The government, then, of President Rivas being fully organized, under the treaty of the 23d, by the appointment of Jerez, Minister of Relations, Corral, Minister of War, Ferrer, Minister of Public Credit, and French, Minister of Hacienda, the first step was to establish the army on a peace footing. With this view all the natives in Granada who desired discharges obtained them. The desire of the soldiers to go to their homes was universal, the military service being distasteful to most of them. On the 4th of November the Legitimist troops who had marched in from Masaya were entirely disbanded, and not many of the native Democrats remained in the service. Thus one of the first results of the treaty was to release more than fifteen hundred men from the ranks of the army, sending them forth to supply the demand for labor then existing generally throughout the State. The Americans thus remained the chief military defence of the government, and all parties looked to them for the maintenance of peace and order. It was through their instrumentality that the treaty was made; not a treaty, as has been often said, made by two military chiefs, but sanctioned and ratified by two contending governments representing the parties into which the whole people of the country was divided. The act of the twenty-third of October was, therefore, in the fullest sense of the word, the act of the sovereignty of Nicaragua; and therefore no party had the right to say that the Americans were domiciliated in the State and engaged in its military service without its consent. The contract of Castellon was acknowledged by the Legitimist authorities as the contract of the Republic. Both Democrats and Legitimists expressed gratitude for the services the Americans had already rendered; and the new Provisional Government, whose orders were now recognized and obeyed throughout the whole State, looked to them as its tower of strength and bulwark of defence.