Instead of twelve
hundred desperadoes, they consisted of about twenty poor lame
ragged wretches, many of them boys from fourteen to sixteen years
of age. They were evidently camp followers, who, unable to keep up
with the army, had been picked up straggling in the plains and
amongst the hills.
It subsequently appeared that no battle had occurred, and that the
death of Gomez was a fiction. The grand defect of Gomez consisted
in not knowing how to take advantage of circumstances: after
defeating Lopez, he might have marched to Madrid and proclaimed Don
Carlos there, and after sacking Cordova he might have captured
Seville.
There were several booksellers' shops at Seville, in two of which I
found copies of the New Testament in Spanish, which had been
obtained from Gibraltar about two years before, since which time
six copies had been sold in one shop and four in the other. The
person who generally accompanied me in my walks about the town and
the neighbourhood, was an elderly Genoese, who officiated as a kind
of valet de place in the Posada del Turco, where I had taken up my
residence. On learning from me that it was my intention to bring
out an edition of the New Testament at Madrid, he observed that
copies of the work might be extensively circulated in Andalusia.
"I have been accustomed to bookselling," he continued, "and at one
time possessed a small shop of my own in this place.
