The inner meaning of these somewhat double-edged phrases is explained in a memorandum for Lord Bathurst, the British Secretary of State for War, which was sent home under the same cover as the Cadiz document[273]. It was eminently not a letter to be shown to Spaniards, and contained some of the most bitter expressions concerning them which Wellington ever penned. No use could be got out of their armies, he wrote, unless they were under his control. They had lost nearly all their guns and cavalry, and generally could not act in bodies separate from the Allied Army. Their discipline, equipment, and organization was as bad as ever: yet if put in line with his own troops they might behave quite well. He would prevent by good management repetitions of those terrible disasters to individual armies which had so often happened in past years. But his power over them must be made real, and for that purpose he intended to apply the financial screw. All subsidies advanced by the British Government to Spain must for the future be expended wholly on such Spanish troops as were actually employed in co-operation with the Anglo-Portuguese army, or else those troops would become a fresh burden on the military chest. And in his letter to Cadiz he had been careful to show that he did not intend to allow the Spanish Government to dictate a military policy to him, because they had placed their troops at his disposition. These letters, sent off from the camp before Burgos on October 5, got to London on October 20, and the Prince Regent’s approbation of Wellington’s acceptance of the offer from the Cortes was granted at once[274]. The dispatch conveying it was delivered at Cadiz on the 17th of November, and on the 20th the Cortes confirmed its former decree, and sent off a formal warrant of appointment to the new generalissimo, which reached him at Freneda on December 4th. The confirmation was not made with such general approval as the original appointment--and for good reason. By this time it had become evident that Wellington was not about to drive the French over the Pyrenees: he had raised the siege of Burgos, and when the Cortes repeated their vote, was known to be in full retreat for Salamanca. Hopes from his success were no longer so high as they had been in September, and a nasty jar had been given to the whole arrangement by the mutinous conduct of Ballasteros, who (as has been shown in an earlier chapter) had issued a manifesto against all submission to foreign generals, and had refused to obey Wellington’s directions at a critical moment. It is true that Ballasteros had been arrested and imprisoned, without any consequent trouble[275]; but it was known that there were other Spanish generals who were not without sympathy with his views.