This wealth helped propel him up the social ladder, whereas in the past heredity had determined one's position in French society. But financial changeability was not the only volatile aspect of French life in the first half of the 1800s. A stormy political period also set the scene for the rise of the bourgeoisie, or middle class.
The turbulent years after the Revolution of 1789 witnessed the reign of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte 1 (1805-1814), the restoration of King Charles X (1815-1830), and the revolution that dethroned him. His reign was followed by the July Monarchy (1830-1848), a constitutional monarchy that would also be overthrown by a revolution. The king abdicated, and another Bonaparte, Napoleon III, again assumed the title of emperor in 1852.
Amidst this political turmoil, the peasants migrated to the cities in great numbers. They were accompanied by a swelling working class of people seeking to take part in France's delayed participation in the Industrial Revolution sweeping through Europe. A burst of railway- and roadbuilding under the July Monarchy gave the cities unprecedented contact with the countryside. The improvements in overland transportation facilitated the exchange of information, goods, and laborers, especially between Paris and the regions to the south.
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