There was already a large party of nobles who, seeing the national need for peace, looked with distrust upon a policy which would still waste Spanish resources in fighting the battles of the empire in mid-Europe: and when to the vacancy in the Council of Regency and the Inquisitor-Generalship, caused by the death of Cardinal Moscoso a few hours after the King, Mariana appointed her Austrian confessor, Father Nithard, Spanish pride flared out and protest became general. Nithard was doubtless a worthy priest, though of no great ability, but if he had been a genius the same detestation of him would have prevailed, for he was a foreigner, and it was guessed at once that between him and the Austrian Queen Spain would be sacrificed as it had been in the past to objects that were not primarily Spanish. Observers abroad saw it too, and although the French envoy who went to condole with Mariana on Philip’s death assured her of the desire of Louis to be friendly with her, the first acts of her regency gave to the French King a pretext for asserting his wife’s right to the inheritance of Flanders, as her dowry had not been paid, and her renunciation was asserted to be invalid. In May 1667 Louis invaded Flanders with 50,000 men, faced only by a small disaffected and unpaid force under the Spanish viceroy, the result being that the French overran the country and captured many principal cities. Don Juan was summoned in a hurry from his exile to the Council of State in Madrid, and he and his sworn enemy Mariana divided between them the sympathies of the capital and the country. Pasquins and satires passed from hand to hand on the Liars’ Parade and in the Calle Mayor, mostly attacking Nithard and the Queen, who were blamed for the war; and the relations between Don Juan and Mariana grew more strained every day.