unharmed. I can't let you sit here and worry about him the whole time, like I was when I was reading this event. I just like dogs too much. Shortly before reaching the ranch, Cole and the other men, lucky enough to have horses, dismounted. The horses and the dog were led to the rear of the company to sit the battle out. The Americans knew they were outnumbered, so Cole told his officers that the goal was to take the enemy out quickly in hand-to-hand combat. They formed into three lines and then started a frontal assault. Once the enemy was in sight, the filibusters started jogging towards them. One line continued the frontal assault while the other two lines broke to either side to attack the flanks. Estrada waited until the filibusters were about 100 yards away before ordering his men to fire. This time, his men seemed to have better aim. Several Americans went down and the charge slowed as the uninjured Americans started to lose their nerves. With the urging of the officers, the filibusters charged again. More Americans took bullets and again they faltered. They tried a third charge and now they were close enough to fight back. The Americans emptied their pistols on the enemy, but they also took musket balls in return. One Nicaraguan ran out of ammunition, so he grabbed a heavy stone as he faced a charge from a sword-wielding American. He slammed the stone against the Yankees' head and killed him. Then he received a bullet to the leg from another American and hit the ground himself. But the filibusters were driven back. They regrouped. They probably should have cut their losses at this point, but they wanted to show that they were braver than McDonald's men had been nine days earlier, so they made another charge yelling, Hurrah Walker! But the enemy held bravely, faithfully obeying their orders to die rather than give up their positions. The filibuster charge was successful but costly. They broke through the Nicaraguan fortifications but lost a handful of men in the process, and Cole himself took a bullet to the torso, though it didn't kill him. In response, Estrada ordered one of the officers serving under him to organize some of his men to sneak around the rear of the ranch as Hacienda and conduct a bayonet charge from behind the Yankees. They were able to sneak around the Americans successfully and charged at them yelling, Viva Nicaragua! The Americans were taken completely by surprise and they scattered. It's time they fled to their horses, taking whatever wounded they could drag with them and fled the battle, with warrior following behind them, his tail between his legs. Twenty of their horses were left abandoned as the survivors raced back to Tipitapa. Estrada allowed his men to follow after them, using some of their abandoned horses to give chase. They were able to catch nine more filibusters on the way back to Tipitapa, and they killed each of them. They called another 18 at San Ida Fonso Ranch, including the injured Byron Cole, who was found sitting on the ground armed with a pair of pistols and a rifle, but too injured to fight. The Nicaraguans took his weapons and made him their prisoners, along with 17 others they cornered at the ranch. The filibusters were taken back to San Jacinto, where there were already 18 dead Americans, making 27 total dead filibusters if we include the nine killed during the retreat. Now there were 18 taken prisoner as well. The prisoners were locked inside a building while Estrada sent word to his commanding officer to ask what to do with them. Back in Tipitapa, the filibusters, who managed to escape, returned to the garrison. One died shortly after making it back, making him the 28th American killed by Estrada's men. Another, Charles Callahan, had escaped, but was picked up by local Indians who were not in Estrada's company, but the Indians were even more vicious. They stripped Callahan naked, whipped him 500 times, and then tortured him to death by cutting off body parts until he died. Back at San Jacinto, Estrada received orders to execute the 18 prisoners. To save bullets, he had his men fashion ropes and he strung each of them up by a tree, leaving them hanging like Christmas ornaments. 48 of the original 70 had now been killed. Walker received word of this defeat back at Granada and he ordered the survivors to withdraw from Tipitapa. His new war was not looking good. It was now a little more than a week before he issued his degree in stating slavery in Nicaragua, hoping to bind the southern states to his new republic. He was hoping for new recruits. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. This is the fifth episode on William Walker's filibustering exploits in Nicaragua, and when we left off, he had recently dissolved his republic of Nicaragua, only to replace it with the new independent republic of Nicaragua, with himself as president. Desperate to attract Americans into the country, he issued his decree allowing slavery in the country for the first time since 1826, in the hopes that Southerners would support his war against Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and the rival Nicaraguan government, the five countries referring to themselves as the allies and enjoying funding by Cornelius Vanderbilt to help overthrow William Walker. Walker had representatives in various parts of the United States with orders to find recruits, raise money, and secure weapons. One of these men was named Domingo de Goecuria, a Cuban who had found trouble selling Walker's bonds in the U.S. Walker had more moral supporters in the United States than he did people actually willing