Soult had now little time to deliberate, for Penne Villemur and Morillo, issuing out of Portugal with four thousand men, had crossed the Lower Guadiana, and seized San Lucar de Mayor on the 4th. This place was ten miles from Seville, which was only garrisoned by a Spanish Swiss battalion in Joseph’s service, aided by “_Escopeteros_” and by the sick and convalescent men; the commandant Rignoux had therefore, after a skirmish, shut himself up in fortified convents. The 6th the Spaniards had occupied the heights in front of the Triana bridge, and the 7th attacked the French entrenchments, hoping to raise a popular commotion. But a worse danger was gathering on the other side, for Ballesteros, after the defeat of Maransin, at Cartama, had advanced with eleven thousand men intending to fall on Seville from the left of the Guadalquivir. To distract the attention of the French, and to keep Laval from detaching troops to Seville, the Spanish general had sent Copons with four thousand men by Itar to Junquera, which is on the Malaga side of the Ronda; meanwhile he himself entered Los Barios with the rest of his army and thus threatened at once Grenada and the lines of Chiclana. At the same time all the smaller partidas of the Ronda were let loose in different directions, to cut the communications, to seize the small French magazines, and to collect the Spanish soldiers, who, at different periods, had quitted their colours and retired to their homes. Copons remained at Junquera, but Ballesteros with three divisions commanded by Cruz Murgeon, the marquis de Las Cuevas, and the prince of Anglona, marched to Utrera as soon as Soult had departed from Seville; thus the communication of that city with Cadiz on one side, and with Malaga and Grenada on the other, was cut off. The situation of the French was very critical, and they wanted ammunition, because a large convoy, coming from Madrid, with an escort of twelve hundred men, was stopped in the Morena by the Partidas from the Ronda and from Murcia. On the 6th the Spanish cavalry was within a few miles of Seville, when false information adroitly given by a Spaniard in the French interest, led Ballesteros to believe that Soult was close at hand, whereupon he immediately returned to the Ronda; the next day Penne Villemur having received notice from lord Wellington that the French would soon return, also retired to Gibraleon.