In the army of Portugal there was a group of officers who belonged to the band of the discontented, and were perfectly prepared to execute a _pronunciamiento_ against the empire if the times and circumstances proved propitious. We know the names of four[332]: Donadieu, colonel of the 47th of the line; Lafitte, colonel of the 18th Dragoons; his brother, a captain in the same regiment, who was serving on Soult’s staff; and Argenton, another captain, who was adjutant of Lafitte’s regiment; two other plotters are hidden under the assumed names of ‘Dupont’ and ‘Garis,’ by which they were introduced to Wellesley. There were _certainly_ other officers implicated, for it is inconceivable that six men could have planned an insurrection unless they were sure of a certain measure of support. At this moment they were carrying on an active propaganda of discontent, especially among the officers of Delaborde’s division and of Lahoussaye’s dragoons. There were many men who saw the full iniquity of the Spanish War, and were disgusted at finding themselves involved in it[333]. Others loathed the hanging and burning, the shooting of priests and women, the riding down of half-armed peasants, which had been their lot for the last two months. Still more were simply discontented at being lost in a remote corner of Europe, where glory and profit were both absent, and where ignominious death at the hands of the lurking ‘sniper’ or the midnight assassin came all too frequently--sometimes death accompanied by torture. It was three months since the army had received a mail from France; they might as well have been in Egypt or America, and they felt themselves forgotten by their master. In many a mind the question arose whether the game was worth playing: must they for ever persist in this wretched interminable campaign, in order that the Duke of Dalmatia might become a king, or even in order that the Emperor might be able to apply the Continental System in its full rigour to this land of brutish peasants and fanatical monks? A speedy return to France seemed the one thing desirable. [332] The names of Argenton, Lafitte, and Donadieu are public property. Napier gives them, as does Bigarré. The names of ‘Dupont’ and ‘Garis’ are in suppressed paragraphs of the _Wellington Dispatches_ which Gurwood chose to omit, and are also found in the minutes of Argenton’s trial at Paris. [333] The reader may trace this feeling in Foy’s diaries, and Naylies (p. 67).