The great Spanish monarchy, almost the master of the world, had, in the century before, firmly established itself over the whole Peninsula, suppressing local liberties, centralizing, despotic. Against that awful monarchy, against its symbol, the angry Catalans had risen; and, supporting that rising in the enormous duel between the house of Spain and the house of France, Richelieu had permitted the rebels to elect his master their Count. On January 23, 1641, following upon treaties of alliance between the Catalan rebels and the French Crown, Louis XIII. was admitted Count of Barcelona, monarch of all that country on either side of the hills. But the game which Richelieu played had not Barcelona for its stakes; he was gambling for the Roussillon only, and for Perpignan. All the strength of Castille, all the men Spain could spare from the universal war, were poured into the defence of Perpignan, and La Rena was sent as governor to hold that northern bastion, and prevent the French advance to the Pyrenees. The town lies sloping downwards westward from its citadel. It stands in a sheet of vineyards; a plain having to the east, solemnly dominating it, all the huge mass of the Canigou. La Rena held it strongly. He would quarter his soldiers upon the townsmen. They resisted. He turned his guns from the citadel upon the burghers, and they surrendered, but not before nearly six hundred of their houses had been ruined by the fire. They had attempted a truce; the bishop had gone up to the citadel with the Sacrament in a procession. They obtained no truce; goods were looted, gallows were raised in the market-place, and Olivares, the great minister of the Spanish king, was supreme. So Perpignan was held in that summer of 1641 for Spain. The plain around was flooded with the French. South, north, east, west of the city their eight thousand infantry, their two regiments of cavalry, garrisoned the villages and towns, until at last, by the end of the year, Perpignan itself was blockaded, and before any siege lines were formed a famine had begun. In that winter, in the January of 1642, the struggle opened between the two powers. Brézé, coming to Catalonia as the Viceroy of Louis XIII., sat down before Perpignan; but he could not quite cut off relief--some wheat got in before the end of the month. From Castille no further troops could come in relief. Still the French flooded on, La Meilleraye at their head; and with him, second in command, a name that was to be more than famous--Turenne. By April the last of the small desperate Spanish garrisons in the neighbourhood of Collioure had surrendered, but Perpignan still held.