Before the campaign began the Spaniards obtained one notable advantage--the removal of Cuesta from command, owing to his own incredible arrogance and folly. It will be remembered that he regarded the Juntas of Leon and Castile as recalcitrant subordinates of his own, and had declared all their acts null and void. When they proceeded, like the other Juntas, to elect representatives for the meeting at Aranjuez, he waited till the deputies of Leon were passing near his camp, and then suddenly descended upon them. Don Antonio Valdez, the Bailiff of the Maltese Knights, and the Vizconde de Quintanilla, were arrested by his troopers and shut up in the castle of Segovia. He announced that they should be tried by court-martial, for failing in obedience to their Captain-General. This astonishing act of presumption drew down on him the wrath of the Supreme Junta, which was naturally eager to protect its members from the interference of the military arm. Almost its first act on assembling was to order him to appear at Aranjuez and to suspend him from command. Cuesta would have liked to resist, but knowing that his own army was weak and that Blake and Castaños were his bitter enemies, he had to yield. He came to Aranjuez, and was superseded by General Eguia. Valdez and Quintanilla were immediately released, and took their seats in the Supreme Junta. The sessions of that body had begun on September 25. Twenty-four members out of the designated thirty-five had assembled on that day, and after a solemn religious ceremony had re-proclaimed Ferdinand VII, and elected Florida Blanca as their President. They then proceeded to nominate a Cabinet, chosen entirely from outside their own body. Don Pedro Cevallos was to be Minister of Foreign Affairs: he had served Ferdinand VII in that capacity, but had smirched his reputation by his submission to Bonaparte after the treachery at Bayonne. However, his ingenious justification[366] of his conduct, and his early desertion of King Joseph, were allowed to serve as an adequate defence. Don Antonio Escaño was Minister of Marine, Don Benito Hermida Minister of Justice, Don Francisco de Saavedra Minister of the Interior. The most important place of all, that of Minister of War, was given to an utterly unknown person, General Antonio Cornel, instead of to any of the officers who had distinguished themselves during the recent campaigns. He was to be aided by a supreme council of war, consisting of six members of the Junta, three of whom were civilians without any military knowledge whatever. No intention of appointing a commander-in-chief was shown, and the Minister of War corresponded directly with all the generals in charge of the provincial armies. Nothing could have been more ill judged; from the want of a single hand at the helm all the oncoming operations were doomed to inevitable failure. The supreme direction was nominally entrusted to the obscure war-minister and his councillors, really it lay with the generals in