[37] Frere, by his own showing, exceeded the bounds of diplomatic evasion. He writes to Canning (Feb. 9) to say that the dispatch of the Lisbon troops had been a complete surprise to him, as he had not received any information on the subject. ‘It occurred to me, however, that it was best to take it upon myself, and to affect to consider it a thing of course, and to say that I had sent orders in conformity with the note which I had received from Mr. de Garay. In order to give this some semblance of truth, I did afterwards write a letter to Lisbon to this effect, and sent it off before I dispatched my note to Mr. de Garay. This did not prevent me from being assailed by remonstrances.’ Finally he proceeded to tell the Junta ‘that he only wished to see Cadiz occupied in the extreme case of an immediate attack by the French’ (Record Office). Unfortunately for the credit of Great Britain with her allies, tumults broke out at Cadiz within a few days of the arrival of Mackenzie’s army, which supplied an excuse to malevolent Spaniards for attributing the worst motives to their allies. As a matter of fact they were not stirred up by Sir George Smith or any other emissary of the British Government, but were the results of the eccentric behaviour of the Marquis de Villel[38]. This personage was a very strange character, a sort of nineteenth-century Spanish Puritan, with a taste for playing the benevolent despot. He attributed the misfortunes of his country (and not without much reason) to her moral decadence. His idea of the way to commence her regeneration was peculiar, considering the circumstances of the time. He issued an edict commanding all married pairs living apart, to reunite, issued laws repressing theatre-going, late hours, and gambling, legislated concerning the length of ladies’ skirts, and organized a grand _battue_ against women of light reputation, of whom he imprisoned some scores. When he proceeded to engage in a sort of moral inquisition into the private life of all classes, he naturally became very unpopular, and on the first opportunity the populace rose against him. He had ordered into the city a newly-embodied ‘Swiss’ battalion, raised from the prisoners of Dupont’s army and other deserters of all nationalities. The cry was raised by his enemies that he was admitting Frenchmen in disguise into the sacred fortress, with the purpose of betraying it to the enemy. Other rumours were put about to the effect that he was deliberately neglecting the fortifications, and supplying the batteries with powder adulterated with sand[39]. [38] For Villel’s eccentricities in detail see Toreno, i. pp. 375-6, and Arteche, v. p. 107. [39] See Col. Leslie (of the 29th), _Memoirs_, p. 94.