Blake, who had abandoned Romana in Gallicia, and who was still at enmity with Cuesta, had been, for these very reasons, invested with supreme power in Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia; and, moreover, there were factions and bickerings among the inferior officers in the armies of Venegas and Cuesta. Albuquerque was ambitious of commanding in chief, and Mr. Frere warmly intrigued in his cause, for that gentleman still laboured under the delusion that he was appointed to direct the military instead of conducting the political service in the Peninsula. [Sidenote: Parliamentary Papers, 1810.] [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 8.] In April, he had proposed to the junta that a force of five thousand cavalry and some infantry, taken from the armies of Cuesta and Venegas, should, under the command of the duke of Albuquerque, commence offensive operations in La Mancha; this, he said, would, “_if the enemy refused to take notice of it_,” become “a very serious and perhaps a decisive movement;” and he was so earnest that, without communicating upon the subject with sir Arthur Wellesley, without waiting for the result of the operations against Soult, he pretended to the junta that the co-operation of the English army with Cuesta (that co-operation which it was sir Arthur’s most anxious wish to bring about) could only be obtained, as the price of the Spanish government’s acceding to his own proposal. The plenipotentiary’s greatest efforts were, however, directed to procure the appointment of Albuquerque to the command of an army; but that nobleman was under the orders of Cuesta, who was not willing to part with him, and, moreover, Frere wished to displace Venegas, not that any fault was attributed to the latter, but merely to make way for Albuquerque; a scheme so indecorous that both the junta and Cuesta peremptorily rejected it. [Sidenote: Parliamentary Papers, 1810.] Mr. Frere did not hesitate to attribute this rejection to a mean jealousy of Albuquerque’s high birth and talents; but the junta had sufficient reason for their conduct, not only on this occasion, but afterwards, when they refused to give him any independent command. The duke, although a brave and patriotic and even an able soldier, was the dupe of a woman who corresponded with the French. The junta, in the fear of offending him, forbore to punish her, at first, yet, finally, they were obliged to shut her up, and they could not entrust him with a command while her dangerous influence lasted. Hence, Mr. Frere’s intrigue failed to serve Albuquerque, and his military project for La Mancha fell to the ground, when sir Arthur Wellesley, unable to perceive its advantages, strongly advised the junta, not to weaken but to reinforce Cuesta’s army; not to meddle with the French either in La Mancha or Estremadura, but to preserve a strict defensive in all quarters.