The Great Filibuster by Roger Pocock

Name: The Great Filibuster
Author: Roger Pocock

The Great Filibuster by Roger Pocock is an account of William Walker, a small, prim, and humorless Tennessee-born lawyer, doctor, and editor, the son of a Scottish banker, who became one of the most remarkable military adventurers of the nineteenth century. Walker was personally abstemious, rigorously respectable, devoted to points of etiquette, and utterly without sentiment, yet capable of commanding the most dangerous men of his era through sheer force of will, subduing hardened desperadoes with a single cold glance from his gray eyes. In 1853, Walker landed in Mexico with only forty-five California gold miners and proceeded to take the city of La Paz by assault, declare himself president of Sonora, and attempt the conquest of the Mexican province. When reinforcements arrived from San Francisco and conspired to destroy him, he shot two, flogged others, and disarmed the rest without visible emotion. As his column marched northward through hundreds of miles of blazing desert, Mexicans and Indians harassed the rear, picking off stragglers and torturing them to death. Men dropped from thirst, and some shot themselves rather than face capture. Of the original force, only thirty-four ragged, starving, and wounded survivors reached the United States boundary, where they surrendered to the garrison as prisoners of war. Just a year after this catastrophe, Walker returned to the field. With six veterans of the Sonora campaign and forty-eight other Californians, he landed on the coast of Nicaragua, which was then convulsed by a rivalry between two claimants to the presidency. Walker threw his support behind one of them, proved himself the hero of several brilliant engagements, and was eventually elected president by the Nicaraguan people themselves. A thousand Americans served under him. His camp was run with the discipline of a Sunday school, his government was regarded as the cleanest Central America had known, and native officers and statesmen who proved treacherous were shot without hesitation. Walker insulted the surrounding republics of Costa Rica, San Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala simultaneously, suspended diplomatic relations with the United States, seized the warehouse of Vanderbilt's steamship lines, and demanded naval salutes for his single schooner of war from the British navy. The combined forces of four republics, the steamship company, the United States, and Great Britain eventually united to destroy him. As enemy armies closed on his capital, Granada, Walker marched out and was on the verge of carrying a charge against allied forces on an impregnable volcano when news arrived that a commander named Zavala had seized the city with eight hundred men. Only a hundred and fifty invalids and sick soldiers held the garrison, but with women loading rifles for the wounded, they endured twenty-two hours of carnage and expelled the attackers. Walker rushed back, broke Zavala between two fires, and in fighting an enemy eight times his own strength, killed half the allied army. Despite this feat, Walker could no longer hold both the capital and his communications to the sea. Granada, described as the most beautiful city in Central America, had to be abandoned and destroyed to deny it to the enemy. Walker withdrew his sick men to an island in Lake Nicaragua while his English second in command, Henningsen, a veteran of the Carlist and Hungarian revolts, began the burning of the city. The American garrison then broke into the liquor stores and lay drunk in the blazing streets, allowing the allied army to cut off the retreat to the lake. Henningsen spent three weeks fighting his way through three miles of burning ruin before Walker could cover his embarkation. Of four hundred men in the garrison, only one hundred and fifty answered the roll call on the Isle of Omotepe. In the plaza of what had been Granada they had planted a spear bearing a rawhide inscribed with the words: Here was Granada. Taking that heap of blackened ruins had cost four thousand of the six thousand allied soldiers their lives. A Costa Rican army of invasion had killed fifty filibusters at a cost of ten thousand men dead from battle and pestilence. On average, the killing of one filibuster cost eight of his adversaries. Four months of confused fighting followed, during which the Americans slowly lost ground and were eventually besieged in the town of Rivas, melting church bells for cannonballs and dying at their posts from starvation. Walker attempted to dislodge two thousand Costa Ricans from the neighboring town of San Jorge, leading his final charge with only fifteen men into the heart of the town before making an orderly retreat. Two hundred men lay in ambush at a planter's house along the road back to Rivas and opened fire at fifteen yards, but Walker reined in his horse, fired six revolver shots into the windows, and rode on quietly erect while men fell around him. When the allies assaulted Rivas a week later they left six hundred dead in the field. A British naval officer who came under flag of truce to treat for Walker's surrender was met with Walker's demand that the officer had come to apologize for an outrage committed against the Nicaraguan flag. On the first of May 1857, Walker grudgingly consented to being rescued by the United States navy. In four years of fighting he had enlisted three thousand five hundred Americans, of whom a thousand fell, while the allied republics lost fifteen thousand killed from a force of more than thirty thousand. Two years later Walker set out once more with a hundred men to conquer Central America, defying British and American squadrons sent to stop him. He was captured by the British and shot by Spanish Americans on a beach in Honduras, dying without fear.

By Roger Pocock · First published 1916 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Adventure, Military Fiction · 1,690 words

First lines

A. D. 1853

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Genres

Historical Fiction — The narrative is centered on the true historical figure William Walker and his filibustering expeditions in Mexico and Nicaragua during the 1850s, presented with dramatized literary techniques while maintaining historical events and dates.
Adventure — The work features protagonists engaged in military campaigns, conquest, and exploration across hostile territories, with emphasis on dangerous journeys, battles, and daring exploits against overwhelming odds.
Military Fiction — The narrative extensively details military strategy, combat operations, leadership under siege, tactical maneuvers, and the dynamics of armed conflict between organized forces.
Biographical Fiction — The work chronicles the life and major events of William Walker, covering his origins, career progression, and ultimate fate, blending historical documentation with narrative storytelling.

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The Great Filibuster is listed on Textopian as a short story by Roger Pocock, dated 1916 CE.

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Work type: Short story
Author: Roger Pocock
Date: 1916 CE
Language: English
Genres: Historical Fiction, Adventure, Military Fiction, Biographical Fiction, War Fiction
Length: 1,690 words
Structure: 1 section, 17 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)

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