" The meaning was only too
unpleasantly obvious. At once, Costa Rica on the south, and
Guatemala, Salvador, and Honduras from the north, with the
malcontents of Nicaragua, declared war against the foreign
invader. Again Walker was in the field with opposed to him
21,000 of the allies. The strength of his own force varied. On his
election as president the backbone of his army was a magnificently
trained body of veterans to the number of 2,000. This was later
increased to 3,500, but it is doubtful if at any one time it ever
exceeded that number. His muster and hospital rolls show that
during his entire occupation of Nicaragua there were enlisted, at
one time or another, under his banner 10,000 men. While in his
service, of this number, by hostile shots or fever, 5,000 died.
To describe the battles with the allies would be interminable and
wearying. In every particular they are much alike: the long silent
night march, the rush at daybreak, the fight to gain strategic
positions either of the barracks, or of the Cathedral in the Plaza,
the hand-to-hand fighting from behind barricades and adobe walls.
The out-come of these fights sometimes varied, but the final result
was never in doubt, and had no outside influences intervened, in
time each republic in Central America would have come under the
five-pointed star.
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