But that unhappy body had no longer a single friend: its members were mobbed and arrested on their flight from Seville to Cadiz; its President the Archbishop of Laodicea, its Vice-President the Conde de Altamira, and the War Minister Cornel were seized at Xeres by a frantic mob, and would have been murdered, if General Castaños, whom the Junta had treated so badly in December 1808, had not arrived in time to save their lives. Twenty-three members reached Cadiz, and there, by a proclamation dated January 29th, abdicated their authority, and nominated a Regency, to which they resigned their power, and the duty of receiving and welcoming the expected Cortes. The Regents were Castaños, the Bishop of Orense, Admiral Escaño, Saavedra--the president of the new and illegal Junta at Seville--and Fernandez de Leon, an American Treasury-official, who was to represent the Colonies[140]. It will be noted that the nominators were wise enough to refrain from appointing any of their own number to serve in the Regency. [140] After a very short tenure of office Fernandez de Leon was superseded by Lardizabal, another American. Meanwhile, the duty of resisting the first shock of the French advance fell not on the Regency, but on the Revolutionary Government which had installed itself in power at Seville. These usurpers proved themselves quite as incapable as the men whom they had superseded. When once in possession of power, Palafox and his friends had to count up their resources: they had at their disposal an armed mob of 20,000 men, and a mere handful of regular troops, consisting of the regiments which had served as the guards of the late Junta, and four or five isolated battalions from the division of Zerain, which had finally sought refuge in Seville. These troops seem to have been about 4,000 strong at the most[141]. There was an immense quantity of artillery from the arsenal; it had been dragged out to line the new earthworks, on which the populace was busily engaged, but not two hundred trained gunners existed to man the batteries. It was hoped that Albuquerque’s Estremaduran army would come to their aid, but--as we have already seen--the Duke deliberately refused to acknowledge the authority of the Seville Junta, and, instead of falling back upon the city, marched southwards to Utrera on the Cadiz road, leaving the great _chaussée_ Ecija-Carmona-Seville open to the French. [141] It is difficult to make out what precisely were the battalions in Seville on January 23-29. But they certainly included a battalion of the 1st Walloon Guards [the Junta’s old guard], with 1st and 2nd of España and Barbastro from Zerain’s division. It is almost certain that most of Zerain’s other battalions were with these three.