Philip was still rejoicing over the capture of the important city of Lerida at the middle of August 1644, and the relief of Tarragona in September, when ill news came to him of his wife's health. She had, it seems, on the 28th September suffered some sort of choleraic attack with erysipelas. Messengers were sent to the King, whilst the doctors, as was their wont, bled the patient copiously until they had left her bloodless, though with symptoms which now would be recognised at once as those of diphtheria. Then, in their desperation, the dead body of St. Isidore the Husbandman and the sainted image of the Atocha were brought to the palace; though the dying woman protested that she was unworthy to have them brought to her bedside. But the inflammation of the throat increased, notwithstanding all the charms of the Church and the prayers of young Baltasar Carlos, who was devotedly attached to his mother. There was no church nor convent in Madrid that did not bring out in procession its crucifixes and most sacred images in Prayer for the Queen's restoration to health, and the fervent prayers of a whole people went up in rogation that her life might be spared.
Death of the Queen
On the 5th October the Queen tried to make a new will, but she was too weak to sign it, and only left verbal testamentary instructions before witnesses for the King to be informed of her wishes. At noon that day she sent for a fleur de lys which formed one of the ornaments of the crown, and in which there was a fragment of the true Cross. This she worshipped fervently, and her two children, Baltasar Carlos and Maria Teresa, were brought to her; but she would not suffer them to approach her for fear of infection, though she blessed them fervently from a distance. "There are plenty of Queens for Spain," she sighed; "but Princes and Princesses are rare." The next day, at a quarter past four in the afternoon, stout-hearted loyal Isabel of Bourbon breathed her last, aged 41. Garbed as a Franciscan nun, the body of the Queen was borne to the Convent of Discalced Carmelites, where she had so often prayed and diverted herself;[[16]] and thence soon afterwards it was carried back again to the palace in grand coffins of lead and brocade, to lie in state with flaring torches and all the pomp and circumstances of royal mourning. "Isabels always bring happiness to Spain," shouted the crowd that adored her, after the fall of Olivares. She, poor soul, had brought happiness neither to Spain nor to France, though she did her best and was truly mourned. She had always been devoutly Catholic; and since the commencement of the war she had grown stronger in her devotion, and in her determination to reform the scandalous licence of the Court.[[17]] Frenchwoman though she was, no breath of suspicion of her loyalty to her husband's people had ever been heard during all the years of war with her brother's realm.
Philip's grief
Philip hastened home as fast as relays of mules would carry him. At Maranchon, about fifty miles from Madrid, where the King had alighted to dine at a wretched venta, the courier bringing the news of the Queen's death met him. The ministers and courtiers around the King, knowing how he loved his wife, avoided telling him the evil tidings at first; for the anxiety and fatigue of the voyage had told upon him, "and he had only just dined." But a few miles farther on, at Almadrones, the news was broken to him in his carriage by the Marquis of Carpio and his son, the favourite Haro, and the bereaved King begged to be left alone with his grief. Turning aside from Madrid, now a city of mourning for him, Philip retired to the Pardo, where, with his son Baltasar—all that was left to him now, for Maria Teresa was but a child—for a few days he indulged his sorrow in private. Thence he went for the official mourning in the old apartment at San Geronimo; whilst, with the gloomy pomp traditional in Spain, the body of the Queen was carried at dead of night across the bleak Castilian plain, with hundreds of monks and nobles following, to the gorgeous new jasper pantheon at the Escorial reserved for Kings and mothers of Kings, which, from very dread, Isabel had never dared to enter in her lifetime.[[18]]
Three days after the Queen died her wraith appeared, it is said, before the nun of Agreda, asking for the prayers of the godly to liberate her from purgatory for the vain splendour of her attire during her life.[[19]] Philip himself was overwhelmed at his loss, and the nun wrote to him exhortations to resignation and patience; but it was a month before he could gather sufficient courage to reply: his grief, as he says, and the many calls upon him having prevented him from doing it before. "I find myself in the most oppressed state of sorrow possible," he wrote, "for I have lost in one person everything that can be lost in this world; and if I did not know, according to the faith that I profess, that the Lord disposes for us what is best, I do not know what would become of me."
The following spring again saw Philip in the field in Aragon. Things were going badly with him now, and he was again losing heart. To the nun he wrote on the 25th March 1645—
"Your letter indeed arrived at a good time; for the cares that surround me had much afflicted me, and your words have encouraged me. I now trust that God in His mercy, looking to all Christendom, and to these realms, which are so pure in their Catholic faith, will not allow us to be ruined utterly, but will shield and defend them, and grant us a good peace. Short are the human resources with which I have returned hither; and what appals me most is to see that my faults alone are sufficient to provoke the ire of our Lord, and to bring upon me greater punishments than before. But the greater the punishment, the greater will be my appeal to faith and hope, as you say; and I will continually supplicate our Lord to supply with His almighty hand what we need. I for my part will do all I can, trying not to displease Him, and to comply with the obligations He has placed upon me, even though in doing so I risk my own life. I have not hesitated to give up the comforts of my home, in order to attend personally to the defence of these realms: for, whilst I thus fulfil this duty, I trust our Lord will not fail me; but in any extremity I submit to His holy will. I have wished for the Prince to begin to learn what will fall upon him after my days are done; and so, though alone, I have brought him with me, and have confided his health to the hands of God, trusting in His mercy to guard him, and to guide all his actions to His greater service."[[20]]
The campaign brought reverse after reverse to Philip. Jealousy had lost him the services of Silva, his best General; and the new French Viceroy of Catalonia, Count de Harcourt, scattered the Spaniards at Balaguer, and all Catalonia and most of Aragon lay at his mercy, if he had been sure of the loyalty of the Catalans, who, truth to say, were getting somewhat disappointed and tired of their French masters.
War in Catalonia