The rule of the Politiques was, unlike that of the Guises, favourable to toleration--as a matter not of conscience but of policy. Katharine's was the controlling spirit, and her chief supporters in the policy were the Chancellor L'Hôpital and the Constable Montmorency, a connexion of Coligny's but an orthodox Catholic. In January 1562 a large extension of toleration was granted to the Huguenots, which roused the fanaticism of the other party and drew the Constable over to their ranks. Navarre was induced to go over to the Catholics, leaving the Protestant leadership to Condé. Some of Guise's followers massacred a number of unarmed Huguenots at Vassy; Paris, frantically anti-Huguenot, gave a triumphal reception to Guise, who held Katharine and the boy-king practically prisoners. The Huguenots rose in arms; Navarre was killed, leaving a boy--afterwards Henry IV.--as his heir and the hope of the Huguenots; for his mother Jeanne of Navarre had not followed her husband in his apostasy. A great battle, indecisive in result, was fought at Dreux, in which each of the commanders, Condé and Montmorency, fell into the hands of their antagonists; and then, in February 1563, Francis of Guise was assassinated by the fanatic Poltrot. About the same time died two of his brothers, D'Aumale and the Grand Prior. The result was the termination of the war by the Peace of Amboise, practically confirming the recent edict of toleration. Katharine still refused to adopt the policy, urged on her by Spain as well as by the Guise faction, of suppressing the Huguenots by the sword. The Huguenots, however, believing that Katharine was merely actuated by motives of expediency, and would seek to crush them if a favourable opportunity offered, organised with a view to enforcing their demands in arms, and again took the field in 1567, thereby deciding the Regent in the policy which they had--up to this time perhaps erroneously--attributed to her. For the time being, however, the war was closed in the spring of 1568, by a treaty confirming the terms of the previous Peace of Amboise. [Sidenote: The Netherlands and Spain]