by Pat Werner

The entire surreal William Walker episode in Nicaraguan history, 23 months that Walker was actually on Nicaraguan soil, was not the beginning or end of anything. Instead the relatively brief Walker era in Nicaragua was but one dramatic chapter in a series of internecine disputes between Nicaraguan elites.
That particular struggle began arguably in 1853, due to the high-handed tactics of Fruto Chamorro, the political leader of the Conservative Party. A denouement came in 1869 at Niquinohomo with the defeat of Tomás Martínez and Máximo Jérez, two aging caudillos that fought with each other and all other comers until they got too old to fight.A major player in the first civil wars was the military leader of the Conservatives, Ponciano Corral. Corral showed some skill, much more than his political leader, Fruto Chamorro, until Walker caught Corral double-dealing and executed him in front of the Parroquia Church in the town square of Granada. How that happened makes for an interesting tale.
In 1853, Fruto Chamorro precipitated a civil war against the Liberals, led by Francsico Castellón and Máximo Jérez. The first battle of El Pozo, on a farm near Chinandega, showed Chamorro’s military prowess, or lack thereof. The Liberals soon attacked, completely beat the Conservatives, and Chamorro headed off alone toward Granada. He got lost in the Sierra de Managua but finally made it to Granada, where, as President of Nicaragua, he pretty much controlled not much more than the plaza of Granada.
Chamorro’s main opponent was Máximo Jérez, the Liberal ideologue. A young Enrique Guzmán would puckishly later write that Jérez was a general who could not ride a horse or shoot a gun, and who never won a battle.
The battle for Granada concentrated on the houses between the Xalteva Church and the main plaza. The fighting was bloody and long. To break the ring of steel around Granada, Chamorro sent his military leader, Ponciano Corral, onto Lake Nicaragua. Corral, on September 15, 1854, sailed the schooner La Zara, close by the island of Zapatera to attack the Liberal schooner La Esperanza. He outgunned it and killed all 40 crew on board. The next day Corral attacked the Fort Inmaculada on the San Juan River, defeated the Liberals there, and killed all the Liberals they could find, the last one by cutting his throat on the dock by the fort.
That lake activity opened up Granada to receive men and supplies from the Caribbean, and with Corral’s competent leadership, the Liberals were defeated and then pushed out of Masaya with a great loss of men, and finally out of Nicaragua. Castellón and Jérez, in exile in Honduras, ran into an American lawyer, Byron Cole, who put them in touch with a friend of his working on a newspaper in the States, William Walker, and soon the Liberals had a ready-made mercenary army recruited under that freebooter adventurer.
At about the same time, Fruto Chamorro, after lousing up Nicaraguan politics and causing hundreds of battle deaths, died in time so that his reputation was not sullied by Walker. His bones are interred in an attractive tomb at the entrance of Granada’s cemetery.
Walker’s initial military act, the first battle of Rivas in the summer of 1855, was a poorly planned failure, and he later retreated to La Virgen. The Conservatives had more successes, and, now led by provisional President José María Estrada, sent Corral with much of the Conservative Army to keep the army between Walker and Granada.
Walker had his one intelligent idea of the entire war when he pirated the paddle wheel steam boat “Virgin” that had been sailing between San Carlos and the freshwater port of La Virgen. Walker had found out that Corral and his entire army was in Rivas and that only a skeleton garrison protected Granada. Walker also got lucky because the Conservatives had defeated the Liberals in a battle and were deep in their cups celebrating that victory.
Walker jam-packed 400 armed men onto the steamboat and set out for Granada. He landed 3.5 miles north of the city early on the morning of October 13, 1855, and made a forced march to town, past where the old Centroamerica High School now stands. Guards at the municipal dock reported seeing dark forms passing the dock in the night and went to general headquarters to report.
They found everyone celebrating, and by the time they got in to talk to the authorities to report, they heard the muskets of Walker’s men attacking them.
A short battle broke out at the San Francisco Church, but within 10 minutes the entire town was Walker’s, including the families of all the Conservative leaders and of Mateo Mayorga, the Foreign Minister. President José María Estrada had escaped (only to be assassinated by Liberal thugs in Ocotal in August of 1856). Walker, after his lightning attack, slept for a time in a hammock strung from the columns in the building where Kathy’s Waffle House is now. He then sent Corral a very conciliatory message asking for a truce and proposing a pact that would divide power between the two factions.
Corral, of course, refused. Walker, on a trumped-up charge, sat his prisoner, Foreign Minister Mateo Mayorga, in a chair in front of the Parroquia church, and shot him early in the morning of October 22, 1855. Walker then sent a polite message to Corral noting that he had the entire families of all the Conservative elites as his prisoners and he would shoot them all if Corral attacked them. This time, Corral took Walker seriously and struck a deal to bring peace and also to save the lives of the Conservative families.
