Abstract
It is quite difficult to discuss the impact of the French revolution on the French society for the country had difficulty accessing stability in the 19th century. Indeed the intervening decades witnessed four major upheavals: in the 1790s, 1830, 1848 and 1870, which brought a whole variety of regime in their wake: no less than three republics, 2 empires and three monarchies emerged. France became a vast political laboratory in which revolutionary ideas, inspired by the Enlightenment, had to fight their way through, experimenting with a dozen constitutions and modern doctrines such as liberalism, nationalism and socialism. If the revolution started a movement of democratisation and liberalisation that deeply influenced the French social structure during the 19th century, the change was quite brutal and therefore spread a feeling of animosity and refusal through a part of the population that is mostly victims of the revolution. Issues such as the place of the Church in the society weren't handled properly by the revolutionaries and led to a schism in the French society. The model inspired by the revolution therefore often failed to live up to expectations. During the first empire, Napoleon claimed to restore the order without abolishing revolutionary principles by setting up a meritocratic authoritarian regime: "la revolution est fixée aux principes qui l'ont commencée, elle est finie". But everyone will agree that an order is far more difficult to build than to destroy. Yet despite repeated revolutions, continuity can be seen as a striking feature of France's administrative, judicial, religious and educational structures. Despite appearances, political and social changes were graduate. This is what we will try to show in this essay.
