While disease was destroying the soldiers and dissensions were spreading between the people and the troops, the leaders were not more friendly in their feelings toward each other than were their followers: the consequences were divided counsels and conflicting conduct. The chief command of the allied force had been given by the provisional government of Rivas to General Ramon Belloso, the commander of the San Salvador contingent. But Paredes, who commanded the Guatemalans, was little disposed to obey the orders of a man he regarded as altogether his inferior in knowledge and capacity, and he also thought it unworthy of his Republic to yield the control of her forces to the general of a much feebler State. The Guatemalans consider theirs the best organized and the leading State of Central America; and the pure Spanish race, which maintains its supremacy at the seat of the old captain-generalcy by the aid of Carrera and his Indians, regards, with some disdain, the irregular governments the mixed races attempt to establish. On the contrary, the self-styled liberals throughout Central America have a bitter hatred toward Carrera and his minions, as they call the Aycinenas and the Pavones, who really direct the affairs of the Republic, under the nominal presidency of the illiterate Indian. And it was jealousy of Guatemala which induced Rivas and Jerez to place the command in the hands of the Salvadorian general. Paredes, however, seems to have retained the privilege of refusing to obey Belloso whenever he thought proper, and the latter was not in the position to enforce obedience or to dispense with the services of the Guatemalans. Besides the dissensions in the allied camp, there were two authorities in the upper part of Nicaragua claiming the supreme executive power. At Leon, D. Patricio Rivas and his cabinet asserted their right to be esteemed by the Allies the sovereign authority of the Republic; while at Somoto Grande, in Segovia, D. José Maria Estrada had set up his government, and issued orders in the name of the people of Nicaragua. Each of these cabals ridiculed the claims of the other, and their contentions were like to involve the allied States in new difficulties. Estrada had sought refuge in Honduras after the treaty of the twenty-third of October, and had published a pamphlet, claiming a right to be chief executive of Nicaragua, because he had written a private decree, declaring null and void the treaty made by Corral under the absolute power he had conferred. Everybody laughed at the idea of giving force to a decree which was unheard of until published in Honduras; but when the defection of Rivas took place, Estrada entered Segovia under the protection of a few Legitimists, commanded by Martinez. The latter proceeded toward Matagalpa, in order to press the Indians of that region into his service, while the Senator-president, as Estrada called himself, remained at Somoto Grande.