Alliance formed during the Thirty Years War between the Protestant Princes, Sweden represented by Axel Oxenstierna and the France of Cardinal Richelieu in April 1633. Initially, Sweden dominated, and command of the war was with Oxenstierna, but France slowly came to dominate, and the formation of the League formalised the war as an conflict between Hapsburg and Bourbon and also wrecked the hopes of the peace party within Germany. French control increased in August 1634, when the League agreed to accept French funds in return for French control of the fortress of Philippsburg on the east bank of the Rhine for the duration of the war, and after the Protestant cause suffered crushing defeat at Nordlingen (6 September 1634) the League members threw themselves on French mercy. On 1 November 1634, the Treaty of Paris formally gave control of what remained of the League to France, but Sweden refused to sign, and in the following year French weakness restored the importance of Sweden and ended the importance of the League.