And there was a much more powerful core of leaders who were the children of the various types of elites within the ancien regime.
Almost the entire history of France the century after the revolution was authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian rule with the collaboration of intellectual, economic, and religious elites.
And this is why Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, and other flavors of Communists take a dim view of the French Revolution.
If a revolution between the cultural elite and the capital elite just led to the pre-eminence of the capital elite and their co-opting of the cultural elite, that means the revolution basically had no positive impact for the overwhelming majority of the French subaltern of the 19th century.
And don't get me or my extended family started about French colonialism.