Just a year later, with six of these veterans, and forty-eight other Californians, Walker landed on the coast of Nicaragua. This happy republic was blessed at the time with two rival presidents, and the one who got Walker’s help very soon had possession of the country. As hero of several brilliant engagements, Walker was made commander-in-chief, and at the next election chosen by the people themselves as president. He had now a thousand Americans in his following, and when the native statesmen and generals proved treacherous, they were promptly shot. Walker’s camp of wild desperadoes was like a Sunday-school, his government the cleanest ever known in Central America, and his dignity all prickles, hard to approach. He depended for existence on the services of Vanderbilt’s steamship lines, but seized their warehouse for cheating. He was surrounded by four hostile republics, Costa Rica, San Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, and insulted them all. He suspended diplomatic relations with the United States, demanded for his one schooner-of-war salutes from the British navy, and had no sense of humor whatsoever. Thousands of brave men died for this prim little lawyer, and tens of thousands fell by pestilence and battle in his wars, but with all his sweet unselfishness, his purity, and his valor, poor Walker was a prig. So the malcontents of Nicaragua, and the republics from Mexico to Peru, joined the steamship company, the United States and Great Britain to wipe out his hapless government. The armies of four republics were closing in on Walker’s capital, the city of Granada. He marched out to storm the allies perched on an impregnable volcano, and was carrying his last charge to a victorious issue, when news reached him that Zavala with eight hundred men had jumped on Granada. He forsook his victory and rushed for the capital city. There were only one hundred and fifty invalids and sick in the Granada garrison to man the church, armory and hospital against Zavala, but the women loaded rifles for the wounded and after twenty-two hours of ghastly carnage, the enemy were thrown out of the city. They fell back to lie in Walker’s path as he came to the rescue. Walker saw the trap, carried it with a charge, drove Zavala back into the city, broke him between two fires, then sent a detachment to intercept his flight. In this double battle, fighting eight times his own force, Walker killed half the allied army. But the pressure of several invasions at once was making it impossible for Walker to keep his communication open with the sea while he held his capital. Granada, the most beautiful of all Central American cities, must be abandoned, and, lest the enemy win the place, it must be destroyed. So Walker withdrew his sick men to an island in the big Lake Nicaragua; while Henningsen, an Englishman, his second in command, burned and abandoned the capital.