On this same day, the Conservatives considered what to do. Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, argued that they should attack Walker, no matter the consequences. Others, aware of Walker’s merciless attitude, decided it was time to make an arrangement with him. On October 23, Corral rode from Masaya to Granada, where he was met on the edge of town by Walker, who escorted him to the plaza of Granada, where he found several hundred enemy Liberals and Americans lined up and presenting arms. Corral arrived at a truce and peace treaty, signed it. The new provisional government was headed by Patricio Rivas with Corral as Minister of War and Walker as commander-in-chief of the Nicaraguan army. Corral then returned to Masaya to begin demobilizing his army.
Formal ceremonies heralding the new coalition government took place on October 29, when Corral and Walker met, embraced and kissed in the main plaza of Granada, and walked to the Parroquia, where a Te Deum was sung in honor of peace and the new coalition government. Patricio Rivas was sworn in on October 30 at the Granada City Hall. Corral and Walker were sworn in and it looked like peace was finally achieved in war-torn Nicaragua.
Corral, however, was just playacting. On November 1, Corral wrote to his Honduran compatriot Santos Guardiola: “My esteemed friend, it is necessary that you should write to our friends to give them notice of the danger which threatens us, and to take active steps with you. If you wait two months it will be too late… Nicaragua is lost, Honduras, San Salvador, and Guatemala are lost if you let things go on. Come quickly if you will find auxiliaries.”
And to Honduran General Pedro Xatruch, Corral wrote: “Friend Don Pedro: We are badly, badly, badly off. Think of your friends. I was left here without anything but what I had on my body, and I hope for your help. Your friend, P. Corral.”
Unfortunately, these letters were given to a spy, who gave them to an ally of Walker who passed them to Walker. On November 4, Walker called a council of war and invited everyone, including Corral, to his headquarters, probably in the house on the southwestern corner of the plaza in Granada, now known as the Pellas house. There the Conservative army was disbanded. On November 5, Corral was arrested and immediately court-martialed. Walker was prosecutor and witness. The court, handpicked by Walker, found Corral guilty, but recommended leniency. Walker, never known for his forgiving nature, decided that Corral would be shot in front of the Parroquia church at noon on November 8.
That gave Corral’s family the opportunity to beg Walker for his life. He had a step mother, Mama Goyita, who was a former slave with a gold nose ring, and two daughters, Carmen 12 and Sofia 14. All begged forcefully for Corral’s life.
After a long session of supplicating, Walker, at his Solomonic worst, felt that justice to the few would be injustice to the many. Accordingly, he did grant a reprieve from execution from 12 noon to 2 p.m. At the appointed hour, Corral left the general command post, a large barracks located where the rusted cannon is presently on the side of the plaza, and sat in a chair about 50 meters in front of the Parroquia church. A firing squad led by the one-legged filibusterer Charles Gilman fired their Model 1842 54-caliber Mississippi Rifles into the blindfolded body of Corral. American Ambassador John Wheeler reported that many women cut off locks of Corral’s hair and soaked their handkerchiefs with his blood.
This episode, perhaps more than any other, shows the one strategic act that allowed Walker to dominate Granada for about a year. It also showed just how cold blooded Walker could be and why it took him less than a year to alienate all of his Nicaraguan allies. Finally, even his own surviving soldiers eventually concluded that he was completely uncaring about his men. By 1858, Walker lost all power and credibility among his troops and with that, the ability to conquer Nicaragua. That was the effective end of Walker’s military exploits in Nicaragua.

For More Reading:
There are several primary sources of “Walkeriana” that are worth reviewing. The first is Walker’s own book, The War in Nicaragua, published in 1860 (reprinted by the University of Arizona in 1985), shortly before he was shot in Honduras by his old antagonist General Xatruch. It is a surprisingly well written work, with only three obvious tinkerings with the truth. It should be noted that some of Walker’s most vehement adversaries in Nicaragua used his own numbers and data published in his newspaper and later reprinted in his book in their own published works. Also in English is Alejandro Bolaños’ magnificent, William Walker, The Gray Eyed Man of Destiny, privately published in 1990, five volumes. If one is serious about understanding the entire Walker and related civil wars in Nicaragua, it is essential reading. Bolaños was a delightful man who spent 25 years going all over the world collecting data and documents on Walker. He was also a first-rate historian and his humor and encyclopedic treatment is sorely missed. In Spanish, the works of Walker’s contemporaries Francisco Ortega Arancibia, 40 Años de Historia, Jerónimo Perez, Obras Completas, and José Dolores Gámez, Historia de Nicaragua, are all valuable and together, give a fairly complete picture of what happened in western Nicaragua, 1855-1857. Several works written later in the 19th century and 20th century, in both languages, are less reliable and tend to substitute polemics for facts.