Don Luis de Haro already did most of the work of the State, and Philip grew still more idle after the death of his son, one of the results of his indolence being a weakening of the struggle he had fought for four years against the temptations of the flesh. Sor Maria from her convent took him to task somewhat seriously for his remissness, and for the first time Philip defended himself with some spirit[[23]] with regard to his dependence upon others. He was anxious to do right, he assured her; but his great predecessors and all other monarchs had been obliged to employ ministers, and he did not think he could be doing wrong in following their example. One man cannot, he says, look into the execution of all his commands, and must trust to others; "for it does not accord with the dignity of a monarch to go from one office to the other to see personally that his decrees are being properly carried out." When he first came to the throne, he reminds the nun, he was only sixteen, and, quite naturally in his inexperience, depended upon a man of more knowledge than himself. Where he had erred was in keeping that minister supreme too long. Since he dismissed Olivares he had tried to avoid having a favourite; and the minister who people now say does everything was brought up with him as a boy, and has always been irreproachable; but even so, he (Philip) had always refused to give him the post of sole minister, and he only does what the King cannot do, namely, look after the raising of funds, and hear the opinions of people with whom the King cannot discourse. "I, Sor Maria," he wrote, "do not shirk any labour, for, as anyone can tell you, I am here seated in this chair continually with my papers before me and my pen in my hand, dealing with all the reports that are sent to me here, and with the despatches from abroad; resolving points in question immediately, and trying to adopt the most proper decision in each case."
The nun even took upon herself, as the winter wore on, to tell the King that it was high time to arrange the new campaign, and follow up the brilliant defence of Lerida which had ended in the defeat of the French under Condé himself. The Aragonese thought so too, for the troops there refused to move for a time unless Philip would come to Saragossa, as in previous years, to direct the campaign personally.
Philip betrothed again
The nun could hardly speak very clearly in reprehension of the King's moral backsliding, although her hints even in this respect are pretty broad. But his confessor and the other friars around him did not hesitate to do so; and people other than friars were saying that with no heir to the crown the King must marry again. So long as Baltasar Carlos lived, Philip had gently put aside these suggestions by saying that his hopes were centred in his son; but when after his heir's death his excesses in the intervals of his poignant contrition shocked the devotees of his Court, and they added their censure to the pressure of the laymen for another Queen-Consort, Philip consented, though without enthusiasm, to marry again. He was only forty-two, but anxiety and dissipation had aged him, and he was approaching the years when most of his ancestors had developed the peculiar strain of mystic devotion that borders upon madness, but his people clamoured for a male heir, for the Infanta Maria Teresa was only eight, and Don Juan of Austria, popular as he was, was impossible as King. In the letter which Philip wrote to the nun, on the 9th January 1647, he says: "I have received a letter from the Emperor condoling with me for the loss of my son, and at the same time offering my niece to be my wife. As this agrees with my own feelings, I think I may decide to accept this marriage, which is doubtless the most fitting one for me; so I hope that our Lord will help this with His powerful hand, so that the business may tend to His service, and to that of my own country"; and a few weeks afterwards he conveyed to her the intelligence that the match has been arranged.
Mariana was as yet a child, and the daughter of Philip's sister Maria. That such a companion can have been really congenial to him it is difficult to believe, but his subjects needed an heir. The unhappy tradition that imposed upon Spain the belief in its duty to dictate orthodoxy to the world was not yet dead, and the solidarity of the house of Austria was a first condition for its success. Spain had already paid dearly for such Austrian help as she had obtained, and the price now given for the further union was a high one indeed; for by this dire incestuous union of Philip and his niece the consummation of his country's ruin and the extinction of his dynasty was wrought. What for the time being was worst of all was, that the support of Austria in the wars that were finally to exhaust Spain was withdrawn even before the marriage took place.
The treaty of Münster
For three years the representatives of the Powers of Europe, invited by the Emperor, had been laboriously discussing terms for a general pacification at Osnabrück and Münster. Philip wrote to the nun that the French demands were so insolent that it was clear that they did not want peace;[[24]] but the Hollanders were more inclined to an accommodation, for they had grown suspicious of the ultimate designs of Mazarin. After interminable intrigues and self-seeking, however, an arrangement was arrived at which practically ended the Thirty Years War; and Spain, beaten to her knees, still burdened with war in Catalonia, on the Portuguese border, and in Flanders, with her kingdom of Naples in full revolt, was obliged to accept, at last, what the world had seen to be inevitable for many years past, the recognition of Protestant Holland as an independent Power. For nearly a hundred years the war with her Protestant former dependency had dragged Spain down, and made her an easy prey to the French, and at last from the sheer impotence of Spain to struggle longer the Treaty of Münster (October 1648) was signed by her, which made Holland free and gave Alsace to France. The central European Powers were satisfied, the religious compromise was ratified, there was nothing more for the Emperor to fight for, and he retired from the war with France, leaving Philip to fight her enemy alone. The long dream of Spain's supremacy over an orthodox Catholic Europe was indeed dissipated at last; she had now to fight for the integrity of her own soil and her continued existence as a great nation, and in this hard strait the empire deserted her.
All through the year 1647, Philip remained in Madrid, whilst the wars in Flanders and Catalonia, as well as on the Portuguese frontier, dragged on with various fortunes, but on the whole not disastrously for Spain. The great revolt of Massaniello in Naples for a time threatened Philip with the loss of the kingdom; when the happy thought came to him of sending his brilliant young son, Don Juan, thither as his Commander-in-chief. He arrived at a time when Guise, the French pretender to the Neapolitan crown, had disgusted the fickle populace which had formerly acclaimed him, and by a fortunate coup de main Don Juan recaptured the city for his father in February 1648, to the joy of most of the inhabitants, who were tired of the anarchy which had lasted for a year. The exploit raised the popularity of the young Prince almost as high as that of his famous namesake after Lepanto, and the rejoicings in Madrid to celebrate the victory made the capital for a time seem its old self again.
But though the lieges might still enjoy their brilliant shows as of yore, Philip himself had become introspective and gloomy; and he attended the bull-fights and parades with sad, weary face. He wrote weekly to the nun deploring his frailty, and beseeching her intercession; but it is clear that he had thrown over most of his good resolutions, for Don Luis de Haro was as necessary to him as Olivares had been; and the fragile beauties of the capital found in him again as ardent an admirer as ever.[[25]] The departure of the bride who was to rescue him from his evil life was long delayed for want of money, both on the part of her father the Emperor, and of Philip;[[26]] and, notwithstanding the King's saintly contrition after his faults, the talk of his loose and idle life began to make him personally unpopular with many, who thought that his place was with his army in Catalonia rather than in the Retiro sunk in slothful pleasures.[[27]]