Paris in the 16th century Protestants were killed in the streets by Catholic mobs. At the end of the century, Henry IV was able to return to Paris as King, and permitted Protestants to open churches outside the city. Urban innovation in Paris during the 16th century included the first street lighting, by candles.The first theater opened in Paris in 1548, and the first ballet performance took place at the French court in 1581. At the beginning of the 16th century Paris was officially the capital of France, but the King, Louis XI, had little trust in the Parisians, and resided in the chateaux of
St. Bartholomew's Day massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day" (1852), which depicts a Catholic woman attempting to convince her Huguenot lover to wear the white scarf badge of the Catholics and protect himself. The man, true to his beliefs, gently refuses her. Millais was inspired to create the painting after seeing Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots". Mark Twain described the massacre in "From the Manuscript of 'A Tramp Abroad' (1879): The French and the Comanches," an essay about "partly civilized races." He wrote in part, "St. Bartholomew's was unquestionably the finest thing of the kind ever devised and accomplished in the world. All the best people took