ABSTRACT
If the heyday of the bourgeoisie was to come after mid-century, its rise was an unmistakeable feature of the world which emerged from the Revolutionary upheaval. The downfall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814– 15, far from leading to a return of the Ancien Régime, maintained the essential administrative and legal changes of the Revolution in place—much to the dismay of the most thehard reactionaries, the ultras, who felt betrayed by Louis XVIII and his ministers (though they took some crumbs of comfort from the abolition of divorce in 1816). The onward and upward march of the bourgeoisie proved unstoppable. 1
