But the objectives of the League, its real objectives, were clear and definite, and its techniques were appropriate. Most simply the League existed to serve the religious interests of the papacy and the ultramontane wing of the clergy against Huguenots and Gallicans alike, the dynastic interests of the Guises against the ruling Valois and the Bourbon succession, and, because Spain was the paymaster, the international interests of Spain.

Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish A…, loc. 91