League

League, a term employed to designate a political alliance or coalition. The most famous leagues were the Ætolian and Achaian Leagues, the Lombard League, the Hanseatic League (q.v.), the leagues of Cambray ('Holy League'), Schmalkald, Nuremberg ('Catholic League'), and Würzburg in the Thirty Years' War (q.v.); also the Solemn League and Covenant, the Anti-corn-law League, the Land League. But the name has a peculiar importance in the history of France, as applied to the opposition organised by the Duke of Guise (q.v.) to the granting of the free exercise of their religion and political rights to the Huguenots. This league, known as the Holy League (Sainte Lique), was formed at Péronne, in 1576, to maintain the predominance of the Roman Catholic religion; but the object of the Guises was rather to exclude the Protestant princes of the blood from the succession to the throne. For an account of the civil war that ensued, see HENRY III., HENRY IV., and GUISE; and for its full history, see Mignet's Histoire de la Ligue (5 vols. 1829).