page_title: Paris during the Bourbon Restoration
section_title: The Parisians
hierarchical_section_title: Paris during the Bourbon Restoration / The Parisians
context_page_description: During the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy that followed the downfall of Napoleon, Paris was ruled by a royal government which tried to reverse many of the changes made to the city during the French Revolution. The city grew in population from 713,966 in 1817 to 785,866 in 1831. During the period Parisians saw the first public transport system, the first gas street lights, and the first uniformed Paris policemen. In July 1830, a popular uprising in the streets of Paris brought down the Bourbon monarchy and began reign of a constitutional monarch, Louis-Philippe.
context_section_description: According to the official census, the population of Paris grew from 713,966 in 1817, shortly after the Restoration of the monarchy, to 785,866 in 1831, shortly after its end. Most of the new Parisians were immigrants from the nearby French regions, seeking work as the city's economy recovered from the long years of war under Napoleon. 
  At the top of the social structure of Paris was the nobility, led by the King and his court.  Both Louis XVIII and Charles X lived in the Tuileries Palace, and used the Chateau of Saint-Cloud as their main secondary residence. The ancient and decayed Tuileries was not a comfortable residence;  it had no basement or sewers, and the lack of modern plumbing made it foul-smelling;  one noblewoman, the Countess of Boigne,  reported that "one is almost suffocated climbing the staircases of the Pavillon de Flore and crossing the corridors of the second floor." The Kings did not carry on the elaborate social protocols and festivities of their predecessors;  both had lived many years in exile, and they were used to a simpler life.  The formal and grand ceremony of the King's waking up and going to bed was replaced by a simple ceremony each evening at nine clock, when the King gave the order of the day to the commander and captains of the King's guards.  The King had to live within a household budget, fixed at the beginning of each year; twenty five million livres for Louis XVIII and twenty million for Charles X.
  High society, composed of two to three hundred families of the old aristocracy, government officials, army officers and high clergy,  was also much less glittering than it had been at Versailles under the old regime;  it was led by the Duchess of Angoulême, the daughter of Louis XVI, who always dressed in black and detested anything modern.  Society met in weekly "cercles" on the first floor of the Tuileries, or in the salons of the magnificent townhouses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain and Faubourg Saint Honoré.  Their income came mostly from their estates or from the State Treasury, from the various official positions they held, but their salaries were less generous than under the Old Regime.
  Just below high society, and growing in status and influence, were the bankers, including Casimir Perier, the Rothschilds, Benjamin Delessert and Hippolyte Ganneron, and new industrialists, including François Cavé, Charles-Victor Beslay, Jean-Pierre Darcey, and Jean-Antoine Chaptal. Unable to become part of the aristocracy, many were elected to the Chamber of Deputies and advocated liberal economic policies and democratic principles, which eventually brought them into growing conflict with the royal government.  While the aristocrats lived on the left bank in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, most of the newly wealthy chose to live on the right bank, often in new neighborhoods that were constructed during the Restoration; the Chaussée-d'Antin was the home of the bankers Rothschilds, Laffitte; Casimir Perier's hôtel was on the rue Neuvre du Luxembourg (now the rue Cambon); Delessert lived on rue Montmartre, Ganneron on rue Bleu in the faubourg Montmartre; Beslay and Cavé on rue Faubourg Saint-Denis and rue Neuve-Popincourt. 
  Below them was a growing middle class of merchants, lawyers, accountants, government clerks, teachers, doctors, shopkeepers, and skilled artisans.
  The largest number of Parisians were working class, either artisans in small enterprises,  domestic servants, or workers in the new factories.  They also included a large number of women, many of them working at home in the clothing industry, sewing and embroidering or other manual labor.
caption: Market of the Saint-Innocents (1822)
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