absolute impossibility of moving large bodies of men without adequate magazines or a fair supply of money. The only regular income of the army was that drawn from the British subsidy. But the worst of Wellington’s troubles were yet some months ahead. The Regency with which he had made his bargain[283] was displaced in March 1813, and succeeded by another. The Cortes was jealous of the Executive, and had determined to make for itself a supreme authority which should have neither brains nor energy. The subject of quarrel chosen was the old Regency’s alleged slackness in carrying out a recent Act which had abolished that moribund abuse the Inquisition[284]. After an all-night sitting and a vote of censure, the Regents were dismissed, and replaced by a group appointed under an absurd principle borrowed from the old régime, which was applied because it suited the desires of the assembly for the moment. It was composed of the three senior members of the Council of State--senility and weakness being desired. These were the Cardinal Bourbon--Archbishop of Toledo--an aged scion of the royal house, and the Councillors Pedro Agar and Gabriel Cisgar, who had been Regents before, but had been got rid of for incompetence. Thus all real power went to the Chamber itself--the Regency having become a negligible quantity. Wellington’s position was decidedly impaired by the change--largely because a new minister-of-war had come into office, General Juan O’Donoju, of whom he had an evil memory as Cuesta’s chief-of-the-staff during the Talavera campaign. This clever, shifty, and contentious Irish-Spanish officer broached the theory that the agreement of December 1812 did not bind the new Regents, because they had never assented to it, and because it was contrary to the spirit of the Constitution that a foreigner should have the power to appoint or dismiss Spanish generals. When Henry Wellesley at Cadiz, instructed by his brother, turned his heaviest diplomatic batteries[285] upon the Regents, and privately warned the leading members of the Cortes of the awkward results that would follow the repudiation of the agreement, O’Donoju was disavowed but not displaced. He continued to give perpetual trouble through the following summer by his persistent intrigues. Wellington was by no means satisfied with the attempts that were made to propitiate him, by the formal recognition of his status as generalissimo by the new Regents, and the gift of a great estate in Granada, the royal domain of Soto de Roma, which had been usurped by Godoy. He did not want grants but real authority. Of his future troubles we shall have to speak in their proper place.