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 "La Grève", in front of the modern City Hall, developed in the 11th century. The headquarters of the guild of merchants was located next to the port, and became the city hall. Another important early port was located on the north side of the Île-de-la-Cité, where the flower market is located today. Les Halles, the central market of Paris, had been founded in 1137 by King Louis VI. By the 16th century it was overcrowded and inefficient. Between 1543 and 1572, King rancis I and his successors gradually rebuilt the market into the form it kept until the time of