Philip was deeply moved, though he said nothing; but as he left his wife’s chamber, he was confronted in the corridor by the kneeling figure of his beloved foster-mother, Anna de Guevara. She, too, formed her impeachment of Olivares in impassioned words, and Philip could only reply, ‘You have spoken the truth.’ Then for two hours the Queen and the Duchess of Mantua were closeted with the King, and the victory was won.[228] That night, 17th January 1643, Olivares was dismissed. He struggled for days to regain his influence over the King, but tried in vain; for Philip, like most weak men, was obstinate when once his mind was made up, and so, ruined and degraded, the Count Duke turned his back upon the Court he had ruled, and went to madness and death, leaving Isabel of Bourbon, the mistress of the situation, the ‘King’s only minister,’ as he said soon after, when he asked the nuns of shoeless Carmelites to pray for his ‘minister.’ Madrid went wild with joy at Olivares’ fall. ‘Isabels have always saved Spain,’ the people cried, as the King and Queen with the Duchess of Mantua went to the convent church of the barefoots to give thanks; ‘Philip is King of Spain, at last, and will save his country.’ But it needed much more than shouting to save Spain. Philip, spurred by his wife, plucked up more energy than ever before. He would be his own minister in future, and would take the field as soon as spring came, and wrest Catalonia from the French. Before that could be done, Philip’s army met in Flanders with the greatest defeat it had ever sustained, a blow from which the reputation of the famous Spanish infantry never recovered. His young brother, Cardinal Ferdinand, had died two years before, and his place in Flanders had been taken by the Portuguese noble Mello. He was a good soldier; but Condé, young as he was, out-generalled him: and the defeat of Rocroy made it certain that France, and not Spain, would in future lead Europe. But yet the soil of Spain itself must be redeemed from the French invaders: and again, through the summer of 1643, Philip struggled manfully to regain his lost dominion; whilst Isabel, as Regent in Madrid, organised, directed, and encouraged, with a spirit and energy that won for her the fervent love of her husband’s loyal subjects. Some success attended him, for he captured Lerida from the French: but the war was a terrible drain, and in the campaign of the following year, 1644, failure followed failure.