Whilst the continued and costly celebrations of the Queen’s tardy recovery after the birth of her sickly child were scandalising the thoughtful, national affairs were going from bad to worse.[256] Don Luis de Haro, Philip’s prime minister, had started in January 1658 to relieve Badajoz, closely invested by the masculine Queen of Portugal, herself a Spaniard, and had been disgracefully routed by the despised Portuguese. This was a humiliation that proved to the world the complete impotence of Spain: but in June of the same year a more damaging blow still was dealt at the power that had held its head so high in the past. The battle of the Dunes, or Dunkirk, in which Don Juan, Condé and the Duke of York on the Spanish side were pitted against Turenne, aided by the troops of Cromwell, was a crushing defeat for Philip’s forces, and placed all Flanders at the mercy of the French. It was clear that Philip could fight no longer, for Spain had well nigh bled to death; and so great was the depopulation of Castile that a project was adopted—though not carried out for lack of money—to re-people the country with Irish and Dalmatian Catholics. There were other circumstances that tended towards peace besides the exhaustion of Spain. The long years of war had told heavily upon the resources of France: the Catalans by this time had grown heartily tired of their French king Stork, and were yearning for the return of their Spanish king Log; and, above all, Mazarin had long cast covetous eyes on the Spanish succession, in the very probable case of Philip’s issue by his second wife failing. For years the Queen-regent, Anna of Austria, had been striving for peace with her brother, but circumstances and national pride had always defeated her. The efforts of the Emperor’s agents in Madrid, aided very powerfully by Mariana, had also been exerted to prevent a close agreement between France and Spain. In 1656 M. de Lionne had been sent secretly by Mazarin to Madrid, where he passed many months in close conference with Luis de Haro, endeavouring, but without success, to negotiate peace.