It was four months before this traitor was got rid of, though Lord Bathurst had been shocked by the news, and corroborated it by his own observation: he had seen mischievous letters from Gordon to the Horse Guards, and if he wrote such stuff to the Duke it was easy to guess what he might write to Lord Grey or Whitbread. Certain of the newspaper paragraphs _must_ have come ‘from some intelligent person with you[326].’ The strange way in which the removal was accomplished was not by a demand for his degradation for misuse of his office[327], but by a formal report to the Horse Guards that ‘Colonel Gordon does not turn his mind to the duties to be performed by the Quartermaster-General of an Army such as this, actively employed in the field: notwithstanding his zeal and acknowledged talent, he has never performed them, and I do not believe he ever will or can perform them. I give this opinion with regret, and I hope His Royal Highness will believe that I have not formed it hastily of an officer respecting whose talents I, equally with His Royal Highness, had entertained a favourable opinion[328].’ Three weeks later the Military Secretary at the Horse Guards writes that Wellington shall have back his old Quartermaster-General George Murray--and Gordon is recalled[329]. But why had Gordon ever been sent? The Duke of York alone could say. The impression which he had left as a soldier upon men at the front, who knew nothing of his political intrigues, was exceedingly poor[330]. This was the worst trick which was played on Wellington from the Horse Guards. Another was the refusal to relieve him of the gallant but muddle-headed and disobedient William Stewart, who despite of his awful error at Albuera was allowed to come out to the Peninsula again in 1812, and committed other terrible blunders: it was he who got the three divisions into a marshy deadlock on the retreat from Salamanca, by deliberate and wilful neglect of directions[331]. ‘With the utmost zeal and good intentions he _cannot_ obey an order,’ wrote Wellington on December 6, 1812--yet Stewart was still commanding the Second Division in 1814[332]. In letters sent to the Horse Guards in December 1812 the Commander-in-Chief in Spain petitioned for the departure of five out of his seven cavalry generals--which seems a large clearance--and of ten infantry divisional and brigade commanders. About half of them were ultimately brought home, but several were left with him for another campaign. He had also asked that he might have no more generals who were new to the Peninsula inflicted upon him, because their arrival blocked promotion for deserving colonels, to whom he was anxious to give brigades. ‘I hope I shall have no more new Generals: they really do but little good, and they take the places of officers who would be of real use. And then they are all desirous of returning to England[333].’ The appeal was in vain--several raw major-generals were sent out for the spring campaign of 1813, and we