Spanish preparations to dispatch a military force to Flanders had already begun in June.

The government of the Regent has raised more than one million pesos and appointed Juan José de Austria as commander of the intended army.

His reputation as a general is already tarnished after a number of defeats in the war against Portugal, and as he assesses the conditions in the Spanish Netherlands pessimistically, he delays the departure for weeks and months.

His pretext for this is the decision of a theological commission that had declared itself against an alliance with the Protestant countries, England and the Netherlands.

In the end, further complications of domestic politics mean that the Spanish army never arrives in Flanders.