France, History Of, Demographic changes

Rates of demographic growth varied greatly from place to place: in Brittany, where typhoid fever was endemic, population figures peaked in 1700. In Quercy they grew by 70 percent between 1700 and 1786. But, regardless of local variations, France as a whole counted two million more peasants in 1790 than during the reign of Louis XIV. Better preventive medicine, a decline in infant mortality,