This book revisits the emergence of democracy during the French Revolution and examines how French liberalism evolved in response. By focusing on two concepts that are often studied separately—public opinion and popular sovereignty—it uncovers a significant historical shift in the understanding of democracy. Initially tied to the direct exercise of popular sovereignty by Rousseau, Condorcet, the Montagnards, and Bonapartist theorists, democracy was first rejected, then associated with the idea of rule by opinion by liberals over the course of the nineteenth century. This redefinition culminated in the invention of the concept of “liberal democracy” in France in the 1860s. The epilogue explores the legacy of the idea of "liberal democracy" in twentieth-century French thought and examines its impact on contemporary democratic theory. In particular, Ghins highlights how the concept of “liberal democracy,” originally conceived in opposition to “Caesarism” during the Second Empire, was redeployed by French liberals against shifting adversaries—“totalitarianism” from the 1930s onward, and “populism” since the 1980s.