From the world these quarrels were covered by an appearance of the utmost respect and honour. He was made a grandee of the first class, and the estate of Soto de Roma in Grenada, of which the much-maligned and miserable Prince of Peace had been despoiled, was settled upon him. He accepted the gift, but, as he had before done with his Portuguese and Spanish pay, transferred the proceeds to the public treasury during the war. The regents however, under the pressure of the Jacobins, and apparently bearing some personal enmity, although one of them, Ciscar, had been instrumental in procuring him the command of the Spanish army, were now intent to drive him from it; and the excesses committed at San Sebastian served their factious writers as a topic for exciting the people not only to demand his resignation, but to commence a warfare of assassination against the British soldiers. Moreover, combining extreme folly with wickedness, they pretended amongst other absurdities that the nobility had offered, if he would change his religion, to make him king of Spain. This tale was eagerly adopted by the English newspapers, and three Spanish grandees thought it necessary to declare that they were not among the nobles who made the proposition. His resignation was accepted in the latter end of September, and he held the command only until the assembling of the new Cortez, but the attempt to render him odious failed even at Cadiz, owing chiefly to the personal ascendancy which all great minds so surely attain over the masses in troubled times. Both the people and the soldiers respected him more than they did their own government, and the Spanish officers had generally yielded as ready obedience to his wishes before he was appointed generalissimo, as they did to his orders when holding that high office. It was this ascendancy which enabled him to maintain the war with such troublesome allies; and yet so little were the English ministers capable of appreciating its importance, that after the battle of Vittoria they entertained the design of removing him from Spain to take part in the German operations. His answer was short and modest, but full of wisdom. “Many might be found to conduct matters as well as I can both here and in Germany, but nobody would enjoy the same advantages here, and I should be no better than another in Germany.”