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The surgeons at Rivas gave him no care, not so much as to wash his wound, or have him wash it; and the climate is so malignant to strangers, that the smallest cut, with the best care, heals only after long hesitation. At length night came on, and our men drew off, foiled at every attempt, having sustained great loss, and, apparently, made little impression on the enemy.
His old antagonist, the Admiral of Arragon, lay near Thienen in an entrenched camp, with a force of at least fifteen thousand men, while the archduke, leaving Rivas in command before Ostend, hovered in the neighbourhood of Brussels, with as many troops as could be spared from the various Flemish garrisons, ready to support the admiral.
Whilst triumphant beyond all her hopes in Paris, she was at work in Spain, and with equal success. Rivas, who had drawn up the will of the late King Charles II., was disgraced, and never afterwards rose to favour. The Duc de Grammont, our ambassador at Madrid, was so overwhelmed with annoyance, that he asked for his recall.
Accordingly, a week after landing with his fifty-seven Americans and one hundred and fifty native troops, Walker sailed in the Vesta for Brito, from which port he marched upon Rivas, a city of eleven thousand people and garrisoned by some twelve hundred of the enemy. The first fight ended in a complete and disastrous fiasco.
The trifling force of two thousand men under Rivas all that the archduke then had in that province and the sconces and earthworks which had been constructed around Ostend to impede the movements and obstruct the supplies of the garrison, would be utterly powerless to prevent the consummation of the plan.
Suffice it to say, that all the animals in the vicinity of Rivas, fit for warlike purposes, had been removed, and toward evening we found ourselves out amongst the hills to the west, beyond the circle of cultivation, and as yet with no horses in tow.
His old antagonist, the Admiral of Arragon, lay near Thienen in an entrenched camp, with a force of at least fifteen thousand men, while the archduke, leaving Rivas in command before Ostend, hovered in the neighbourhood of Brussels, with as many troops as could be spared from the various Flemish garrisons, ready to support the admiral.
When we reached Nicaragua, in the latter part of December, 1856, the entire force of the filibusters was still in Rivas, with the exception of a small party stationed on the Rio San Juan, beyond the lake, and communicating with the Isthmus force only by means of two small steamers, "La Virgen" and "San Carlos," which plied across the lake between the head of the river and Virgin Bay, on the California passenger-line.
In the mean while our company of rangers was ordered back to the Transit road, to remain until the passengers crossed. We rode down by a trail that lay nearer the Pacific than the one by which we had first approached Rivas.
To these might be added all those among the ranks to whom, from any cause, desertion or expulsion from Nicaragua was disagreeable, those who distrusted the Costa-Rican promises, or feared disgrace at home, or had sick or wounded friends at Rivas, or were desperate, broken men without other home, or with what other peculiar motives there might be.
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