The enemy, however, were not without causes of weakness and dissension. Some of the faults of their force arose from its allied nature. The soldiers in Leon were drawn from Guatemala and San Salvador; and besides these, Rivas had pressed numbers of laborers about Leon and Chinandega into the ranks. The Guatemalan contingent was made up entirely of Indians, and fierce was the feud between them and the Leoneses. Not unfrequently collisions would occur between the Guatemalans and the people of the town, at the numerous liquor shops scattered through the suburbs of Subtiaba; and in the quarrels knives would be drawn, and blood spilled. So pressing was the evil that the Guatemalan soldiers were finally ordered to remain in their quarters, and it was necessary to keep them out of the streets, in order that the insults of the people might be avoided. The Salvadorians were tolerated by the Leoneses; but the local authorities could not prevail on the latter to regard the former as their deliverers from tyranny and oppression. The allied troops had not been many days at Leon, before fever and cholera attacked them. The Guatemalans especially suffered from this disease; and so great was their loss, that many among the soldiers, and some even of the officers, attributed the malady to poisonous substances mixed in their food. But it was easy for a medical eye to perceive sufficient causes for the mortality of the troops in their sudden removal from the highlands of Guatemala to the plains of Nicaragua, and in the total want of comfort and cleanliness about the quarters and persons of the soldiers. As Manning wrote, the troops were almost without clothing; and this was a severe deprivation to the Guatemala Indian, accustomed to the use of the thick woollen jacket, which protects him from the cold of his native hills. And woollen covering at night is indispensable to the health of the soldier in Nicaragua. The warm days, followed by the clear cold nights, render blankets necessary at all seasons of the year; and it was the want of care in sleeping which produced much of the disease, not only among the Guatemalans at Leon, but also among the Americans at Granada. When you add to these causes, the little attention Central American officers pay to the health of their soldiers, and the small skill of their surgeons and physicians, it is not difficult to understand the mortality among the Allies.