Castaños being appointed commander-in-chief of the Andalusian army, as I have before related, rallied Echevaria’s troops, and asked for the co-operation of the British force; he had no objection to their entering Cadiz, but he preferred having them landed at Almeria to march to Xeres. General Spencer, however, confined his offers to the occupation of Cadiz; and when Morla pretended that to fit out the Spanish fleet was an object of immediate importance, colonel sir George Smith, an officer employed by general Spencer to conduct the negotiations, promised on his own authority, money to pay the Spanish seamen, who were then in a state of mutiny. Lord Collingwood and sir Hew Dalrymple refused to fulfil this promise, and the approach of Dupont causing Morla to wish Spencer’s troops away, he persuaded that general to sail to Ayamonte, under the pretence of preventing Avril’s division from crossing the Guadiana, although he knew well that the latter had no intention of doing so. The effect produced upon colonel Maransin by the appearance of the British force off Ayamonte has been already noticed. General Thiebault says, that Spencer might have struck an important blow at that period against the French; but the British troops were unprovided with any equipment for a campaign, and to have thrown five thousand infantry, without cavalry and without a single place of arms, into the midst of an enemy who occupied all the fortresses, and who could bring twenty thousand men into the field, would have been imprudent to the greatest degree. General Spencer, who had by this time been rejoined by his detachment from Sicily, only made a demonstration of landing, and having thus materially aided the insurrection, returned to Cadiz, from whence he was almost immediately summoned to Lisbon, to execute a new project, which proved to be both ill-considered and fruitless. [Sidenote: Mr. Canning to lord Castlereagh, 28th Dec. 1807.] [Sidenote: Sir Hew Dalrymple’s Correspondence.] [Sidenote: Parliamentary Papers, 1809.] [Sidenote: Sir Hew Dalrymple’s Correspondence.]