Whatever may have been Philip's intention, and it is impossible to doubt his sincerity, his good resolutions, as Olivares probably foresaw, did not last long; but the cavillers for a time were silenced, and Olivares at any future crisis could and did always point to his letter, and shift a full share of his responsibility upon the King. The responsibility, in good truth, was a heavy one. The constant drain of men and money to Germany, Italy, and Flanders fell mainly upon the realms of Castile, where the poverty was greatest. The expulsion of the Moriscos (1610), the most ingenious and industrious craftsmen in the land, had already produced its dire effects, and skilled industry, which formerly paid most of the taxes, had well-nigh disappeared. Without doing anything to revive manufactures in Spain itself, the Government of Olivares now began the fatal policy of prohibiting commerce of all sorts with the countries at war with Spain, which soon meant all maritime Europe; and the consequence was a complete dearth of commercial movements, a terrible rise in prices, universal contraband and untold suffering, which the purblind minister sought to remedy by the puerile device of suddenly reducing by one half the value of copper money (May 1627), and {183} fixing a maximum price at which farmers might sell food stuffs! [Sidenote: Illness of the king] Anxiety and dissipation acted upon a physique never strong, and Philip, in the summer of 1627, fell seriously ill in Madrid. The last baby girl had died, and though the Queen was pregnant, the next heir, failing issue to the King, was his brother Carlos, a gentle, easy-going young man, in appearance and character wonderfully like his elder brother. But for all his gentleness Carlos was no friend of Olivares, who had taken from his side all the friends he depended upon, most of them, be it said, kinsmen of Lerma, whose sister had been the Prince's governess.