France has always been ruled by a professional elite. These people go into administrative schools to be trained to run the country.
They’re literally a caste. Its like the most exclusive club in the Western World.
It’s true to this day that the social class one is born into in UK, Germany or France is the class one will die in.
Brain teaser: who set up what became the modern French administrative state? It wasn’t Napoleon, it was ol’ King Louis XIV. His goal was to break the power of the regional dukes, and he did it. Made them stand in his Versailles palace bedroom while he got into bed.
This practice was later adopted by Lyndon Johnson in a much cruder form.