been running in the minds of the framers of the constitution. But--as we shall see--the Cortes, when it actually met, took no such shape. The mandate for the election of the assembly was duly published; and so far public opinion was to a certain extent satisfied, for it was clear that the Central Junta was at last about to abdicate. But though the majority of the Spanish people were contented to wait, provided that the executive committee should show signs of rising to the occasion, and doing its best as an _interim_ government, there were some politicians who saw in the crisis only an opportunity for pushing their private ambitions. Those veteran intriguers, the Conde de Montijo and Francisco Palafox, undismayed by the failure of the September plot, began to make arrangements with the Seville demagogues for a fresh attempt at a _coup d’état_. Their plots seem to have distracted Romana and his colleagues from their obvious military duties--the conspirator at home is always the enemy who looms most large before the eyes of a weak government. But after some search both were discovered, arrested and imprisoned. Meanwhile the executive committee, with the Junta’s approval, issued a long series of edicts concerning the reorganization of the army, and the defence of Andalusia from the French attack, which might at any moment begin. The ‘Army of the Centre,’ of which Areizaga was still, strange to say, left in command, was to be raised to 100,000 men by a strenuous conscription. The press was to be all-embracing, married men, novices in monasteries, persons in minor orders, only sons of widows, all the classes hitherto exempt, were to be subject to it. To provide funds the clergy were ordered to send in to the mint all church plate save such as was strictly necessary for the celebration of the sacraments, and all private citizens were bidden to contribute one half of their table-silver. In order to provide teams for the artillery--which had lost nearly all its horses and guns at Ocaña--a strict requisition for draught animals was begun all over Andalusia. Engineers were sent out to fortify all the passes of the Sierra Morena, with permission to exact forced labour from the peasantry of the hill country. Three members of the Junta--Rabe, Riquelme and Campo Sagrado--were sent to Areizaga’s head quarters at La Carolina as ‘field deputies,’ to stir up or support the energy of the commander-in-chief. This was a device borrowed from the practice of the French Revolution, and had no better effect than might have been expected. As in 1793, the ‘Representatives on Mission’ were either useless or positively harmful. They either wished to thrust amateurish plans of their own upon the military men, or at least distracted them by constant inquisitorial supervision.