Metropolitan France
According to INSEE, 65,018,000 people lived in metropolitan France as of January 2018, while 2,790,000 lived in overseas France, for a total of 67,808,000 inhabitants in the French Republic. Thus, metropolitan France accounts for 95.9% of the French Republic's population.
History of France
Peasants made up the vast majority of population, who in many cases had well-established rights that the authorities had to respect. In 1484, about 97% of France's 13 million people lived in rural villages; in 1700, at least 80% of the 20 million people population were peasants.