safer place than the town of Blois; and they concerted measures with the queen-mother, to whom the conspirators were, both in their plans and their persons, almost as objectionable as to them.  She wrote, in a style of affectionate confidence, to Coligny, begging him to come to Amboise and give her his advice.  He arrived in company with his brother D’Andelot, and urged the queen-mother to grant the Reformers liberty of conscience and of worship, the only way to checkmate all the mischievous designs and to restore peace to the kingdom.  Something of what he advised was done:  a royal decree was published and carried up to the Parliament on the 15th of March, ordaining the abolition of every prosecution on account of religion, in respect of the past only, and under reservations which rendered the grace almost inappreciable.  The Guises, on their side, wrote to the Constable de Montmorency to inform him of the conspiracy, “of which you will feel as great horror as we do,” and they signed, Your thoroughly best friends.  The Prince of Conde himself, though informed about the discovery of the plot, repaired to Amboise without showing any signs of being disconcerted at the cold reception offered him by the Lorraine princes.  The Duke of Guise, always bold, even in his precautions, “found an honorable means of making sure of him,” says Castelnau, “by giving him the guard at a gate of the town of Amboise,” where he had him under watch and ward himself.  The lords and gentlemen attached to the court made sallies all around Amboise to prevent any unexpected attack.  “They caught a great many troops badly led and badly equipped.  Many poor folks, in utter despair and without a leader, asked pardon as they threw down upon the ground some wretched arms they bore, and declared that they knew no more about the enterprise than that there had been a time appointed them to see a petition presented to the king which concerned the welfare of his service and that of the kingdom.” [Memoires de Castelnau, pp. 49, 50.] On the 18th of March, La Renaudie, who was scouring the country, seeking to rally his men, encountered a body of royal horse who were equally hotly in quest of the conspirators; the two detachments attacked one another furiously; La Renaudie was killed, and his body, which was carried to Amboise, was strung up to a gallows on the bridge over the Loire with this scroll:  “This is La Renaudie, called La Forest, captain of the rebels, leader and author of the sedition.”  Disorder continued for several days in the surrounding country; but the surprise attempted against the Guises was a failure, and the important result of the riot of Amboise (tumulte d’Amboise), as it was called, was an ordinance of Francis II., who, on the 17th of March, 1560, appointed Duke Francis of Guise “his lieutenant-general, representing him in person absent and present in this good town of Amboise and other places of the realm, with full power, authority, commission, and special mandate to assemble all the princes, lords, and gentlemen, and generally to command, order, provide, and dispose of all things requisite and necessary.”