The Jockey Club was originally organized as the "Society for the Encouragement of the Improvement of Horse Breeding in France", to provide a single authority for horse racing in the nation, beginning at Chantilly in 1834. It swiftly became the center for the most "sportifs" gentlemen of "le tout-Paris." At the same time, when aristocrats and men of the "haute bourgeoisie" still formed the governing class, its Anglo-Gallic membership could not fail to give it some political colour: Napoleon III, who had passed some early exile in England, asserted that he had learned to govern an empire through "his intercourse with the calm, self-possessed men of the English turf".