The wholesale massacre of wounded and prisoners by both the _Cristino_ and Carlist generals aroused the indignation of every civilized community, and especially in England, where an uneasy sense of responsibility for the atrocities which were committed was natural in view of the fact that the government had taken to some extent an official part in the war, and that English regiments were soon to be exposed to the cruelties against which the whole of Europe was protesting. The pressure of public opinion in England, indeed, was so strong that at length Lord Eliot was despatched to Spain to negotiate a convention between the belligerents which would ensure the ordinary laws of civilized warfare being obeyed. It was a difficult task. {7a} But by the exertions of Lord Eliot and Colonel Wylde of the Royal Artillery, who was serving as a kind of military _attaché_ at the head-quarters of the queen’s forces, a convention, known as the “Eliot Convention,” was at length signed by Zumalacarregui at or near Logroño, on April 27 and 28, 1835. The convention, as might have been supposed, was in practice regarded by neither party, and was evaded when not actually set at nought. It was said not to apply to any part of Spain but the Basque provinces, nor to any troops enlisted after its signature in April; but the massacre of prisoners was possibly not so systematically carried out after the agreement as it had been before. But, strangest of all, as soon as the news of the signature of this convention became known at Madrid, the utmost indignation was expressed, not only by the populace of Madrid, but in the Cortes. An attempt was made to kill Señor Martinez de la Rosa in the streets by an armed mob, and the ministry was compelled to resign. Count Toreno was then called to the supreme power on June 7, with Mendizabal as finance minister. Meanwhile the military skill of Zumalacarregui in the Basque provinces, and of Cabrera in the east of Spain, had alone prolonged the struggle during 1834 and 1835; but the death of Zumalacarregui from a wound received in action near Bilbao in June, 1835, was a serious blow to the hopes of the Pretender, although there are good grounds for supposing that the bold general’s end was hastened by poison administered by his own partisans. {8} In the month of April of this same year, 1835, Lord Palmerston, who, after a brief retirement from office in 1834, was once more Foreign Secretary in London, had sanctioned the enlisting of an army of ten thousand men in England, which, under the command of Colonel, afterwards Sir de Lacy Evans, landed at San Sebastian in August to assist the government of the regency to put down the Carlists in the northwest. There was already a British Auxiliary Contingent attached to the Spanish army, and the British Naval Squadron, under Lord John Hay, assisted the _Cristinos_ on the coast between Bilbao and Santander.