Before 1799, France was politically unstable and economically exhausted after the Revolution and the Terror, with feudal privilege only partly dismantled and inflation rampant. Continental Europe was a patchwork of monarchies and small states (e.g. ~300 in the Holy Roman Empire) bound by no shared identity, only a dynastic balance of power.
Napoleon Bonaparte's rule (from 1799 to 1815) centralised French taxation and banking, and introduced the Napoleonic Code. His rule established legal equality and secular law, which was later adopted across much of Europe. It also imposed press censorship, secret policing, and reinstated colonial slavery. His wars killed an estimated 3 to 6 million people, dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, and consolidated dozens of small states, while the nationalist resistance his conquests provoked gave birth to the unification movements that later created modern Germany and Italy.