St. Bartholomew's Day massacre published his "Discours contre Machievel" in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four years. Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli's "books [were] held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italionized courtiers" (in the words of his first English translation), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers". In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, and not very much after,
Paris in the 16th century Beginning in 1522, wealthy Parisians loaned their money to the Bureau de Ville, the city government, which in turn made loans to the King. In exchange the King gave the city the right to collect certain taxes in Paris, and the Parisian investors received a healthy eight percent return for their loans to the city. By the second part of the 16th century, however, the Kings were so deeply in debt that wealthy Parisians refused to lend any more money; the King was forced to borrow money from Italian bankers, who received the right to receive a portion of French