a force almost equal in numbers to Victor’s depleted corps. But it was clear that the Marshal would have to leave some sort of a garrison in the Lines before Cadiz, and that the Allies would have a numerical superiority, if they could force on a fight at a distance from the sea and the French base. One cardinal mistake was made in planning the expedition. Its command was to be entrusted to General Manuel La Peña, then the senior officer in Cadiz, a man with a talent for plausible talking and diplomacy, but one who had already shown himself a selfish colleague and a disloyal subordinate. This was the same man who in 1808, nearly three years back, had sacrificed his chief Castaños at the disastrous battle of Tudela[134], by refusing to march to the sound of the guns, and securing a safe retreat for himself and his 10,000 men, while the main army was being crushed, only four miles away, by Marshal Lannes. Though not personally a coward, he was a shirker of responsibilities, and incapable of a swift and heroic decision. He was ambitious enough to aspire to and intrigue for a post of importance, but collapsed when it became necessary to discharge its duties. He treated Graham in 1811 precisely as he had treated Castaños in 1808, and it was not his fault that the sally from Cadiz failed to end in a disaster[135]. The English lieutenant-general had discretionary authority from his Government to refuse to act in any joint expedition of which he was not given the command. But anxious to bring matters to a head, and deceived by La Peña’s mild plausibility, he consented to take the second place, on the ground that the Spaniard contributed the larger body of troops to the enterprise. [134] See vol. i. pp. 442-3. [135] Schepeler, the Prussian officer in Spanish service, whose notes on all the Cadiz affairs are so important, owing to his having served through them under Blake and La Peña, says that the latter was generally allowed to be incompetent--he was a regular old woman. He tells an illustrative anecdote, of a guerrillero chief who came to concert a bold plan with the general, and went away at once, saying, ‘Can I hope to get anything out of an officer who, as I find, is called “Donna Manuela” by every one about him?’ Schepeler, _Geschichte der spanischen Monarchie_, i. 134. La Peña had kept his place, despite of his Tudela fiasco, through family and _salon_ intrigues--he is said to have been the ‘tame cat’ of certain great ladies of the patriotic party.