> So there's no reason for the organisers to limit the number of sold tickets.

But maybe they stupidly did so anyway? (Perhaps because they only knew how to draw randomly from the number of tickets that could physically fit into a large tumbler.)

> I think the key is that no one thought Hotel de Ville bonds would get repaid, so there value would be approximately zero (or around about there). So Voltaire could buy all the bonds for cheap.

That would also make sense, but it seems implausible to me that Voltaire would be able to buy up the bonds cheaply after the lottery had already been announced.

The article mentions records of the results, but unfortunately all I could find is the announcement of the 19th draw (I think the results of the 18th draw are below, but they don't show names) [1]. Looks like you were right and the number of tickets were limited to 20,000 "LE PUBLIC est averti que les Billets de la dix-neuvième Loterie de la Ville, toujours fixés au nombre/ de Vingt mille, depuis & compris le numéro 20001 jusques & compris le numéro 40000, commenceront d'être distribués le Samedi 19 Juin 1762"

[1] http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/o...

Thanks for doing the research!

This version of the story is also more in the spirit of the original article. It's not just that the government was more solvent than people thought; Voltaire is making money by cleverly exploiting a technicality in the lottery system.