Thus affairs in the capital went from bad to worse. Fanaticism spent itself upon the loan-mongers, mostly Genoese and Jews with Portuguese names, who served Olivares in extremity, and many of them, and the richest, fell into the hands of the Inquisition. There were frequent hints, uttered beneath bated breath, that if all men had their due Olivares himself would be burnt in a _sambenito_ outside the gate of Fuencarral, for he had risen by the devilish arts of sorcery, and kept the King in his power by witchcraft.[4] Enormous difficulty was experienced in levying troops for the war, for the country was half depopulated, and many able-bodied men fled: the old spirit of confidence in a sacred mission was gone, and they had now no stomach for a fight provoked by the King's favourite. The Catalans looked on in sulky suspicion, believing that Olivares needed the soldiers to rob them of their liberties; whilst in Madrid itself, though there were only eight {266} companies of troops, "and more idle men to be spared than in half Spain."[5] The shirkers flocked by thousands into ecclesiastical and noble service, or in that of the Inquisition, with little or no pay, in order to escape enlistment.[6] News came daily, too, of reverses in Flanders, and serious riots in Biscay against the salt tax; and in the meanwhile the French armies were mustering upon the Pyrenean frontier to menace Spanish territory when the dread hour should strike. No spot of brightness indeed appeared anywhere.