While Padilla was being worshipped as a popular idol at Valladolid, jealousy and disunion were working against him at Toledo. Great men had joined the people and Padilla, the Duke of Infantado, the Marquis of Villena, Juan de Avila, and many prelates and knights. They had imprisoned the King's messengers and ministers in the Chapel of St Blas, and forced the governor to swear fealty to the _Commindad_. The mayor defending the Bridge of St Martin had fallen, and the Silvas, guarding the Alcázar against 4000 men, were forced to evacuate when the insurgents burnt down the gates and walls, and were masters of all the fortifications. They made canons of the church bells, stopped up every entrance by the river, and defied the Imperial army. Such a proud and congenial hour for Toledo. All the citizens went about puffed up with glory and addressed one another as "Brutus," swaggering abroad, and ready to ring the bells as soon as word came from Tordesillas that the queen had signed.[12] Padilla hurried back, hearing his wife was ill, and in his absence the Imperial army sacked Tordesillas. Jealousy as usual had weakened the force of the Comuneros, though Padilla's gallant presence impelled them to some brilliant skirmishing. But their fate was sealed at Villalar, where the Conde de Haro defeated them, and took prisoners to the Castle of Villalar, the infamous Ulloa's property, three noble gentlemen of old Castille, Padilla, Maldonado and Bravo, whose names are writ upon the walls of the parliament house of Madrid, and printed large upon the hideous page of Charles Quint's early reign. Padilla's noble letters of farewell to his wife, Maria de Pacheco, and to Toledo, may be seen in the archives of Simancas, letters full of stately sentiment, of dignified tenderness and virile pathos. History proudly records his rebuke to Bravo's last lament as they walked to the gallows: "Señor Juan Bravo, yesterday it befitted us to fight like cavaliers; to-day it befits us to die like Christians." Their heads were exposed over the gates of Toledo, and then flung into the river.