"Your letter indeed arrived at a good time; for the cares that surround me had much afflicted me, and your words have encouraged me. I now trust that God in His mercy, looking to all Christendom, and to these realms, which are so pure in their {396} Catholic faith, will not allow us to be ruined utterly, but will shield and defend them, and grant us a good peace. Short are the human resources with which I have returned hither; and what appals me most is to see that my faults alone are sufficient to provoke the ire of our Lord, and to bring upon me greater punishments than before. But the greater the punishment, the greater will be my appeal to faith and hope, as you say; and I will continually supplicate our Lord to supply with His almighty hand what we need. I for my part will do all I can, trying not to displease Him, and to comply with the obligations He has placed upon me, even though in doing so I risk my own life. I have not hesitated to give up the comforts of my home, in order to attend personally to the defence of these realms: for, whilst I thus fulfil this duty, I trust our Lord will not fail me; but in any extremity I submit to His holy will. I have wished for the Prince to begin to learn what will fall upon him after my days are done; and so, though alone, I have brought him with me, and have confided his health to the hands of God, trusting in His mercy to guard him, and to guide all his actions to His greater service."[20] The campaign brought reverse after reverse to Philip. Jealousy had lost him the services of Silva, his best General; and the new French Viceroy of Catalonia, Count de Harcourt, scattered the Spaniards at Balaguer, and all Catalonia and most of Aragon lay at his mercy, if he had been sure of the loyalty of the Catalans, who, truth {397} to say, were getting somewhat disappointed and tired of their French masters. [Sidenote: War in Catalonia] The Aragonese mostly remained faithful to Philip, but held firmly to their privileges; and when in the autumn of 1645 he summoned the Cortes of Saragossa and Valencia to swear allegiance to Baltasar Carlos, they drove a hard bargain, and Philip was forced to concede many legislative demands of the members, in return for sparing votes of supply. The tale he told to the Castilian Cortes summoned early in 1646 in Madrid was disconsolate in the extreme. All was spent: the wars still went on in Flanders, Germany, Italy, and Catalonia, as well as on the Portuguese frontier, and the regular revenue was utterly insufficient. The deputies were as much afflicted by the penury of their constituents as the King was by the emptiness of his treasury, but with many groans they voted an immediate grant of a million and a half of ducats in money, and in the following year an extension of the special war taxation upon food, and leave to sell pensions was granted.