Although the royal age of majority was 14, his mother, Catherine de' Medici, entrusted the reins of government to his wife Mary's uncles from the House of Guise, staunch supporters of the Catholic cause.

[3] A little over a year after his marriage, on 10 July 1559, Francis became king at age 15 upon the death of Henry II, who had been killed in a jousting accident.

Francis II took the sun for his emblem and for his mottoes Spectanda fides (This is how faith should be respected) and Lumen rectis (Light for the righteous).

On the first day of his reign, Francis II instructed his four ministers to take orders from his mother, but since she was still in mourning for her husband, she directed them to the House of Guise.

Francis, Duke of Guise, was one of the most famous military commanders in the royal army, and the Cardinal of Lorraine had participated in the most important negotiations and matters of the kingdom.

Her protégé Jean Bertrand had to surrender his title Keeper of the Seals of France to chancellor François Olivier, whom Diane had removed from this position a few years earlier.

[11] The interest rates on these loans were not insignificant, as lenders had grown wary of the crown's inability to pay over the years and this lack of confidence would only be furthered with Henry II's death.

[13] Religious violence was increasing, with attacks in Paris, first in response to the loss at the Battle of Saint-Quentin (1557) and then around the trial of the heretic parlementaire Anne du Bourg.

Their rise to dominance had come at the expense of Anne de Montmorency and the House of Bourbon who resented their total ascendency to varying degrees.

To try and set about fixing the realm's finances, they embarked upon an aggressive campaign of cost cutting, scaling down the size of the army from its height in the wars, and deferring payments to the troops, who angrily protested against the Guises.

[18] Forced loans would continue into 1560, with 100,000 crowns being demanded of the Parlement and merchants of Paris in October 1560, shortly after the convoking of the estates had taken place.

From July 1559 to February 1560 they would pass four more persecutory edicts, including such provisions as the razing of any house which a Protestant meeting occurred in, and the prosecution of landlords who knowingly harboured heretics as tenants.

Finally on 12 February while the court was travelling to Amboise, the Duke's secretary arrived, bringing a lawyer who had got cold feet about the direction of the conspiracy.

[24] With this knowledge to hand, and suspecting the involvement of Condé, the Guise summoned much of the high nobility to Amboise, and began fortifying the castle in preparation.

[25] On 17 March, Francis II made the duke of Guise the Lieutenant General of the kingdom, giving him final authority for all military matters.

Realising the motley nature of the conspiracy, a mixture of fairly harmless heretics and hardened military men, an amnesty was declared on 17 March for those who laid down their arms and went home within 48 hours.

[27] Nevertheless, the court was conscious its religious policy had been a failure, and as early as 8 March, the Edict of Amboise was propagated, offering a retroactive amnesty for those convicted of heresy, on the condition they live as good Catholics.

Troops raised for the conspiracy in Dauphine, Provence, and the Lyonnais were left without central direction, creating the nucleus of guerrilla armies that caused chaos in their localities.

[31] Beyond the planned regional elements of Amboise, many Protestants began seizing churches independently, and engaging in acts of unauthorised iconoclasm, as in Rouen and Provence.

[36] The king's reaction was fierce and determined: he mobilised his troops, sent the army to the rebellious areas to quell the sedition, and ordered governors to return to their positions.

Heavily outnumbered Condé and Navarre decided making a stand and fighting would be pointless, and they departed their southern regional powerbase at the kings request to attend the forthcoming Estates General.

[29] This changing of the political winds was furthered when in April the former Guise client Michel de l'Hôpital became Lord Chancellor of France replacing the ailing François Olivier.

In conjunction with Charles Cardinal of Lorraine, Catherine de Medici and Admiral Coligny, he began pushing this new religious policy further.

[41] Conscious that the financial and religious problems of the crown had not yet gone away, and desiring to create a more definitive solution, the Guise oversaw the calling of an Assembly of Notables.

Lorraine intended to guide the assembly towards his proposed idea of a national religious council, to reunify the two faiths peacefully, this was however taken off course by Coligny, who presented a petition from the Norman church seeking the right to establish temples.

On the Spanish side, King Philip II showed some unwillingness to return four locations in the northeast of the kingdom as required by the treaty.

[53][54] Along with restitution of territories, the government of Francis II had to negotiate, pay, or claim compensations for people whose properties were taken or destroyed during the war.

[63][64] When the Bishop of Valence and Charles de La Rochefoucault, sieur of Randan, sent by the king to negotiate, arrived in Scotland, they were treated almost like prisoners.

When Francis II and Mary Stuart were presented with the Treaty of Edinburgh, they were outraged and refused to sign it; they also challenged the legitimacy of the Scottish parliament's decision.

Historians agree that Francis II was fragile, both physically and psychologically, and his frail health led to his early death.