The Cortes found it necessary also to interfere with the executive. The Duke of Orleans had offered his services to the Spaniards; the former government had not thought proper to accept his offer, but the Regency, a few weeks after their installation, invited him to take the command in Catalonia. A century ago their conduct might have been easily explained, when Lord Molesworth gravely asked, what could be done for generals, in such havoc as was then made of them, if there were not so many younger sons of princes in Germany, who all ran wherever there was a war, to get bread and reputation? But pedigrees and patents of nobility were not considered now as exclusive qualifications for command, and the conduct of the Regency, in this instance, was inconsiderate and hasty. When the duke first offered his services, the Spaniards were in the full tide of success; and he expected, with good reason, that as soon as the French armies were disheartened, they would readily forsake a tyrant, to whom they were not bound by any tie of duty. Affairs bore a very different aspect when the Regency informed him, that the obstacles which had formerly frustrated his desires were now removed; reminded him of the triumphs which his ancestors had won in Catalonia; and called upon him to preserve the verdure of their laurels. The duke was a man of too much honour and courage not to fulfil the offer which he had made in more prosperous times. Accordingly he sailed from Sicily in the beginning of June, touched at Tarragona, and having been received there with the honours due to his rank, continued his voyage to Cadiz, where he landed under a salute of artillery. The Bishop of Orense had not arrived from his diocese to take his seat in the council of Regency when the duke was invited: he therefore was not implicated in this transaction, which was in every respect exceedingly imprudent. There might have been some apparent cause for it, if the duke had been a general of great experience and celebrity, or if he could have assisted Spain either with men, money, or stores; but the Sicilian court had no means at its disposal: it had sent a present of a thousand muskets early in the year, and this was the extent of its ability. On the other hand, the presence of a prince of the Bourbon line, at the head of a Spanish army, would have certainly drawn against it a stronger French force than would otherwise have been employed, the destruction of one branch of that house being of more importance to Buonaparte than the conquest of Spain. That consideration may have had some weight with the Junta of Seville, when upon the first outburst of national feeling, Louis XVIII. wrote to the principality of Asturias, offering with his brother, his nephews, and cousins, to serve in their ranks, unite the Oriflamme with their standards, and call upon the deluded French to rally round it, and restore peace to the world. So many inconveniences were perceived in