To force a change in the whole spirit, and action of the government, seemed to some, the only remedy for the distemperature of the time; but this might have produced anarchy, and would have given countenance to the democratic spirit, contrary to the general policy of the British government. Wellington therefore desired rather to have the prince regent at Lisbon, or the Azores, whence his authority might, under the influence of England, be more directly used to enforce salutary regulations; he however considered it essential that Carlotta, whose intrigues were incessant, should not be with him, and, she on the other hand, laboured to come back without the prince, who was prevented from moving, by continued disturbances in the Brazils. Mr. Stuart, then despairing of good, proposed the establishment of a military government at once, but Wellington would not agree, although the mischief afloat clogged every wheel of the military machine. A law of king Sebastian, which obliged all gentlemen holding land to take arms was now revived, but desertion, which had commenced with the first appointment of British officers, increased; and so many persons sailed away in British vessels of war, to evade military service in their own country, that an edict was published to prevent the practice. Beresford checked the desertion for a moment, by condemning deserters to hard labour, and offering rewards to the country people to deliver them up; yet griping want renewed the evil at the commencement of the campaign, and the terrible severity of condemning nineteen at once to death, did not repress it. The cavalry, which had been at all times very inefficient, was now nearly ruined, the men were become faint-hearted, the breed of horses almost extinct, and shameful peculations amongst the officers increased the mischief: one guilty colonel was broke and his uniform stripped from his shoulders in the public square at Lisbon. However these examples produced fear and astonishment rather than correction, the misery of the troops continued, and the army, although by the care of Beresford it was again augmented to more than thirty thousand men under arms, declined in moral character and spirit.