It was a victory for Isabel that presaged the great minister’s fall; for Olivares dared not leave his master’s side, and the Queen remained in the capital as Regent. Every device was adopted to delay the King’s progress. Money was wanted, and when that had been extorted, in many cases by imprisonment,[227] the lavish and pompous preparations for the journey were endless. Nine state coaches and six litters, a hundred and three saddle horses, with crowds of courtiers, were considered necessary for a campaign; and every grandee and titled nobleman in Spain was warned that he must join the royal train. When, at last, after visits to numberless altars, Philip took leave of his wife at Vacia Madrid in April 1642, it was only to be delayed on the way for many weeks in ostentatious feasts, hunting parties and frivolities, before he at length arrived at Saragossa. By that time Aragon itself was half overrun by the French, and Philip, fully awake now to the terrible condition of affairs, grew ever more gloomy with his minister, who even now found means to keep the King isolated at Saragossa, miles away from the hostilities, in discounted inaction. In the meanwhile Isabel in Madrid, free from the terrifying presence of the favourite, organised the party of his opponents. She had always been a favourite with the crowd for her popular manners, but now she won their hearts completely; for they knew she was against the man upon whose back they laid all their woes. She visited the guards and barracks, mustered the regiments in the capital and addressed to them harangues, exciting their loyalty to the King and Spain. Once more she sacrificed her ornaments, devoted herself to the comfort of the soldiers, raised a new regiment at her own expense in her son’s name, presided over the Councils, and infused more activity and enthusiasm in the administration than had been seen for years. Isabel of Bourbon had seized her opportunity. Up to that time she had been simply an appanage of the splendours of the idle King; now, with the power of a Regent and the favour of the people, she became the strongest personality in Spain. Her letters to the King were vigorous and brave; and he thenceforward treated her with greater consideration, as if up to that time he had never realised that his wife was a woman of talent and spirit. Philip was kept idle at Saragossa, away from his army and his nobles for months. Once he acted on his own initiative and appointed a new commander-in-chief, the Marquis of Leganés, a kinsman of Olivares; but the appointment was unfortunate. At the first engagement afterwards Philip’s army was utterly routed before Lerida; and as winter approached, with a badly fed, unpaid dwindling force, quarrelling generals, and his best provinces held by France, Philip returned to Madrid with an aching heart at the end of the year 1642.