In the meanwhile the never-ending trivial show of Madrid went on. The idlers still paraded up and down the Calle Mayor or gossiped on Liars' Walk for the greater part of the day. Philip issued ferocious but ineffective pragmatics against extravagance in dress and household appointments;[[26]] both the public playhouses were filled, and the comedies applauded by eager crowds as usual. But, on the other hand, famine had laid its grisly hand everywhere on the arid lands of Castile, the excise had been increased until even in the capital itself starvation was not a threat but a reality; the ecclesiastical revenues were drained as they had never been drained before, and salaries, pensions, and State debts were either not paid at all or else ruinously curtailed. In Madrid, penury was now evident even amongst the better classes;[[27]] and Philip, who always lived frugally in his own person, was obliged to write to his brother Fernando, begging him to save to the utmost: not to allow his household to wear other than plain cloth, and not to spend a ducat unnecessarily.

Spanish troops were fighting under the Infante for the preservation of Flanders, in Germany, in Italy, in the Valtelline, wherever the enemies of the faith or the allies of Richelieu defied the Spanish claims; and yet it never entered the head, apparently, either of Olivares or his master, that these terrible sacrifices were useless to Spain; except that it was a point of honour to hold the Catholic States of Flanders that had been the ancient inheritance of its royal house. Holland was really lost beyond all recovery, though the stiff-necked pride of Castile would not acknowledge it; the religious question in Germany had already practically settled itself, and had left Spain hardly an excuse for fighting for orthodoxy there. All that was needed, even now, for Spain was to eat her unavoidable leek, to recognise facts patent to all the world, and to abandon her impossible pretensions; and peace with France and Holland might have been attained with ease. But through all the suffering and stress, that if continued meant national exhaustion, there was no indication anywhere of the conviction that Spain must voluntarily humble herself or bleed to death.

Court diversions

The process of social decadence had gone on apace, as was inevitable in such circumstances. scandals were of constant occurrence. At the end of 1635, when the grave matters referred to were under discussion, two nobles, the Marquis del Aguila and Don Juan de Herrera, came to blows with each other in the theatre of the Buen Retiro Palace, in the presence of the King himself;[[28]] and whilst they fled from justice, a greater noble still, the Count of Sastago, Captain of the King's Guard, was accused of inciting them to the disturbance. As was invariably the case, no sooner was one offence mentioned than a dozen were added to it. The Count, it was said, had sold the sergeancy of the guard for 1100 ducats; the provedor of the guard paid him fifty reals every day, filched from the mess bill; he ill-treated his wife, ... and much else of the same sort; and as soon as Count de Sastago was under lock and key for these offences, no less than three other noble Counts were competing and quarrelling with each other for his place as Captain of the Guard;[[29]] whilst, a few days afterwards, Zapata, the Lieutenant of the Guard, was carried to prison for making a disturbance at the entrance of the palace, and breaking down the barriers to get in, against the royal orders, whilst Prince Baltasar Carlos was coming out.

On New Year's Eve 1636, we are told, "their Majesties went to dine at the Buen Retiro, where there was in the afternoon a sort of comedy or festival never seen before in Spain. First there appeared the poet Atillano, who has come from the Indies, and who may justly be called a prodigy of the world, as he proved himself to be on this occasion; for such is his poetic rage, that he utters a perfect torrent of Castilian verse on any subject proposed to him,[[30]] and, withal, in very remarkable style, with much taste and adornments from the Scriptures and classical authors, brought in most aptly, with comparisons, emphasis, digressions, and poetic figures, which strike his hearers with astonishment, many believing that it can only be done by devilish arts, for he never drops a foot or forgets a syllable.... After Atillano came Cristobal, the blind man, well known at Court; and he also showed his skill in turning out couplets impromptu, with his usual prettiness and propriety, and quite in courtier-like fashion. But as he lacks erudition, and the other man possesses much, you may well imagine the difference between them. After the poets came Calabaza, the dwarfs, the little negro, and the girls they call the Count's wrigglers;[[31]] and they represented their figures and played a hundred monkey tricks to raise a laugh. Afterwards the party ended by a ball and masquerade. It was very good and diverting; and my lady Countess of Olivares gave the collation to their Majesties."

Progress of the war

The year thus fittingly begun in the Court was signalised by the Cardinal Infante Fernando in Flanders and France by military capacity which recalled the great days of the Emperor a hundred years before. The French and Dutch allies were already suspicious of each other, and were not co-operating cordially; so that Fernando had been able to wear out the resistance of the French without a general engagement, and whilst they, disorganised and decimated with famine and disease, retreated into France, the Infante overran Picardy and Champagne. He pushed his advance beyond the Somme and to the banks of the Oise, threatening Paris itself, and elated Olivares planned a simultaneous invasion of France under the Admiral of Castile, and yet another from the side of Germany over the frontier of Burgundy. The only one of these attacks that came to anything was that of the Cardinal Infante; but even he, either from want of resources or lack of boldness, lagged on the line of the Somme and Oise until the French had recovered from their panic. Orange was also marching to aid his ally, and Paris had raised a great army of citizens to resist further attack; and early in 1637 the Spaniards, under the Cardinal Infante, had retreated into Flanders again, forced once more to stand on the defensive. But the net result of the temporary display of Spanish vigour had been to free the Catalonian frontier from imminent fears from the French, and Philip had found no excuse for insisting further upon his desire to place himself in command of his troops in Barcelona.

A perusal of the gossiping newsletters of the times, though, of course, much that they record is merely trivial, throws a lurid light upon the utterly lawless condition of the capital at this grave juncture, when the nation was supposed to be straining every nerve to prevent humiliation at the hands of its implacable enemy. It would be profitless to give details of all, or of any large number, of the scandals mentioned by the chroniclers from day to day; but as a specimen a few entries belonging to this year 1636 will give an idea of the state of affairs in Philip's Court at the time. In January, Don Antonio Oquendo, the famous naval commander, was at Mass in the church of Buen Suceso,[[32]] when a challenge to immediate combat was brought from the rival admiral Nicholas Spinola. Oquendo just gave himself time to confess, and then met his opponent, both being mounted and armed with knives. One of the combatants was wounded before the passers-by could interfere, and the other fled to hiding.[[33]]

A turbulent capital

A day or two later, proclamation was made in the streets that the King ordered all the Portuguese murderers in Madrid to leave within a week, or they would be apprehended and sent before the judges, who Were considering their cases. "The intention of this," sapiently says the chronicler, "appears to be that they may thus be forced to enlist as soldiers, and the pragmatic with regard to the number of lackeys allowed had a similar object." At the same time a scandalous quarrel was going on between the officers of the Inquisition and the alcaldes of the Court, or judges of first instance, on some trivial point of etiquette, but which ended in wholesale excommunication of all the alcaldes in a body, and several inferior officers on both sides being condemned and imprisoned by the rival authorities. In the summer another panic occurred in the Church of St. Philip and on Liars' Walk, because a heretic shouted some sacrilegious words in the church; and soon afterwards an offended soldier murdered by a pistol shot a gentleman named Bilbao on the steps leading to the crowded atrium of the church, the most frequented spot in Madrid.