The development of the Holy League has now advanced another stage in its evolution. The old warrior had not discontinued his secret relations with Spain, in spite of his warm denial of the fact to the queen mother, who taxed him with it,[1219] but through Bardaxi still kept in communication with Philip II. We find him writing twice to the King in February 1567 and Philip responding in terms of encouragement in the following month.[1220] Guyenne was peculiarly vulnerable to such an attack as was now contemplated, and Montluc was certainly the best captain to execute it. The army of the Huguenots there was in a bad state.[1221] The instrument was already forged to Philip II’s hand in the local Catholic leagues in France. His interest in these was one of the silent activities at Bayonne. The instructions to the duke of Alva and to Bardaxi were almost identical. “As the queen mother lacks either fixity of ideas or honesty of purpose”—the words are those of the _procès-verbal_ framed in the Spanish council-chamber, it is necessary to encourage the practices of Montluc and the Catholics.[1222] It must have been a source of delight to the Spanish king to observe the rapid increase of these associations. There are two changes to be noticed in these provincial leagues: their increasingly popular character, and their tendency to fuse together. Hitherto they had been local in their operations. Now a process of federation is to be observed by which the provincial leagues are gradually welded into one whole—in a word the mighty Sainte Ligue of 1576 potentially exists now.[1223] The federative tendency of these associations was a natural result of their increase in number and membership. It was not a haphazard development at all. Design is evident throughout.[1224] The renewal of civil war in 1567 had given a great impulse to this spirit of association.[1225] Nowhere was it more pronounced than in Burgundy. Tavannes, who was governor of Burgundy, in the year 1567 (July 18), formed a league under the name of the Confrérie du St. Esprit. Churchmen, the nobility of Burgundy, and wealthy bourgeois who wished to preserve the Catholic religion were united together in the service of the King. The version of its origin in the _Mémoires de Tavannes_ is so interesting that I venture to quote it: