Only a steady perusal of Wellington’s Original and Supplementary Dispatches can give the chronicler an idea of the varied nature of his troubles and worries, during the winter that followed the Salamanca campaign. They were not merely those of an ordinary general in command of an army: his political position had now grown so important that not only did all happenings in the Peninsula fall within his sphere, but the Cabinet at home was continually consulting him on questions of general European importance. And in the months after Napoleon’s Russian _débâcle_ the politics of Europe came to a crisis, such as had never been seen since first he assumed the Imperial crown. His domination was breaking up: his prestige had received a mortal wound: alliances were shifting: the wildest enterprises were advocated. There were those at home who proposed that Wellington should take his Peninsula army to Germany--or to La Vendée--and others who wanted to saddle him with a large Russian auxiliary force to be brought by sea from Reval or Odessa. On every scheme, however wild, he had to give his opinion. But, placing in order of importance the many worries that beset Head-Quarters at Freneda, it would seem that the most constant and prolific source of trouble was a circumstance which ought rather to have lessened than increased Wellington’s military difficulties--if only men had been other than they were. It will be remembered that as early as 1809 the project of making him Generalissimo of all the Spanish armies had been mooted and rejected[270]. He had expressed his opinion that Spanish national pride made it impossible. ‘I am much flattered,’ he had written to the British Minister, ‘by the notion entertained by some of the people in authority at Seville of appointing me to the command of the Spanish Armies. I believe it was considered an object of great importance in England that the Commander-in-Chief of the British troops should have that situation. But it is one more likely to be attained by refraining from pressing it, and leaving it to the Spaniards themselves to discover the expediency of the arrangement, than by any suggestion on our parts.’