During the Seven Years' War, the British briefly occupied the town after the Raid on Cherbourg in 1758. The British destroyed military buildings and warehouses before departing. With the development of a new pool of trade in 1769, Cherbourg - a longstanding commercial port of minor importance, a city without a university or cultural activity, regularly looted, and having weak relations with Paris - acquired a weight in the Cotentin which translated, on the eve of the French Revolution, by the creation of networks of sociability by the middle-class united in associations - such as the in 1755 and the lodge "Faithful mason". The population increased from 800 feus (4,000 inhabitants) in Cherbourg and 95 in Octeville, around 1715, to 7,300 people in Cherbourg by 1778.