Philip could look nowhere else for an alliance. France was his deadly enemy, though it was governed by his sister Anna as regent, and a further marriage experiment in that direction was out of the question at present, even if there had been an available French princess.[234] The Emperor and Spain, on the other hand, had been—to Spain’s ruin—fighting shoulder to shoulder throughout the whole of the thirty years’ war, now dragging to its conclusion, and the treaty was promptly signed for the marriage of Baltasar, aged seventeen, with Mariana of Austria, three years younger. With regard to their betrothal, Philip wrote to the nun thus: ‘My sister, the Empress, having died, I consider it advisable to draw closer the ties between the Emperor and ourselves in this way, my principal aim being the exaltation of the faith; for it is certain that the more intimate the two branches of our house are, so much the firmer will religion stand throughout Christendom.’
Only two months later, early in October, the blow fell, and the prince died of smallpox. Whilst he lay ill the distracted father wrote frantically to his correspondent, crying for God’s mercy to save him from this last trial. But when the boy had died the King’s letters assumed a tone of dull despair. God had not heard his prayers, and he supposed it was for the best. He had done everything to dedicate this grief to God; but his heart was pierced, and he knew not whether he lived or dreamed. He was resigned, he said, but feared his constancy, and so on; each phrase revealing a heart that almost doubted the efficacy of prayer, and the goodness of the Almighty.[235]
Thenceforward, for a time, his conduct changed. He had done his best and had not spared himself. He had prayed night and day, and had fashioned his life according to monastic counsels. But defeat, trouble, poverty and bereavement had fallen upon him in spite of all, and Philip, in the intervals of his poignant contrition, plunged into dissolute excesses that shocked and scandalised the devotees about him. Philip was forty-two, about the age when some of his forbears had developed that strain of mystic devotion that so nearly borders madness. He had no male heir, and only one tiny daughter of eight, and his troubles and excesses had prematurely aged him. All Spain demanded of him a man child to succeed to his greatness; and the remonstrances of the churchmen and the nuns at the scandal of his life were reinforced by the Emperor’s ambassadors, who urged that he should marry the girl-niece who had been betrothed to his dead son.