When the Cortes met, America expected more justice; she had contributed ninety millions of dollars for the support of the war, and many of her sons had served zealously in person; she had also been declared an integral part of the empire by the Central Junta, and her deputies were now permitted to sit in the Great National Assembly. She was however soon made to understand, that the first of these privileges meant eternal slavery, and that the second was a mere form. “The Americans complain of having been tyrannized over for three hundred years! they shall now suffer for three thousand years,” and “I know not to what class of beast the Americans belong:” such were the expressions heard and applauded in the Cortes, when the rights of the colonists were agitated in that assembly. Better to lose Spain to Joseph, if America be retained, than to save Spain if America be separated from her, was a feeling deeply rooted in every Spanish heart, a sentiment covertly expressed in many public documents, and openly acted upon; for, when repeated insults, treachery, and continued violence, had driven the colonists to defend their rights in arms, the money and stores, supplied by England for the support of the war against the French, were applied to the fitting out of expeditions against America. Thus the convocation of the National Cortes, far from improving the posture of affairs, dried up the chief sources of revenue, weakened the army in the field, offended many powerful bodies in the state, involved the nation in a colonial war, and struck at the root of the alliance with England. CHAPTER II. While the Spaniards were occupied with the debates of the Cortes, the French works were laboured with care. The chain of forts was perfected, each being complete in itself with ditch and palisades and a week’s provisions; the batteries at the Trocadero were powerful, and the flotillas at San Lucar de Barameda, Santa Maria, Puerto Real, and Chiclana, were ready for action. Soult repaired in person to San Lucar, and in the last night of October, thirty pinnaces and gun-boats slipping out of the Guadalquivir eluded the allied fleet, passed along the coast to Rota, and from thence, aided by shore batteries, fought their way to Santa Maria and the San Pedro. But, to avoid the fire of the fleet and forts in doubling Matagorda, the duke of Dalmatia, remembering what he had formerly effected at Campo Saucos on the Minho, transported his flotilla on rollers, overland; and in November, one hundred and thirty armed vessels and transports were assembled in the Trocadero canal. This success was, however, alloyed by the death of general Senarmont, an artillery officer of the highest reputation.