A little later came a much more plausible proposition, which met with an equally strong negative from Wellington. The ever-loyal Electorate of Hanover was prepared to rise: to start the movement it would be only necessary to land a nucleus of British-German troops somewhere on the Frisian coast. Could Wellington spare the three cavalry regiments, five infantry battalions, and one battery of the King’s German Legion which were serving with him? After Tettenborn’s March raid to Hamburg the insurrection actually broke out, and Bathurst suggested[312] that the time had come to throw a considerable force ashore in the electorate. He asked whether the Hanoverian officers in Spain were beginning to chafe at being kept so far from their homes at the critical moment. Again Wellington put in a strong negative. He had been to consult General Charles Alten, ‘by far the best of the Hanoverian officers,’ as to the expedience of sending the Legion to Germany. Alten held that ‘the best thing for England, for Germany, and the world, is to make the greatest possible effort _here_:’ the services of a few thousand veteran troops would be important in the narrower field in Spain--they would be lost in the multitudes assembling on the Elbe. If a large body of loyal levies were collected in Hanover it might ultimately be well to send a part of the Legion thither: but not at present[313]. This was the policy which the Ministry followed: in the spring they dispatched to North Germany only cadres from the dépôts of the Legion at Bexhill--500 men in all, including some experienced cavalry and artillery officers. In July the 3rd Hussars went across to Stralsund, in August two batteries of Horse Artillery, all from England[314]. But no deduction of units was made from Wellington’s Spanish army--only a few officers were permitted to sail, at their own request. The senior of them, General Bock of the Heavy Dragoons, unfortunately perished by shipwreck with his three aides-de-camp off the coast of Brittany in the winter that followed Vittoria. Bathurst was so far right that many of the Hanoverian officers regretted their stay in the Peninsula: on the other hand, Wellington was not merely trying to keep his own army strong, when he refused to listen to the suggestions made him. It was perfectly true that 4,000 good soldiers were an appreciable unit in a Spanish battle--while they would be ‘entirely thrown away,’ as he put it, in Germany. The margin of strength was so narrow in the Peninsular Army that it was not safe to decrease it.