The promise that none but Portuguese should rule in the country had been disregarded almost from the first in the appointment of Viceroys. The Austrian nephew, the Archduke Albert, had reigned under Philip II.; and Moura, the wise half-Portuguese minister of Philip II., had ruled Portugal for years under his son. But to appoint a Portuguese noble now, with Olivares' known policy, would have been highly dangerous, and the Portuguese would hardly have stood a Spanish noble, even if Philip had dared to appoint one. The policy of conciliation that Philip II. had adopted had left the house of Braganza, which had a better claim to the Portuguese crown than Philip, richer and more powerful than most sovereigns. The reigning Duke of Braganza had married a sister of the Spanish Duke of Medina Sidonia, the head of the Guzmans, of which house Olivares was a cadet; and in normal circumstances Braganza might have been the ideal man for Viceroy. But the circumstances were not normal. The deepest discontent reigned in the country at the ruin that had befallen its trade in consequence of its union with Spain, and especially at the new taxation for Spanish objects proposed at the bidding of Olivares; and a subject so powerful and so popular as Braganza was naturally suspect. The difficulty was met at the end of 1634 by going somewhat far afield for a ruler of Portugal. The younger daughter of Philip II., the Infanta Catharine, had married Carlo Emmanuele, Duke of Savoy, in 1585; and one of their daughters, Princess Margaret, the {287} widowed and dispossessed Duchess of Mantua, a first cousin of Philip, was brought to Spain to govern Portugal,--the idea being that, as she was a lady and a foreigner, she would be a safe and obedient instrument in the hands of Olivares. In November 1634 she entered Madrid in great state, and at the bull-fights and other festivities held to celebrate her coming she sat by the side of Philip and his Queen, which the Madrileños thought a great and unusual honour, accorded in order to give her higher prestige and authority before she set out for her fateful government, a figurehead for Olivares' attempts against Portuguese autonomy. [Sidenote: Catalonia] Catalonia was more uneasy even than Portugal. There had been a talk all the summer of the King's going thither to ask for more money, and the Catalans were in anger at the very idea. So great was the ill-feeling, that the Viceroy, the Duke of Cardona, a humble servant of Olivares, thought it safer to keep out of the way of his subjects; and the Castilian soldiers were daggers-drawn with the people, in whose houses they were billeted, in defiance of the Catalonian constitution.