At the appointed hour they were led out on the plaza, where, after the executioners, with an eye to thrift, had first stripped them of their valuable articles of clothing, they were shot in cold blood, without the form of a trial. A boy of twelve was spared to witness the brutal scene. The bodies were rifled of their rings, and in some cases even the gold fillings in their teeth, after which they were thrown into a burial ground where the wild hog and the coyote fattened on them. To Crabbe was accorded the honour of dying last and alone. He was tied to a post and riddled with bullets. His head was cut off and exhibited in a jar of vinegar for several days, a sight which so stimulated the heroism of the natives that they fell upon a party of sixteen peaceful travellers a few days afterwards and cut them off to a man, while another bold band crossed into the American territory and murdered four sick men, presumed to have been adherents of Crabbe. Of the nine hundred men who were to have joined Crabbe from California, only some fifty appeared in the vicinity of Caborca, where being set upon by the natives they succeeded only with great difficulty in making their way back across the boundary line.
Mr. Forsyth, the American minister to Mexico, took pains to investigate the matter, and laid before his own Government and that of Mexico the results of his inquiry. He pronounced the execution of the prisoners "legal murder," a conclusion which apparently satisfied both parties, the Americans because it was "legal," and the Mexicans because it was "murder," and so the matter was allowed to drop. It ended filibusterism in that country. The American apostle of liberty no longer heeds the cry of the oppressed of any faction. Nor is it likely, since the world was shocked by the execution of the Austrian archduke, that many Europeans will be found treading the wine-press for what they have been pleased to term the "regeneration" of Mexico.
With the expulsion of the filibusters terminated for a time the war in Nicaragua. The Allied states formed a kind of protectorate over the republic, having first rewarded themselves, after the fashion of greater powers, by gathering a goodly share of the fruits of victory. Costa Rica was rewarded by the possession of Guanacaste and a strip of land bordering along the lake and the southern side of the San Juan river, a sufficiently small return for her outlay in the war, which had entailed a loss of so many thousand men, women, and children slain by cholera. The "Tiger of Honduras" was given material aid in driving from power at home the partisans of Cabañas. General Martinez, a descendant of the apocryphal heroine of San Carlos, was appointed President of Nicaragua, and at once sent a minister to Washington, who was received without question. Mr. Buchanan thus gave himself a plausible excuse for declining to recognize the claims of Walker. Señor Yrissari, the new minister, negotiated a new treaty for the construction of a canal, the terms of which not being considered favourable to Costa Rica, that state and Nicaragua were soon again preparing to grapple each other's throats.