Francis II., a poor creature of sixteen years, the slave of his wife Marie Stuart and of the Guises, was called king of France for seventeen months. He it was who sat daily by Mary in the royal garden, on the terrace at Amboise overlooking the Loire, and, surrounded by his brothers and the ladies of the court, gazed at the revolting and merciless executions of the Protestant conspirators,[108] who, under the Prince of Condé, had plotted to destroy the Guises and to free the king from their influence. It was the first act in a horrible drama, a dread pursuivant of the civil and religious wars in France. The stake was a high one, for the victory of the reformers would sound the death-knell of the Catholic cause in Europe. There is little reason to doubt that the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, who now emerges into prominence, was genuinely sincere in her disapproval of the horrors of Amboise, and in her efforts to bring milder counsels to bear in dealing with the Huguenots; but the fierce passions roused by civil and religious hatred were uncontrollable. When the Huguenot noble, Villemongis, was led to the scaffold at Amboise, he dipped his hands in the blood of his slaughtered comrades, and, lifting them to heaven, cried: "Lord, behold the blood of Thy children; Thou wilt avenge them." A savage lust for blood among the Christian sectaries on either side, drawing its stimulus from the records of the ferocity of semi-barbarian Jewish tribes, smothered the gentle voice of Jesus, and during thirty years was never slaked. Treachery and assassination were the interludes of plots and battles. In 1563 the Duke of Guise was shot by a fanatical Huguenot with a pistol loaded with poisoned balls. In 1569, when the Protestant leader, Admiral Coligny, was surprised and attacked by the forces of the Duke of Anjou, Prince Condé, although wounded in the arm, hastened to his succour. As the prince passed on, his leg was broken by a kick from a vicious horse. Still charging forward, he cried: "Remember how a Louis of Bourbon goes to battle for Christ and Fatherland!" His horse was killed, himself captured; as he was handing over his sword to his captors, the Baron de Montesquieu, "_brave et vaillant gentilhomme_," says Brantôme, arrived on the scene, and, on learning what was passing, exclaimed, "_Mort Dieu!_ kill him! kill him!" and blew out Condé's brains with a pistol. The body of the heroic Bourbon was then tied on an ass, and a mocking epitaph set upon it:-- "L'an mil cinq soixante neuf, Entre Jarnac et Château neuf; Fut porté mort sur une ânesse, Cil qui voulait ôter la messe." The defeated Protestants were, however, soon roused to enthusiasm by the arrival of Jeanne of Navarre at their camp, leading her son Henry by one hand and the eldest son of Condé by the other. "Here," cried the widowed queen, "are two orphans I confide to you; two leaders that God has given you." One of these orphans was to become Henry IV. of France.