"Leagues of Peace" were formed to diminish the horrors of war, to protect the helpless, to enforce order.
The Council of Poitiers, where there is one of the earliest mentions of these "Leagues of Peace," was held 1223 years ago.

The Council of Bourges in 1031 created a species of national militia to police the rural districts and prevent war.

Our ancestors believed in leagues with "teeth in them." From France where the movement had its origin and culminated at Elne (1207) in the full organization of the "Truce of God," it spread eastward into Germany and Thuringia.

The German duchies and the Austrian marches submitted soon after to its humanitarian and Christian code.

In 1030, the Pope, the French and German princes united their efforts for the development of the forerunners of the "Truce of God," the conventions known as the "Peace of God." The Peace, the earlier institution of the two, exempted from the evils of war, churches, monasteries, clerics, children, pilgrims, husbandmen; the cattle, the fields, the vineyards of the toiler; his instruments of labor, his barns, his bakehouse, his milch cows, his goats and his fowl.
The Truce forbade war at certain "closed seasons." It gave angry passions time to subside, and endeavored to discredit war by making peace more desirable and its blessings more prolonged.