Some delay had taken place in the Duque de S. Carlos’s journey, owing to the removal of the Cortes from Cadiz to Madrid just at that time. In the interim, Buonaparte, who was now as desirous to withdraw his troops from the Peninsula as, in evil hour for himself, he had once been of introducing them there, sought to accelerate that object. He released Zayas and Palafox, who had been kept close prisoners at Vincennes, and sent them to Valençay. Escoiquiz soon followed them; and Laforest proposed that orders should be given by the Regency, immediately after the ratification, for a general suspension of hostilities, humanity requiring that all useless expenditure of blood should be avoided. The Emperor, he said, had appointed Marshal Suchet his commissioner for executing that part of the treaty which related to evacuating the fortresses; and it now depended upon the Spanish government alone to expedite this business, and effect the release of prisoners; the generals and officers should proceed by post to their own country, and the soldiers be delivered upon the frontier as fast as they arrived there. This being assented to by Macanaz and Escoiquiz, ♦PALAFOX SENT TO THE REGENCY. DEC. 23.♦ on Ferdinand’s part, it was determined that Palafox should be sent to communicate it to the Regency, bearing with him a duplicate of the Duque’s commission, in case any accident might have happened to him upon the way; and also a letter in which Ferdinand expressed his persuasion that the Regency had by this time ratified the treaty. But Palafox had secret instructions to see the English ambassador at Madrid, express to him how grateful the King felt for the exertions of the British government in his favour, and communicate to him, in secrecy, the King’s real intention in thus negotiating with Buonaparte, in order that that government, far from resenting such a proceeding, should contribute to its fulfilment. The ♦REPLY OF THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT. 1814. JAN. 28.♦ Regency replied to this second communication by referring to their former reply; they added, that “an ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary had now been named, on his Majesty’s part, for a congress in which the allies were about to give peace to Europe. In that congress, they said, the treaty would be concluded; and it would be ratified not by the Regency, but by his Majesty himself, in his own royal palace of Madrid, whither he would be restored to occupy, in the most absolute liberty, a throne rendered illustrious by the heroic sacrifices of the Spaniards, and by his own sublime virtues. And they expressed their satisfaction in the thought that they should soon deliver up to his Majesty the authority wherewith they were intrusted, ... a charge of such weight that it could rest only upon the robust shoulders of a monarch who, by re-establishing the Cortes, had restored to freedom an enslaved people, and driven the ferocious monster, Despotism, from the throne of Spain.” ♦MEASURES OF THE CORTES.♦