The advantages derived from the conquest were even extended to the province of Aragon, and to the court of Joseph, for the contributions were diminished in the former, and large sums were remitted to the latter to meet Napoleon’s grant of one-fifth of the war contributions in favour of the intrusive government. This prosperous state of French affairs in Valencia was established also in the face of an enemy daily increasing in strength. For the regent, Abispal, had given Blake’s command to his own brother Joseph O’Donel, who collecting the remains of the armies of Murcia and Valencia, had raised new levies, and during Suchet’s illness formed a fresh army of twelve or fourteen thousand men in the neighbourhood of Alicant. In the Balearic Isles also Roche and Whittingham’s divisions were declared ready to take the field, and fifteen hundred British troops, commanded by general Ross, arrived at Carthagena. To avoid the fever there, these last remained on shipboard, and were thus more menacing to the enemy than on shore, because they seemed to be only awaiting the arrival of a new army, which the French knew to be coming from Sicily to the eastern coast of Spain. And as the descent of this army was the commencement of a remarkable episode in the history of the Peninsular War, it is proper to give an exact account of its origin and progress. Sir John Stuart had been succeeded, in Sicily, by lord William Bentinck, a man of resolution, capacity, and spirit, just in his actions, and abhorring oppression, but of a sanguine, impetuous disposition. Being resolved to ameliorate the condition of the Sicilian people, after surmounting many difficulties, he removed the queen from power, vested the direction of affairs in the crown prince, obtained from the barons a renunciation of their feudal privileges, and caused a representative constitution to be proclaimed. Believing then that the court was submissive because it was silent; that the barons would adhere to his system, because it gave them the useful power of legislation, in lieu of feudal privileges alloyed by ruinous expenses and the degradation of courtiers; because it gave them the dignity of independence at the cost only of maintaining the rights of the people and restoring the honour of their country:—believing thus, he judged that the large British force hitherto kept in Sicily, as much to overawe the court as to oppose the enemy, might be dispensed with; and that the expected improvement of the Sicilian army, and the attachment of the people to the new political system, would permit ten thousand men to be employed in aid of lord Wellington, or in Italy. In January, therefore, he wrote of these projects to the English ministers, and sent his brother to lord Wellington to consult upon the best mode of acting.