ABSTRACT
This was an achievement by any standards, but for an outsider whose origins lay with a family of modest provincial origins, it was extraordinary. The rise to power of the cardinal de Fleury is an instructive example of social mobility within the parameters of the socio-political system of the ancien régime. Unusual in that he came
further on a longer trajectory than his contemporaries, it nevertheless involved all those elements necessary, in that political system, for advancement.
