Among the persons who accompanied Ferdinand to Bayonne was D. Joseph Palafox y Melzi, the youngest of three brothers, of one of the most distinguished families in Aragon. He was about thirty-four years of age, and had been from boyhood in the Spanish guards without ever having seen actual service; in Madrid, where he had mostly passed his time, he was only remarkable for a certain foppishness in his appearance, and in ordinary times he might have passed through life as an ordinary man, without any pretensions to moral or intellectual rank. After the tumults at Aranjuez he was appointed second in command there, under the Marquis de Castellar, to whose custody the Prince of the Peace was committed. Not being regarded at Bayonne as a person whom it was necessary to secure, he found means to escape in the disguise of a peasant, and in that dress arrived safely at a country house belonging to his family, at Alfranca, about two miles from Zaragoza. That city was in a perturbed state, ... the people restless, indignant, and eager to act against the enemy; the magistrates, and the Captain-general of Aragon, D. Jorge Juan Guillermi, desirous of maintaining order, and ready in regular course of office to obey the instruction which they received from Madrid, not scrupulous from what authority they came, while it was through the accustomed channels. The arrival of Palafox at such a time excited the hopes and the expectations of the Zaragozans. That he was hostile to the intended usurpation was certain, he would not otherwise have exposed himself to danger in escaping from Bayonne; that he came with the intention of serving Ferdinand was to be presumed, ... perhaps with secret instructions from him; it was even rumoured that Ferdinand himself had miraculously made his escape, and was now concealed in the house of the faithful companion of his flight. This report was too romantic to obtain belief, except among the most credulous of the ignorant. Palafox however was so popular, and the impatience of the people discovered itself so plainly, and their wishes so evidently looked to him as the man whom they would fain have for their leader, that though he used no means direct or indirect for encouraging this disposition, the Captain-general thought proper to send him an order to quit the kingdom of Aragon. Despotic as the system of administration had been throughout all Spain, such an order to a man of Palafox’s rank, in his own country, would have been deemed at any time a most unfit exertion of authority. Under the present circumstances it evinced the determination of General Guillermi to support the intrusive government, and hastened the insurrection which he apprehended, but was unable to avert.