In the summer of 1638, Richelieu was ready to strike his blow on Spanish soil. Crossing the river Bidasoa at St. Jean de Luz, a French army rapidly captured Irun and the fine harbour of Pasages, and laid siege to Fuenterrabia both by sea and by land. The Prince of Condé (Henri de Bourbon) and the Duke de la Valette were in command on land, and the Bishop of Bordeaux at sea. An attempt was made by the French to storm the hill upon which the fortress stands, but the Admiral of Castile and the Marquis of los Velez, with 6000 men from Navarre and Guipuzcoa, eager to fight for their own provinces, came opportunely upon the scene. A dashing charge threw panic into the French camp, and the besiegers fled headlong to their boats. Spaniards were always ready enough to fight when well led, and they were fighting for their own provincial frontiers; and though La Valette was accused by Richelieu of treachery, and condemned to death in his absence in England, whither he had fled to join Marie de Medici, his men on this occasion were fairly beaten by Spanish soldiers, who were irresistible when they were defending their own provinces.
The French repelled
The same thing was seen in Catalonia in the following spring, where, counting upon the notorious disaffection of the Catalans with Olivares' policy, Condé in the spring of 1639 invaded Roussillon, which then belonged to Catalonia, and captured Salcés. Peremptory demands for help came to Madrid, but Olivares was in no hurry to help the Catalans, and preferred that their own impotence to defend their country without the aid of Castile should be first demonstrated. The provincial authorities were stout and determined, and rapidly raised an army of 10,000 men. But the Catalans had no leader yet worthy of the name; and, though they fought bravely, they fought for a time in vain. They were badly and timidly led; and 8000 of them died of the plague before Salcés, in which fortress the French were shut up. Condé, late in the autumn, came back from Provence with a new French army of 20,000 foot and 4000 horse to reinforce the French; and though the case seemed hopeless, the Catalans, ever a dour race, determined to stand and fight them. Full of confidence, the French army stormed the trenches of the besieging Catalans on the 1st November. But the ditches and moats were swollen by autumn rains, and regiment after regiment rushed to the attack, only to be repelled with terrible loss by the stout Catalans, behind their earthworks and gabions. Discouragement at last seized the French, and they fled, leaving the Catalans masters of the field, and Salcés unrelieved. The fortress surrendered to famine at the beginning of the year 1640, and the second attempt of Richelieu to invade Spain failed. Nor were the attempts upon the Catalan coasts by the French fleet under the Bishop of Bordeaux more successful; for, after some depredations and the temporary occupation of Spanish ports, the French fleet was scattered by a storm and returned disabled to France. Once more it was proved that Spaniards were indomitable when they were fighting for a deep-seated sentiment. The deepest of all was local loyalty. Whilst the sentiment of religious selection had been dominant it had given Spaniards a strength not their own; but that burning faith was ashes now,[[22]] and the only thing worth fighting for, beyond the inborn love of contest, was the independence of the province that gave them birth, and for this, rather than for a Spain that for most of them was but a geographical expression, Spaniards were still ready to sacrifice their lives without stint.
It was a wretched story that King Philip had to tell the Cortes of Castile that were assembled in Madrid in the summer of 1638. His treasury, he said, was more empty than ever; "for he had been obliged by his duty to oppose all the heretics in Europe in defence of the Catholic religion, as well as the enemies of his house in Italy, Germany, Flanders, and Brazil, and a greater war was now on his hands than had afflicted Spain since the time of Charles V. And although peace had been discussed through various channels, as yet unsuccessfully, the surest way to attain tranquillity was to arm more powerfully than ever, and strike their enemies with dismay." Seventy two millions and a half of ducats had been raised by loans at 8 per cent. interest, and spent in the previous six years on war, in addition to two millions and a quarter for the army in Spain itself. This was an expenditure unheard of previously in Spain, and it meant that a sum greater than ever was demanded now of Castile in the form of an enormous addition to the food excise, and an increase of the alcabala. The country was depopulated and starving, said the deputies;[[23]] but withal the duty of his Majesty as a Christian prince was clear, and, no matter at what sacrifice, the means for fighting the battle of the Church and Spain must be found by his faithful vassals.
And so, through 1638 and 1639, as has already been told, the war went on, not on the whole unfavourably for Spanish arms, for the French invasion, at least, was repelled; but more disastrously than ever, for the overtaxed and ruined people upon whom the crushing burden lay of providing funds. Talk of peace went on in Madrid all the while. A secret agent of Richelieu named Pujol was in close though cautious negotiation with Olivares for three years, both ministers professing ardent desires for an agreement. But it was clear that neither was disposed to give way an inch in his claims, and again and again the Spanish agents declared that on no account would they recognise the Dutch otherwise than as recalcitrant rebels against their King. In the circumstances, therefore, peace was impossible; for Holland had not held her own for seventy years to bow the head now, and in the summer of 1640 the internal storm which had long been gathering burst upon Spain, not, we may be sure, to Richelieu's surprise, and all hope for peace fled.
Rebellion in Spain
The fatal burden of Philip's inherited task, and the traditions imposed at his baptism, had led him to embark in impossible wars for an idea; the need for money to support a policy of Quixotic adventure had drained Castile; and the unhappy insistence of Olivares in exacting from the autonomous realms a similar sacrifice, had at last sapped their loyalty to the sacred personality of the sovereign. Philip, in the prime of his manhood, after nineteen years of rule, found himself face to face with rebellion of his own people, as well as with a great war abroad; whilst the centre of his realm, whither all wealth flowed and whence all power emanated, was sunk in pagan epicureanism, pride, pretence, and sloth.
In earlier chapters we have seen that on both the occasions that Philip had personally attended the Cortes of the eastern realms, he, and especially Olivares, had quarrelled bitterly with the deputies, and had returned to Madrid in anger, leaving a rankling discontent behind. Olivares since then had lost no opportunity of dealing hardly with Catalans particularly,—their causes in Madrid being treated with ostentatious neglect, and their interests passed over, in order, as Olivares said, to teach them the lesson of obedience; whilst the Catalans, whose qualities certainly do not include submissiveness, repaid this treatment by passively resisting the orders that came to them from the Court. When Roussillon was invaded by the French in the autumn of 1639, Olivares had been slow to send succour from Castile. As we have seen, the drain for the foreign war was tremendous, and both money and men were scarce, even if Olivares had desired to send prompt aid. But such was not the case; and the main efforts by which the French were expelled and Salcés captured were those of the Catalans themselves. The Viceroy was Queralt, Marquis of Santa Coloma, who, although a Catalan, was devoted heart and soul to Olivares, and had been chosen as a more pliant instrument for the minister than his dignified predecessor, the Duke of Cardona.
To Santa Coloma, whilst the Catalans were straining every nerve to defend their principality from the French, Olivares and the King continued to send messages calculated to arouse the deepest resentment of the people.
"Do not," wrote Olivares, "suffer a single man who can work to absent himself from the field, nor a woman who can bear on her back food or forage.... If the enterprise can be effected without violating the privileges of the province, well and good, but if in order to respect these the service of the King is retarded by one single hour, he who dares to uphold them at such a cost will be an enemy to God, his King, his race, and his country.... Make the Catalans understand that the general welfare of the people and of the troops must be preferred to all rights and privileges.... You must take great care that the troops are well lodged and have good beds; and if there are none to be had, you must not hesitate to take them from the highest people in the province; for it is better that they should lie on the ground than that the troops should suffer."