It must not be inferred that there was a dearth of material for destructive criticism. Few decades of English history have offered a more tempting opportunity to a satirist.[49] The Napoleonic Wars, renewed in May, 1803, after the brief Peace of Amiens (1802), were not, in spite of an occasional naval victory, resulting advantageously for England; the disgraceful Convention of Cintra (1808) and the Walcheren fiasco of 1809 had detracted from British prestige; and the Peninsular Campaign of 1808 seemed at the time to be a disastrous failure. The wearisome conflict had accentuated class differences, since, as Byron afterwards pointed out in _The Age of Bronze_, the landed interests only increased their wealth as the struggle continued. Many reforms were being agitated: Catholic Emancipation, opposed resolutely by George III and not made a reality until Canning became supreme; the abolition of negro slavery, championed persistently by Wilberforce; and many improvements in the suffrage laws, planned by Sir Francis Burdett and a small group of liberal statesmen. The older leaders, Pitt and Fox, died in the same year (1806), leaving weaker and less trusted men to fill their places; while political issues became confused until the establishment of the Regency in 1811 opened the way for the long Tory administration of Lord Liverpool. Some incidents of an unusually scandalous character aroused a general spirit of dissatisfaction. The impeachment of Melville in 1806 for alleged peculation of funds in the naval office; the investigation in 1806 into the character of the giddy Princess Caroline, instigated by the Prince of Wales, who had married her in 1795 and deserted her within a year; the resignation of the Duke of York from the command of the army, following a dramatic exposé of his relations with Mrs. Clarke and her disposal of commissions for bribes; the duel between Castlereagh and Canning (1809)--all these were unsavory topics of the hour. The open profligacy of the heir to the throne drew upon him ridicule and contempt, and the frequent recurrence of the King’s malady left Englishmen in doubt as to the duration of his reign. In such an age the ephemeral satires of the newspapers joined with the cartoons of Gilray and Cruikshank in assailing evils and expressing public indignation. It is, then, remarkable that no writer of real genius should have been led to commemorate these events in satire.