Cuesta was, however, so popular in Estremadura, that the central junta, although fearing and detesting him, consented to his being placed at the head of Galluzzo’s fugitives, part of whom had, when the pursuit ceased, rallied behind the Guadiana, and were now, with the aid of fresh levies, again taking the form, rather than the consistence, of an army. This appointment was an act of deplorable weakness and incapacity. The moral effect was to degrade the government by exposing its fears and weakness; and, in a military view, it was destructive, because Cuesta was physically and mentally incapable of command. Obstinate, jealous, and stricken in years, he was heedless of time and circumstances, of disposition and fitness. To punish with a barbarous severity, and to rush headlong into battle, constituted, in his mind, all the functions of a general. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 2, section 2d.] [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 13. Vol. I.] [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 2, section 2.] The president, Florida Blanca, being eighty-one years of age, died at Seville, and the marquis of Astorga succeeded him; but the character of the junta was in no manner affected by the change. Some fleeting indications of vigour had been produced by the imminence of the danger during the flight from Aranjuez, but a large remittance of silver, from South America, having arrived at Cadiz, the attention of the members was so absorbed, by this object, that the public weal was blotted from their remembrance, and even Mr. Frere, ashamed of their conduct, appeared to acquiesce in the justness of sir John Moore’s estimate of the value of Spanish co-operation. The number of men to be enrolled for the defence of the country had been early fixed at five hundred thousand, but scarcely one-third had joined their colours; nevertheless, considerable bodies were assembling at different points, because the people, especially those of the southern provinces, although dismayed, were obedient, and the local authorities, at a distance from the actual scene of war, rigorously enforced the law of enrolment, and sent the recruits to the armies, hoping thereby either to stave the war off from their own districts, or to have the excuse of being without fighting men, to plead for quiet submission. The fugitive troops also readily collected again at any given point, partly from patriotism, partly because the French were in possession of their native provinces, partly that they attributed their defeats to the treachery of their generals, and partly that, being deceived by the gross falsehoods and boasting of the government, they, with ready vanity, imagined that the enemy had invariably suffered enormous losses. In fine, for the reasons mentioned in the commencement of this history, men were to be had in abundance; but, beyond assembling them and appointing some incapable person to command, nothing was done for defence.