The capital, when compared to London, for extent is as 264 to 195, (nearly as 7 to 5) that is to say, according to the calculation beforementioned (p. 28) Paris stands on 6 99/121 square miles of ground, and London on 5 35/968.
It contains a million and 130 thousand inhabitants, which is fifty thousand more than it did two years ago; these formerly inhabited Versailles, and left it at the time the court did.
Lyon contains 160 thousand persons.
Marseille, the most populous, in proportion to the size, of any city in Europe, contains, in a spot of little more than three miles in circumference, 120 thousand persons, which includes about 30,000 mariners on board of the ships in the harbour.[36]
Bordeaux, 100,000. The population of many more cities is given in a note,[37] besides which there are others, the number of whose inhabitants I cannot learn, such as Toulouse, Toulon, Brest, Orange, Blois, Avignon, &c.
The nation gains five millions sterling per annum by the reduction of its expences, and by not having any unnecessary clergymen to maintain,[38] and the forfeited estates of the emigrants are estimated at immense sums.[39]
The heavy taxes on salt (la gabelle) and on Tobacco are suppressed, and those two articles are allowed to be objects of commerce.[40]
"No city in the world can offer such a spectacle as that of Paris, agitated by some great passion, because in no other the communication is so speedy, and the spirits so active. Paris contains citizens from all the provinces, and these various characters blended together compose the national character, which is distinguished by a wonderful impetuosity. Whatever they will do is done." Witness the taking of the Bastille in a single day, which had formerly withstood the siege of a whole army during three and twenty days. And witness the 10th of August.
I have been frequently told by persons in England, that a regular and disciplined army may easily crush a herd of raw and inexperienced rabble, such as they supposed the French were, although ten times more numerous. This may possibly be the event in small numbers, but if we state the case with large numbers, for instance fifty thousand men of the greatest courage, and of the most perfect discipline, and who are fighting for pay, without any personal motive, against five hundred thousand men, whom we shall suppose utterly ignorant of the art of war, but who conceive they are fighting for their liberty and their country, for their families and their property, and then reflect on the courage and bravery of these very men, on their impetuosity, their acharnement, or desperate violence in fight, which may be compared to the irresistible force of water-spouts, and of whirlwinds, it may not appear too partial to conjecture, that such persons may perceive some little reason for suspending, if not for altering, their opinion,[41] and may now estimate the degree of danger this nation may apprehend from the attacks of extraneous powers, provided its own people are unanimous.