Not until September was this scourge removed from the land. By that time they were bought off and were conducted to the frontier by Bassompierre, the Alsatian gentleman in the King’s service, who was well rewarded, as he deserved to be, for the accomplishment of the perilous task. But the licensing of the regular troops immediately afterward still prolonged the agony of the province for a season.[1749] The Peace of Monsieur may fittingly be said to have terminated the period of the _religious_ wars of France. The dominant issue of the succeeding years of conflict from 1576 to 1598 was not a religious, but a political one. Why permanent peace did not result it is not the work of this volume to narrate. Suffice to say that Spain and Spain’s instrument, the Holy League, were to blame for the ensuing years of strife. The germ of the provincial Catholic leagues had been the desire, on the part of the Catholics of France, to resist the progress of Calvinism. But in the hands of the French nobles these local leagues, controlled by the aristocracy and welded into one mighty organization under the leadership of the duke of Guise, backed by Spanish gold, became a new league of the public weal, which, under the cloak of religion revived the feudal ambition of the French nobility to acquire power at the expense of the crown. CHÂTILLON—COLIGNY John III, † 1480 │ ├——————————————————┐ │ │ James II Gaspard I, married † 1512 † 1522 │ ┌——————————————————┼————————————————————————┐ │ │ │ Odet, Gaspard II, Admiral Coligny François d’Andelot bishop of murdered at † 1569 Beauvais St. Bartholomew, 1572 † 1571 │ │ Louise m. _a_) Charles de Teligny, † 1572 _b_) William the Silent MONTMORENCY