France, History Of, Urban prosperity

Town life continued to flourish. A few places, favoured by political and ecclesiastical as well as by economic circumstances, grew far larger than the rest. Paris could probably count more than 100,000 inhabitants by the late 13th century, possibly many more than that; some great provincial centres—e.g., Toulouse, Bordeaux, Arras, Rouen—may have surpassed 25,000, but most of the older cities