Now also came the news that lord William Bentinck’s plans were altered, and the intercepted despatches shewed that the king had again ordered Drouet to pass the Tagus, but Soult’s resistance to this order was not known. Wellington therefore at the same moment, saw Marmont’s army increase, heard that the king’s army, reinforced by Drouet, was on the point of taking the field; that the troops from Sicily, upon whose operations he depended to keep all the army of Aragon in the eastern part of Spain, and even to turn the king’s attention that way, were to be sent to Italy; and that two millions of dollars, which he hoped to have obtained at Gibraltar, had been swept off by lord William Bentinck for this Italian expedition, which thus at once deprived him of men and money! The latter was the most serious blow, the promised remittances from England had not arrived, and as the insufficiency of land-carriage rendered it nearly impossible to feed the army even on the Duero, to venture further into Spain without money would be akin to madness. From Gallicia, where no credit was given, came the supply of meat, a stoppage there would have made the war itself stop, and no greater error had been committed by the enemy, than delaying to conquer Gallicia, which could many times have been done. To meet the increasing exigences for money, the English general had, for one resource, obtained a credit of half a million from the Treasury to answer certain certificates, or notes of hand, which his Spanish correspondents promised to get cashed; but of this resource he was now suddenly deprived by the English ministers, who objected to the irregular form of the certificates, because he, with his usual sagacity, had adapted them to the habits of the people he was to deal with. Meanwhile his troops were four, his staff six, his muleteers nearly twelve months in arrears of pay, and he was in debt every where, and for every thing. The Portuguese government had become very clamorous for the subsidy, Mr. Stuart acknowledged that their distress was very great, and the desertion from the Portuguese army, which augmented in an alarming manner, and seemed rather to be increased than repressed by severity, sufficiently proved their misery. The personal resources of Wellington alone enabled the army to maintain its forward position, for he had, to a certain extent, carried his commercial speculations into Gallicia, as well as Portugal; and he had persuaded the Spanish authorities in Castile to give up a part of their revenue in kind to the army, receiving bills on the British embassy at Cadiz in return. But the situation of affairs may be best learned from the mouths of the generals.