According to French statistics from 2004, France had a total population of sixty-two million. The Paris region had ten million people, with 2.2 million in the city proper. It was France's largest city and one of the world's most famous megacities.
This figure did not include illegal immigrants, tourists, or transient residents. Although she had not checked the population in 1927, extrapolating from current data showed that if Grindelwald's plan to destroy Paris by fire had succeeded, one-sixth of France's population would have perished. It would have been a catastrophe of the century.
Fortunately, Nicolas Flamel and Newt Scamander had stopped it. The Muggle newspapers explained the blaze as a hotel fire. Though it had not reached the scale of the Great Fire of London, it had still given Parisians quite a fright.
Visiting the library whenever she arrived somewhere was Pomona's habit. Before going to Nicolas Flamel's former residence, Pomona and Severus, who had changed into a fresh outfit, went to the National Library of France by the Seine.
Like the megacity itself, this super-library was enormous. Its predecessor had been Charles V's Royal Library, built specifically to house the royal collection.
After years of expansion, it held not only books from France, but also books Napoleon had looted from Italy, as well as some artistic treasures from the Old Summer Palace.
Pomona had no interest in appreciating Qing Dynasty palaces. The West had Ludovico Sforza, while the East had Wu Sangui. If he had not let the Manchus through the pass, then given the productive capacity of a nomadic people, whether they could have breached the Great Wall's defenses at all would have been questionable.
The National Library also contained extensive newspaper archives. Pomona found papers from the time of the Paris Commune movement in 1871.
On July