More than
two-thirds of them at once enlisted under Walker's banner.
He now was in a position to dictate to the enemy his own terms of
peace, but a fatal blunder on the part of Parker H. French, a
lieutenant of Walker's, postponed peace for several weeks, and led
to unfortunate reprisals. French had made an unauthorized and
unsuccessful assault on San Carlos at the eastern end of the lake,
and the Legitimists retaliated at Virgin Bay by killing half a dozen
peaceful passengers, and at San Carlos by firing at a transit
steamer. For this the excuse of the Legitimists was, that now that
Walker was using the lake steamers as transports it was impossible
for them to know whether the boats were occupied by his men or
neutral passengers. As he could not reach the guilty ones, Walker
held responsible for their acts their secretary of state, who at the
taking of Granada was among the prisoners. He was tried by
court-martial and shot, "a victim of the new interpretation of the
principles of constitutional government." While this act of
Walker's was certainly stretching the theory of responsibility to the
breaking point, its immediate effect was to bring about a hasty
surrender and a meeting between the generals of the two political
parties. Thus, four months after Walker and his fifty-seven
followers landed in Nicaragua, a suspension of hostilities was
arranged, and the side for which the Americans had fought was in
power.
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