Note 135 — SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER IV

Schepeler, the Prussian officer in Spanish service, whose notes on all the Cadiz affairs are so important, owing to his having served through them under Blake and La Peña, says that the latter was generally allowed to be incompetent—he was a regular old woman. He tells an illustrative anecdote, of a guerrillero chief who came to concert a bold plan with the general, and went away at once, saying, ‘Can I hope to get anything out of an officer who, as I find, is called “Donna Manuela” by every one about him?’ Schepeler, Geschichte der spanischen Monarchie, i. 134. La Peña had kept his place, despite of his Tudela fiasco, through family and salon intrigues—he is said to have been the ‘tame cat’ of certain great ladies of the patriotic party.