No, not really. The thing is, the land seized during the revolution can be classified in three categories : the land "seized" by the peasantry from the nobility in 1789 mostly during the Great Fear(it wasn't really seized, it is more the end of the feudality, and the destruction of the terriers, the land seized by the state and sold through the Assignats (which was mostly sold to the Bourgeoisie IIRC), and the land that the communes got back from the nobility in 1789 (which became communal land). Also, Masculine Primogeniture, while it was the rule for the nobility wasn't really for the Tiers Etat and the inheritance laws and traditions varied from place to place.
Still, wouldn't there have been enough of new land to be encourage peasants to start new family? At least some of it had to have ended up among the peasantry, or else surely the Revolution would not have been as popular with them as otherwise?
IIRC, the Conscription wasn't widely applied in non French speaking territory until late in the wars, given that the powers that be suspected that the population of the West Bank of the Rhine and Italy wouldn't be that happy to be conscripted. So losses would probably be lower anyway.
I hadn't known that, that makes the lack of firm data regarding the territories even more depressing.
6.6% between 1821 to 1831 according to Populstat, compared to 12.2% for Germany and 15.3% for Great Britain. It wasn't a decent population growth for the era.
I'm more referring it in contrast to later population growth. Certainly it is mediocre but it is positive and moving in a decent direction, much higher than their nearby neighbor of Belgium at least.
I think the 900000 casualities for the French Empire is really low. The losses for the Russian Campaign alone are between 200.000 and 300.000 men.
They seemed low as well, the higher figures are (for my side of the conversation at least) unfortunately more probable.
Actually the graph shows that the French crude birth rate was already dropping since 1775 at least (which strengthen the theory that France only had an earlier demographic shift than the other european countries). There is a harder drop during the early revolutionnary period (well, it was one of the largest conscription event in France ever) and one 20 to 30 years after the end of the Napoleonic wars, so more or less when the "Génération Creuse" of the Napoleonic wars would start to have children.
It does look more similar to that, I had been basing my previous recollection of revolutionary fertility decline starting off a dimly remembered chart from several years ago. The drop off around 1840 also seems to correlate well to that, since the marriage age in Europe was (relatively) old - 1881 census figures indicating that 60% of women were single at 25, and 32% at 30, so that would fit casualties sustained at the end of the war.
The rise of the republic led a lot of royalists/imperialists to get out of the country to seek fortune elsewhere, including in the army. All of a sudden you had an influx of young, ambitious men.
France will have a lot more poor though, who will be going somewhere. Some will go overseas, but with a population much larger (and with more young of appropriate age for the army) the army is going to be much larger. I think that it will at least partly compensate. More people, and with Europe probably still mostly at peace even if tensions are high, and probably not the same degree of constant tensions with Germany without the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, glory seeking officers will go where the action is - overseas.
In this regards the relative decentralization of French colonial acquisition helps, since most of the acquiring was done by said units on the ground and not official French government policy, so even if the Government is otherwise disinterested low level units seeking glory, fame, and diversion will still be carving out their little empires.
Hence, they went to Africa, and we saw the result in WWI when the troupes coloniales were called forth to defend the country, much to the dismay of Prussian troups.
I recall reading - and unfortunately I don't know where, maybe it was the Climax of French Imperialism but it seems unlikely - that the French army command actually made rather surprisingly little usage of colonial manpower in their planning before the Great War.
You're touching the core of the problem here. Any population increase post-1870 would be encouraged to stay on the continent to counter-balance growing Prussian demographic pressure.
I think that would be problematic for them to manage. I doubt that the British or the Germans were happy about all the people fleeing to America, but they went anyway. Large numbers of poor people will do what they have to attempt to get a better life, and that will involve them going overseas.
Anyway can the French agricultural production sustain the population?
Some seem to take a rather positive view of French agriculture, but
others seem to have a rather negative forecast over French agriculture - compared to English agriculture at least. Although even for the gloomy one it notes that French output per acre wasn't terribly less(pg. 39), so France might be able to sustain more people, just a lot more of them will have to be peasants than in England. France certainly has more land available. Also, France will probably get North Africa soon enough, which is a nice agricultural breadbasket. Given these factors it doesn't seem impossible that French can sustain its population growth if it occurs.