They transferred the court from Blois to Amboise, by which move they upset the plans of the petitioners and also put the king into a more defensible castle.
Soldiers, assembled for the occasion, met the Huguenots as they advanced in a body towards Amboise, [Sidenote: The tumult of Amboise, March 1560] shot down La Renaudie and some others on the spot and arrested the remaining twelve hundred, to be kept for subsequent trial and execution.

The suspicion that fastened on the prince of Conde, a brother of the king of Navarre, was given some color by his frank avowal of sympathy with the conspirators.

Though the Guises pressed their advantage to the utmost in forbidding all future assemblies of heretics, the tumult of Amboise was vaguely felt, in the sultry atmosphere of pent-up passions, to be the avant-courier of a terrific storm.
The early death of the sickly king left the throne to his brother Charles IX, a boy of nine.

[Sidenote: Charles IX, 1560-74] As he was a minor, the regency fell to his mother, Catharine de' Medici, who for almost thirty years was the real ruler of France.

[Sidenote: Policy of Catharine de' Medici] Notwithstanding what Brantome calls "ung embonpoint tres-riche," she was active of body and mind.