The most tiresome case in 1812-13 was that of Colonel James Willoughby Gordon, who had come out as Quartermaster-General in 1812, when Wellington’s first and most trusted quarter-master, George Murray, was removed (quite without his desire) to a post in Ireland. Gordon was sent by the Duke of York’s personal choice[323], without any previous consultation with the Commander-in-Chief in Spain as to whether he would be acceptable. The atrocity of this appointment was not only that Gordon was incapable, but that he was a political intriguer, who was in close touch with the Whig Opposition at home, and before he went out had promised to send confidential letters on the campaign to Lord Grey. This he actually did: the malicious Creevey had a privileged peep at them, and found that ‘his accounts are of the most desponding cast. He considers our ultimate discomfiture as a question purely of time, and that it may happen any day, however early: and that our pecuniary resources are utterly exhausted. The skill of the French in recovering from their difficulties is inexhaustible: Lord W. himself owns that the resurrection of Marmont’s broken troops after Salamanca was an absolute miracle of war. In short, Gordon considers that Lord W. is in very considerable danger[324].’ The writer was holding the most important post on Wellington’s staff, and using the information that he obtained for the benefit of the Parliamentary Opposition; he should have been court-martialled for the abuse of his position for personal ends. Wellington at last detected his mischief-making, by the appearance in the Whig papers of definite facts that could only have been known to three people--Wellington himself, his secretary Fitzroy Somerset, and the Quartermaster-General. ‘I showed him,’ writes Wellington to Bathurst, ‘my dispatch to your Lordship of August 3, as the shortest way of making him acquainted with the state of affairs.... The topics of this dispatch find their way into the _Morning Chronicle_, distorted into arguments against the Government. I am quite certain that the arguments in the _Morning Chronicle_ are drawn from a perusal of my dispatches, and that no one saw them here excepting the Quartermaster-General and Lord Fitzroy. Even your Lordship had not yet received this dispatch, when the topics it contained were used against the Government in the newspapers.... For the future he shall not see what I write--it would be no great loss to the Army if he were recalled to England. I cypher part of this letter in the cypher you sent me to be used for General Maitland[325].’