Paris in the 16th century Wars of Religion (1562-1598). Paris was the stronghold of the Catholic League. On the night of August 23–24, 1572, while many prominent Protestants from all over France were in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of Henri of Navarre—the future Henry IV—to Margaret of Valois, sister of Charles IX, the royal council decided to assassinate the leaders of the Protestants. The targeted killings quickly turned into a general slaughter of Protestants by Catholic mobs, known as St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, and continued through August and September, spreading from Paris to the rest of the country. About three thousand Protestants
Paris in the 16th century It was moved closer, to Charenton, six miles from the Bastille, in 1606. The Jewish community in Paris in the 16th century consisted of only about a dozen families. The Jews had been formally expelled from the city by Philippe le Belle in 1306, and in 1380 and 1382, the houses of Jews and property of Paris Jews had been seized. The few families remaining were of Italian or central European origin, and kept a very, very low profile. The first migration of about fifty Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal did not arrive until 1667, via Bayonne, Bordeaux and