Personal motives, irrespective of principle, united many persons and families with either of these great parties which seemed most likely to subserve their private ambitions. The feudal system was nearly extinct in form, but its spirit was still alive. The nobles who had long held sway in some of the provinces of France desired to hold them as distinct and separate governments, and to transmit them as an inheritance to their children. This motive often determined their political association. During the most of the period of this long civil war, Catherine de Médicis [12] was either regent or in the exercise of a controlling influence in the government of France. She was a woman of commanding person and extraordinary ability, skilful in intrigue, without conscience and without personal religion. She hesitated at no crime, however black, if through it she could attain the objects of her ambition. Neither of her three sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, who came successively to the throne, left any legal heir to succeed him. The succession became, therefore, at an early period, a question of great interest. If not the potent cause, it was nevertheless intimately connected with most of the bloodshed of that bloody period. A solemn league was entered into by a large number of the ultra-Catholic nobles to secure two avowed objects, the succession of a Catholic prince to the throne, and the utter extermination of the Huguenots. Henry, King of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. of France, admitted to be the legal heir to the throne, was a Protestant, and therefore by the decree of the League disqualified to succeed. Around his standard, the Huguenots rallied in great numbers. With him were associated the princes of Condé, of royal blood, and many other distinguished nobles. They contended for the double purpose of securing the throne to its rightful heir and of emancipating and establishing the Protestant faith. But there was another class, acting indeed with one or the other of these two great parties, nevertheless influenced by very different motives. It was composed of moderate Catholics, who cared little for the political schemes and civil power of the Roman Pontiff, who dreaded the encroachments of the King of Spain, who were firmly patriotic and desired the aggrandizement and glory of France. The ultra-Catholic party was, for a long period, by far the most numerous and the more powerful; but the Huguenots were sufficiently strong to keep up the struggle with varying success for nearly forty years. After the alliance of Henry of Navarre with Henry III. against the League, the moderate Catholics and the Huguenots were united and fought together under the royal standard until the close of the war in 1598.