The French Revolution advanced the idea that property could be owned by anybody and you didn't have to be "nobility" to have power in society. Pretty frickin huge stuff.

As for Napoleon, his civil laws were extremely progressive for the time. There is a reason that he was beloved by basically everybody in France. In the context of chaos of the Republic, and the tyranny of the Kings before that, most people were relieved by the stability he brought, and ecstatic with the reforms enacted. He obviously wasn't perfect (especially his abhorrent treatment of Haiti), but Napoleon was a hero of history. It's all about context.