to put money on the line. There weren't many people willing to invest in his Nicaraguan bonds while the country was engaged in a war that Walker could very possibly lose rendering the bonds worthless. But Goecuria was determined to make his mission a success, so he sought an audience with one of the country's wealthiest businessmen, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Goecuria, of course, had no idea that Vanderbilt was already working to see Walker overthrown after Walker confiscated his Nicaraguan property. Walker, by this time, had found out that Vanderbilt was funding the Central American allies, but he learned this after Goecuria had already left for the U.S. So there was a great deal of asymmetrical information going on. So Goecuria made a proposal to Vanderbilt. If he could provide a loan of $250,000, other investors would probably view Vanderbilt's investment as evidence that the bonds were sound and they'd follow his lead. In return, Walker would restore Vanderbilt's government-granted monopoly to the transit company's roads through Nicaragua. This was actually a good business proposal for Vanderbilt who had no real moral objection to Walker's attempt to conquer Nicaragua, but at this point his vendetta against the filibuster was at least as much personal as it was business. Walker was an enemy, and Vanderbilt wanted to see him defeated. But he figured Goecuria could unwittingly help him defeat Walker. Vanderbilt had already been sending rifles to the Central Americans, one of the primary reasons they were able to effectively fight back against the Americans who had previously enjoyed a strong technological advantage against the musket-bearing Nicaraguans. But one of Vanderbilt's competitors, George Law, had recently been purchasing muskets from the U.S. Army cheaply as the Army was replacing them with rifles. Law was then taking the obsolete muskets and employing a British arms expert named Charles Henningson to convert them into rifles capable of shooting the new miniball. Vanderbilt told Goecuria that he would agree to his proposal to fund Walker if he went to George Law and purchased the rifles. Vanderbilt was willing to pay for the rifles, but he instructed Goecuria not to mention his name. The plan was to purchase the rifles from his competitor, and then instead of sending them to Walker, he'd send them to the Central American allies. Now this was a clever plan, but Vanderbilt ended up shooting himself in the foot, so to speak. Instead of undermining Walker, he ended up encouraging George Law to become a financial backer instead. When Goecuria approached George Law with his proposal, Law agreed, and it seemed like Vanderbilt's plan was going to come to fruition. But at the last minute, Law discovered that Vanderbilt was the one supplying the funds, and he knew Vanderbilt was his competitor, so he figured out the ruse. When the plan was discovered, George Law stopped the sell of the arms, and instead shipped a bunch of his newly repurposed rifles to William Walker free of charge. So Walker lucked into a great new supply of weapons, but he was dealing with recruitment problems. The guns would be of no use if he didn't have men to fight with them, and his recruits had previously dried up after Vanderbilt cut off steamer transports to Nicaragua and Panama. His transit company, Stock, had plummeted as a result of this, but he was secretly supporting this financially by making a non-compete agreement with another competitor who shuttle people to Panama. But the payment for this non-compete went directly to Vanderbilt rather than to the transit company, so the stockholders didn't know why Vanderbilt was letting his steamers sit idle as the stock dropped to only three dollars a share. But Vanderbilt's competitors, Charles Morgan and William Garrison, who were working with Walker, had finally managed to get their hands on some new steamers and trips from the US to Nicaragua were up and running once more. But by the time this happened, Walker suffered his first wave of mass desertions. In July, 23 filibusters from New Orleans abandoned Walker and became bandits raiding gold mines. On August 8th, they were caught by a company of ally soldiers and killed. Even more costly were the 200 German recruits who'd come from New York. Two weeks after they joined Walker, nearly all of them deserted. So by the time Morgan and Garrison were able to start bringing more recruits to Walker, he only had about 1200 men capable of fighting against a much larger force. I don't know the total number of allied troops in Nicaragua at this point, but there were at least 2,300 stationed in Messiah, a town not far northwest of Granada by early October. So Walker was trying to find anybody who could help him fight this war. Many of his recruits were very young as well. One anecdote which I just find amusing is of a filibuster who was probably only in his early tweens, and he was carrying a rifle that was clearly too big for him to even use very well. So Walker asked him if he would prefer to be a drummer boy. The teenager answered, quote, no thanks, general. I've never seen a picture of a battle yet that the first thing in it wasn't a dead drummer boy with a busted drum, end quote. But George Law was now willing to back Walker with more than just some free rifle, so he gave $25,000 to his arms expert, Charles Henningsen, to purchase some heavy artillery with the instructions to take them to Nicaragua and volunteer. Henningsen would end up becoming one of Walker's most capable officers. He arrived in Nicaragua with a pair of howitzers