It was reported that the Central Junta upon the first intelligence of the defeat had fled from Seville. The danger was considered so imminent, that they had deliberated concerning their removal; and the Junta of Seville, who had been consulted, proposed that if such a measure were adopted, absolute power should be left in their hands. But the government did nothing precipitately, and on no occasion throughout the war did it display more magnanimity or so much energy as at this time of trial. The same day brought them tidings of the defeat at Ciudad Real and of that at Medellin; the same gazette communicated both to the people. There was nothing to qualify the disgrace and loss which Cartaojal had sustained; he was therefore quietly removed from the command. Whatever errors the Central Junta may have committed, no other government ever exercised its power with such humanity in such times, no other government ever made such just and humane allowances for inexperience and weakness, nor dealt so generously with the unfortunate. They decreed pensions to the widows and orphans of all who had fallen at Medellin, in proportion to their rank and circumstances, and a badge of distinction to those corps which the General should commend; and they promoted all the officers who had distinguished themselves. They pronounced that the General and the body of the army had deserved well of their country. Knowing that Cuesta had been lamed by his fall, they required him in all his dispatches to report the state of his own health; and though they appointed D. Francisco de Venegas to succeed Cartaojal, they placed both armies under Cuesta’s orders, giving him the rank of Captain-general. In the preamble to this decree they said that all the details of the battle tended to console them for its loss, and that the spirit of Hernan Cortes might have beheld with joy the courage which his countrymen had manifested upon the scene of his childhood. The example of that day, they said, might make them hope that with perseverance they might form an infantry capable of defending the national independence; an infantry that should be the worthy rival and successor of those famous _Tercios_ which under the best captains in the world had supported the glory of Spain in Flanders and in Italy and in Germany. ♦THEIR APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE.♦