The Peace of St. Germain was the broadest and most substantial body of privileges yet secured by the French Protestants. Antedating the Edict of Nantes by twenty-eight years, it might have been as great and as permanent an instrument as the latter, if the ambition of the Guises and the intervention of Spain in French affairs had not overthrown it. France itself, government and people, was tired of ten years of strife and disposed to peace. The economic interests of the country were anxious for peace. Only zealots for the religion and those who sought to fish in troubled waters reprobated the terms of St. Germain and sought to continue the struggle. It is true that mutual suspicion still prevailed. Some of the Huguenots anticipated new encroachments again, destructive of the peace, and that the King only aimed to disarm the Protestants in order to overwhelm them later. But time, in all probability, would have qualified this feeling. Religion, unless artificially exaggerated, had ceased to be the primary issue of France by 1570. The real issue was Spain. For all parties alike in France had begun to chafe because of the power acquired by foreign military influences, especially that of Philip—a feeling which ultimately was destined to unite the country on the basis of a national patriotism and embolden Henry of Navarre to expel the Spaniard and establish the Bourbon throne on a truly national basis. An incident which took place at the court in mid-July, when the terms of peace were under consideration, illustrates this all but universal hatred of Spain. One day the Spanish ambassador entered the King’s chamber for audience. Soon afterward the marshal Tavannes came in, who was somewhat deaf and accustomed to speak in a loud voice. Perceiving the ambassador he gruffly remarked in a voice so audible as to be heard by Alava: These Spaniards would do better to govern their own members and not interfere by trying to govern other people’s countries. For I well know that the Spaniards have no wish but to foment civil wars, so that both one party and the other may be weakened and they themselves become stronger than both. For my own part, I would rather see a hundred white capes [the Huguenot costume] than one red cross [the device the Spaniards wore]; because, after all, the first are our brethren and our kindred, while the latter are the natural enemies of our country.[1449]