which had to be brought without carriages to avoid being detected by US customs officials. So after having carriages built for them, Walker prepared to attack the allies hovering nearby in Messiah. Two-thirds of Walker's total troops were sent to Messiah, dragging the howitzers uphill as they marched. When they reached the town, they found that it had been fortified by Adobe barricades, but the artillery would prove useful against them. But to conduct the assault, Walker was forced to leave only 200 men in Granada and another 200 in Rivas. On the morning of October 11th, Captain James Jamison, officer who'd escaped on a pony after taking a bullet to the knee in the second battle of Rivas, ordered two companies of light infantry to prepare the howitzers. Captain Schwartz served as the artillery commander and he ordered the men to fire. Two 12 pound balls flew through the air and exploded in the San Sebastian Plaza on the eastern part of town. The allied troops nearby were caught by surprise and they scattered. The howitzers fired off more shots and then Captain Thomas Dolan let a company of 50 men to charge the closest barricade. On the other side of the barricade, white shirted allied troops were already running away. The Americans made it over the first barricade and started for the San Sebastian Plaza. It had been abandoned by the allies fleeing the cannonballs and the Americans found the breakfast the allies had left behind which they gratefully finished themselves. The troops in Messiah were serving under the command of General Raymond Bayoso and he pulled his forces back to the main plaza in the center of the city. Barricades blocked every street leading to it but another of Walker's officers, Captain Hesse, another guy whose first name I don't know, let a unit of men employed as sappers. Most likely this plan was taken from General Zachary Taylor in the Mexican War. Hesse or one of Walker's other officers probably served under Taylor judging by the similarity of the plan but I can't confirm this. The job of the sappers was to hack at the adobe walls of the buildings on either side of the road and when they got through the walls riflemen would rush in to occupy the buildings while the sappers moved on to the next wall. So slowly the army moved toward the plaza this way using the buildings to cover them. All the while Schwartz kept his howitzers lobbing shells now aimed at the central plaza where the enemy was garrisoned. After a while he was reduced to only one howitzer after the carriage of the other collapsed. Jameson led his infantry into the city and was carefully positioning them as snipers as the army worked its way through the buildings. At one point he'd moved too far forward and Captain Markham ordered him to pull his men back before they were hit by enemy fire. Jameson called out the order but one of his men apparently didn't hear him so he went to get the soldier's attention by tapping him on the soldier. The soldier was kneeling and resting his rifle on the railing of the portico of the building taking aim down the site oblivious to Jameson's orders. When Jameson got closer to the soldier he noticed why. The man had taken a bullet to the forehead killing him so cleanly that he was left frozen in his firing position. This continued throughout the entire day. Finally as the sun set Walker's men had made their way to the last line of buildings in front of the plaza. These buildings were occupied by enemy soldiers roughly 1400 a mixture of Salvadorians and Nicaraguans. About this time a courier brought an upsetting message to General Walker. While he was busy attacking messiah another attack was being levied against Granada while it was weakly garrisoned by only 200 troops under the command of General Burkett Frye. Walker sent a company of mountain rangers back to the capital to reinforce him. They made it back to Granada but they never got inside the city. They ran into a small party of enemy soldiers and decided to fight through them. There should have been an easy victory the rangers were equipped with sharps breach loading rifles. The same ones used in Kansas referred to as Beecher's Bibles. This was the first time that the new rifle was used in Nicaragua though. The previous rifles were still muzzle loaders firing mini balls but the sharps rifles with the easier breach loading design used a powder cartridge made of paper. This meant they were far superior weapons than what the Central Americans had but this was a new technology for the rangers and they were not aware that you had to keep the cartridges dry or they would be rendered useless so they'd let their cartridges become damp from the dew that had wet the ground the night before. They were useless and the soldiers didn't know it. When the rangers went to fire on the enemy the hammers of their rifles clicked uselessly. Realizing that they were about to be massacred the rangers scattered. Most of them escaped but one a Cuban who stood out by wearing the flashy uniform of the Cuban guards was swarmed upon by the enemy and torn off his horse. Walker would later find out that he'd been executed by a firing squad. Worried about his capital Walker ordered the rest of his men to withdraw from Messiah and make their way back to Granada behind the rangers who had the advantage of being on horseback. By the time they would get back to the capital it would be too late to save it. While Walker was leading the attack on Messiah Colonel Jose Zavala was leading 900 allied soldiers to take back Walker's capital. His orders had actually been to block the road between