To do Philip justice, he personally was eager to fulfil his duty; but long custom had made him almost incapable now of shaking off the yoke of Olivares and having his own way. For a time the minister and his obedient Councils opposed every obstacle to the project of the King's joining the army in the field. The personal danger was made most of; the incommodity of the voyage, the inconvenience to the troops to be weighted with the additional responsibility of the safety of the monarch; the risk of assassination by rebel subjects; even the positive lack of money for the journey, was urged, again and again, upon Philip by Olivares. It was useless, moreover, he said, for the King to go without large reinforcements. On the other hand, the Queen and the higher nobles, even many of the Councillors, urged that the case was desperate, and that without the King's personal example Catalonia was lost for ever to Spain. They even began to whisper that cowardice was the reason of Olivares' obstinate resistance to the journey; and at length Philip, aroused for once in his life, put his foot down, peremptorily silenced the remonstrances of the Council, and tore up its Memorial opposing his going. {360} Again the drums were beaten. The cities of Andalucia were appealed to in the name of loyalty; the nobles and their sons were once more squeezed. The son of Olivares, with his father's money, raised a chosen corps with which he made a brilliant show before the King, and gave an excuse (says Novoa) to put pressure upon other young nobles to do the like. At last, with infinite effort, a new force was got together to accompany the King to Aragon; the Queen, working strenuously, selling her jewels, putting pressure upon pious ladies and ecclesiastics to subscribe, making much of the popularity of her son Baltasar Carlos; and for the time putting aside the frivolous pleasures that had delighted her, to play a part worthy of the daughter of the gallant Béarnais, Henry of Navarre.