Then followed a series of terrible criminal proceedings. The partisans of the rebellion were tried, condemned, and executed with as little mercy as English rulers ever manifested to Irish rebels. White puts the number executed at one thousand two hundred, but cites no authorities to justify so large an estimate. After this affair at Amboise, "the political character of the Huguenots," as White admits, "became more prominent, and proved the temporary destruction of French Protestantism." The reformers committed many outrages on the Catholics after the failure at Amboise, especially in the districts where Montbrun and Mouvans swept through with the hand of destruction, till the latter perished miserably at Draguignan. Then followed a new Huguenot plot, formed by Condé and his brother Anthony, but Francis II. raised a considerable force, and, marching down, overawed them. Condé and the other Huguenot leaders were summoned to appear before him. D'Andelot fled; Condé appeared, was tried, and condemned; but before any other steps were taken Francis II. died in November. "Did you ever hear or read of anything so opportune as the death of the little king?" wrote Calvin; and Beza gloried over "the foul death of the miserable boy." Charles IX. became king, with his mother, Catharine de Medicis, as regent, and she sought to weaken the power of the Guises. Condé was released from prison, his brother Anthony made lieutenant-general of the kingdom. An assembly of the Three Estates was convened, but dissolved without effecting any good. Throughout the land, the Huguenots employed abuse and violence, drawing on themselves fearful punishment. Still, under Catharine's fickle favor, the Huguenots were steadily gaining ground, and the Colloquy at Poissy, in 1562, where Beza appeared in person, was, in its actual result and in moral effect, a victory to the reformers. The countenance of the court gave them boldness. The Catholic party saw the evident danger and were loud in their complaints, but this only made collisions more frequent: one party elate with hope and triumph, the other seeing naught but treachery and violence. It needed but a spark to kindle a conflagration; at last it came. On Corpus Christi, in 1561, as the procession of the blessed sacrament moved through the streets of Lyons, a Huguenot rushed upon the officiating clergyman and endeavored to wrest the consecrated host from his hands. So daring an outrage roused the Catholics to fury. In an instant the whole city was in arms, and the innocent atoned in blood for the madness of one. Even in Paris itself similar riots took place, and fifty Catholics were killed or wounded at the church of St. Medard, into which D'Andelot rode on horseback at the head of the Huguenots.