Messiah and Granada to catch Walker's army in the event of their retreat but Zavala was more ambitious so he made a move on the capital. He made this decision at the urging of an American scout who joined the allies after William Walker rejected him. Walker apparently knew the man from California and the guy had a criminal record so Walker wouldn't let him join so he'd affected to Zavala and brought with him information about Granada's weak defenses. So Zavala led his army around the other side of the city to attack from the south since that was the side that Birkitt Fries Garrison would not be expecting an attack from. They attacked as the Garrison was eating lunch but they quickly jumped into action to defend the city. As Zavala's troops moved in most civilians ran for safety but one John Lawless didn't bother. He had been there since before Walker's entrance into the Civil War and he'd been friendly with the Legitimistas. He was a businessman and a neutral and he was confident that he'd be left alone by the allied soldiers so he was surprised when the soldiers grabbed him, took him inside a church and executed him by firing squad and made sure that he was dead by repeatedly stabbing his corpse with bayonets. Two other American non-combatants would share his fate and then the soldiers took the corpses of the three civilians, stripped them naked and tossed them into the Jalteva Plaza to make clear to everybody in the city that they would not be showing any mercy. The soldiers also stuck their muskets into the windows of homes and fired at whoever was occupying the inside. They only seem to have been targeting adult men but one of their victims was the six-year-old son of an Englishman who was accidentally shot while the invaders were aiming for his father. Friesman took arms to defend the main plaza taking defensive positions in the surrounding buildings. There they held the invaders at bay while Walker raced his troops back to the capital. Walker's troops marched all night and arrived at Granada at around nine in the morning, exhausted. From outside the city they could still see William Walker's flag flying from the top of the parochial church in the center plaza. Captain Schwartz still had one hoitzer with him and he set it up to fire at the enemies inside Granada. The first shell landed perfectly creating an orange explosion in the middle of a group of allied soldiers sending shrapnel flying and killing several enemy soldiers who were manning an artillery gun of their own. The filibusters cheered and Captain Markham ordered a charge. They easily captured the position when the enemy had set up the cannon. Walker sent the rest of the army to reinforce Frye and Jameson's infantry company were ordered to move to the north side of the plaza to secure the San Francisco church which had been taken by Guatemalan soldiers. Jameson's men burst inside surprising the enemy and killed 30 of them as they tried to escape. The rest surrendered including several high-ranking officers. Other Guatemalan and Nicaraguan soldiers exited buildings they were occupying raising their hands and surrender only to be gunned down by Walker's men. With Walker having brought the bulk of his filibuster army back to the capital, Zavala ordered the rest of his men to retreat back to messiah. They had lost about 200 men who had either been killed or taken prisoner. With the capital secured once again the two officers that had surrendered to Jameson had been treated as honored guests. They actually joined the Americans during meals and had made friends with the filibusters. The enemy officers had become well liked but after their week of friendly imprisonment inside the city, Walker learned about the execution of the Cuban who'd accompanied the Rangers to reinforce the city ahead of the army, the one who'd been dragged from his horse and executed by a firing squad. In retaliation, Walker had the two officers executed in the plaza as he'd done with many enemies since he'd taken the city. This time though the execution was not greeted with approval. The two Guatemalan officers had endeared themselves to Walker's men. After they were shot there were no cheers. In his personal memoirs of Nicaragua, Jameson said quote, and all my life I recall nothing that impressed upon me more vividly than did this incident, the sorrow and bitterness of war. End quote. This is where his memoirs of Nicaragua ended. We don't actually know if Jameson deserted or not but it's likely that he did having grown disgusted by the war. But although Walker had failed to capture Messiah, he'd taken out more enemy soldiers than he'd lost himself and he was receiving new recruits by the hundreds. But in early November, Walker decided he needed to try to take Messiah once more. At this point, a new force of allied soldiers had been brought into Nicaragua, taken San Juan del Sur and caught off Walker's connection to the transit road, leaving him sandwiched between two enemy armies. So the enemy was fortified not far from the halfway house between San Juan del Sur and Lavier Hinn. On November 10th Charles Hornsby led 250 filibusters to attack the force barricading the transit road. But he'd been repelled and Walker was angry enough at Hornsby's poor performance that he sent him back to the United States. The next day Walker sent another company of 250 men to add to Hornsby's force under the command of Charles Henningsen. Henningsen, the arms expert sent by George Law, had taken over training Walker's troops and they were improving rapidly in their ability to use their weapons. Walker made him a