The same question that arose about the King’s German Legion also came up during the spring of 1813 with regard to the Brunswickers. Many officers of the Brunswick-Oels battalion in the 7th Division were fired with the idea of liberating Germany--they wrote to their duke, then in England, begging him to have the battalion ordered home. He replied that he had tried to get the War Office to let him go to the Elbe, even with a small cadre, a few hundred men, but had been refused[315]. It is much more surprising that this corps was not spared from the Peninsula: Wellington had a bad mark against it, for its terrible propensity to desertion, and a worse for the behaviour of one of its companies at Tordesillas in the recent campaign. Probably he thought that, if he surrendered the Brunswickers, he would have to give up the German Legion also. It is odd to find that among Wellington’s troubles were not only the proposed subtraction of troops whom he did not want to lose, but the proposed addition of troops whom he was not at all anxious to see in the Peninsula. The story is one which illustrates the casual methods of Russian officers. In February there came to Freneda a well-known British secret agent, Mackenzie, the man who had organized the successful evasion of La Romana’s Spaniards from Denmark in 1808[316]. He brought letters from Admiral Greig, commanding the Russian Black Sea fleet, to the effect that there was a surplus of troops from Tchitchagoff’s Army of the Danube, which could not be utilized in Germany for want of transport and supplies. There were 15,000 men who could be collected at Odessa and shipped to Spain, to be placed in the Allied Army, if Wellington would accept them. The memory of Russian co-operation in Holland in 1799 was not a very happy one: but it seemed unwise to offend the Tsar, on whose goodwill the future of Europe now depended. Wherefore the answer given was that they might come if the British Cabinet approved, and if the Spanish and Portuguese governments saw no objection. ‘One would think that the Emperor had demands enough for his men,’ wrote Wellington to Charles Stuart, ‘but Mackenzie says that they have more men than they can support in the field, which is not improbable. The admission of Russians into the Peninsula, however, is quite a new feature of the war: and it is absolutely necessary that the allied Governments should consent to the measure[317].’ The correspondence with Cadiz and London ended in the most tiresome and ridiculous fashion--the Spanish Regency was at the moment in a state of diplomatic tension with Russia, on some questions of precedence and courtesy. It answered in the most downright fashion that the presence of Russian troops in Spain would be neither helpful nor welcome. The British ambassador at Cadiz was shocked at the language used, which would be most offensive to the Tsar[318]. But the whole project suddenly collapsed on news received from London. Count Lieven, the