The Count Tilly, a titled Andalusian gentleman, of some talents, unbounded ambition, and no principle, had, on the first appearance of a general disposition to resist the French, employed himself in the organization of the intended revolt. His principal agents were men of low rank, highly endowed with the characteristic shrewdness, quickness, and loquacity of that class of Andalusians, and thereby admirably fitted to appear at the head of the populace. Tilly, however, either from the maxim that a successful revolution must be cemented with blood--a notion which the French Jacobins have too widely spread among us--or, what is more probable, from private motives of revenge, had made the death of the Count del Aguila an essential part of his plan. That unfortunate man was a member of the town corporation of Seville, and as such he joined the established authorities in their endeavours to stop the popular ferment. But no sooner had the insurrection burst out, than both he and his colleagues made the most absolute surrender of themselves and their power into the hands of the people. This, however, was not enough to save the victim whom Tilly had doomed to fall. One of the inferior leaders of the populace, one Luque, an usher at a grammar-school, had engaged to procure the death of the Count del Aguila. Assisted by his armed associates, he dragged the unhappy man to the prison-room for noblemen, or Hidalgos, which stands over one of the gates of the town; and, deaf to his intreaties, the vile assassin had him shot on the spot. The corpse, bound to the arm chair, in which the Count expired, was exposed for that and the next day to the public. The ruffian who performed the atrocious deed, was instantly raised to the rank of lieutenant in the army. Tilly himself is one of the Junta; and so selfish and narrow are the views which prevail in that body, that, if the concentration of the now disjointed power of the provinces should happen, the members, it is said, will rid themselves of his presence, by sending a man they fear and detest, to take a share in the supreme authority of the kingdom.[55] [55] This was actually the case at the creation of the Central Junta. The effects of the revolutionary success on a people at large, like those of slight intoxication on the individual, call forth every good and bad quality in a state of exaggeration. To an acute but indifferent observer, Seville, as we found it on our return, would have been a most interesting study. He could not but admire the patriotic energy of the inhabitants, their unbounded devotion to the cause of their country, and the wonderful effort by which, in spite of their passive habits of submission, they had ventured to dare both the authority of their rulers, and the approaching bayonets of the French. He must, however, have looked with pity on the multiplied instances of ignorance and superstition which the extraordinary circumstances of the country had produced.