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not got on well together in spite of outward appearances. The moment any general acts cordially with us . . . some reason is found for his removal. This ridiculous Spanish jealousy would be bearable if they supported it by exertion of their own so as to enable us to leave them to themselves, but we are now feeding and clothing their half-starved men in the front and they are doing very little in the rear to supply those they have or to increase their numbers. In short, five years’ misery has not scourged them into reasonable beings, and turned romance heroes into common-sense soldiers and practical politicians.23

Only in the autumn did significant numbers of Spanish troops reach the line, and then their discipline proved so lax that most of them were sent to the rear almost immediately. Deeply frustrated, Wellington was driven to tender his resignation (though this was eventually rejected by the cortes), while there were moments when he seriously considered overthrowing the government. So weary was he of Spain, indeed, that in November 1813 he even proposed making the continued employment of British forces in Spain conditional upon the admission of a British garrison to the recently captured border fortress of San Sebastián. This, he claimed, would cut the Gordian knot: ‘You may rely upon this, that if you take a firm, decided line, and show your determination to go through with it, you will have the Spanish nation with you, you will bring the government to their senses, and you will put an end at once to all the petty cabals and counter action existing at the moment.’24 At all events, it is not a happy story, but in the end the commitment of the Patriot regime and the Liverpool administration to the war effort and Wellington’s own dedication and common sense saved the Anglo-Spanish alliance from collapse.

All things considered, the survival of the Anglo-Spanish alliance can be considered as something of a minor miracle. It is important to note, however, that these sorts of troubles were not just restricted to Spain. At the same time that Wellington was experiencing such difficulties in the Peninsula, Britain also found itself coming under pressure in Sicily. In the course of 1809 skirmishing had continued between the court and the commander of the British garrison - the same Sir John Stuart who had won the battle of Maida in 1806 - over the direction that military operations should take. As before, the queen in particular favoured an invasion of the Italian mainland, but it was only with some difficulty that Stuart could be persuaded to launch even the most minor operation. Eventually Austrian requests for help in1809 led him to sanction a two-pronged descent on Calabria and the city of Naples, but news of the Austrian defeat at Wagram caused its cancellation. As a result, Maria Carolina and her supporters were left even more disgruntled than before, especially as Stuart had agreed to a request from the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, Lord Collingwood, to send a force to take the Ionian islands from the French, a task that was quickly achieved in respect of all of them except Corfu. This dissatisfaction was in part justified, for Stuart was not an impressive figure and may well have wasted genuine opportunities at this time. But the British still had reason to complain of the utter inability of the Sicilian regime to muster a credible fighting force, while their allies would not give them the authority that might have allowed them, as in Portugal, to have made something of the situation. As the British were convinced that much of their subsidy to Sicily was being used to fund the expenses of the court, and were increasingly anxious to send some of the troops they had in Sicily to Spain, there was much discontent and a growing conviction that the only way forward was a change of regime. In this they were encouraged by their contacts with the island’s nobles and merchants: eager to throw off the control of the court, the local elites saw the British as their salvation and sought to secure their patronage by affecting