Brigadier General. He had substantial military experience and he spoke Spanish fluently, so he was a valuable addition to Walker's army. Henningsen had a group of his men move a holwitzer to within musket range of the enemy and then he let loose a flurry of artillery and rifle fire at the enemy occupying transit road. The enemy was able to drive the holwitzer back but Henningsen was only using this to distract the enemy while he sent another company of soldiers to attack from the opposite side. The maneuver worked and the enemy forces were ordered to retreat. Henningsen ordered his mounted forces to chase the retreating soldiers which successfully caused the enemy to scatter. Now they were disorganized and fleeing in different directions. Some fled south to Costa Rica and the rest fled north to regroup. But the skirmish was successful in taking back control of the transit road and now Walker was ready to make another attempt at Messiah. Four days after Henningsen drove the enemies away from the transit road General Edward Sanders led another attack on Messiah only to run into 800 enemy soldiers waiting for them. Apparently there was a spy among the filibusters who was able to inform General Bioso of the plan to take Messiah so these soldiers were prepared for the attack. The only thing that saved his men was the heavy artillery they had with them which was able to fire at close range driving the enemy away. But the initial attack failed and the element of surprise was gone. Sanders' men made camp and Walker arrived with more troops only to find his troops completely unmotivated to fight another battle. During the skirmish one of Sanders' men had been taken prisoner a young man named Jack Harris. The day after the failed attack Sanders was marched to the city plaza and lined up in front of a firing squad. As the executioners readied their weapons a house not far from the plaza exploded. Only seconds later another building was destroyed on the other side of town. Harris' execution was interrupted by the artillery signaling the start of the second attempt to capture Messiah. The soldiers panicked the firing squad immediately forgot about Jack Harris as they ran for cover along with the rest of their comrades. Just as they did in the first invasion they set up defensive positions around the center plaza. Hundreds of filibusters stormed into the plaza and Harris could see General Walker leading his horse into the square. Harris was saved seconds from execution and would actually live a long life after eventually leaving Nicaragua. An army of 800 filibusters were setting fire to buildings and digging their way through walls to the plaza just as before. The siege would last for three days before Walker would eventually withdraw once again. We don't have the same details we do from the first attack on Messiah because so many of those details were provided by Jamison's personal account so unfortunately we're not able to reconstruct the exciting play-by-play but we do have a good idea of the casualty count now allies had about 43 dead and nearly double that number injured. Walker lost about a hundred men. Only a few days after Walker's retreat from Messiah Lieutenant Faisu brought a ship named after Walker's capital the Granada off the coast of San Juan del Sur. Faisu had been made a captain of the ship and had it armed with cannons. This single ship was essentially Walker's entire navy. Faisu's goal was to block any Costa Rican reinforcements from being unloaded in the city. He was moving toward an enemy ship that had been named after the Second Battle of Rivas. It was once called Onse de Abril, the April 11th, the date that the Second Battle of Rivas had been fought in one by the Costa Ricans right before being decimated by cholera. The Costa Rican ship was armed to the four pound cannon and when Faisu was in range the Costa Ricans started fire. Faisu anchored the Granada about a hundred yards from the enemy ship and started returning fire with his two six pound cannons. Both ships took a beating, but the Granada had the better artillery. It withstood a few hits from the Costa Rican ship and took out several enemy soldiers with its return fire. But about two hours after the naval battle started the Granada got a perfect hit. The cannonball pierced to the coast of ship's magazine. This is where their ammunition was stored and the gun powder inside exploded. The ship burst into flames and started to sink. Most of the crew were killed in the explosion, a total of 66. Survivors took to the water, many of them sustaining severe burns themselves. Faisu lowered the small boats on the side of the ship and picked up 48 surviving coasters. 12 of them would die from their burns shortly after and Faisu let the others go home where they spread the legend of the Granada's secret rocket powered weapon. Apparently they didn't know that the explosion was caused by their own supply of gun powder. During the battle Faisu's crew only lost one man with eight more injured. Walker rewarded him with a promotion and a piece of property that had been confiscated from the enemy. This victory along with Henningson's victory near the halfway house that reclaimed Transit Road was important. Over the coming weeks Walker received several ships bringing him hundreds of new recruits. Had Faisu and Henningson not managed their victories these reinforcements would not have been able to make a do Granada. But these recruits would arrive just in time to participate in Walker's downfall which will be the topic of the next episode. For more content like this visit mesus.org