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In 1802, Europe was undergoing the First Industrial Revolution. As machine manufacturing replaced the agrarian economy, cities like London grew, and people started making a much more noticeable impact on nature. The technological change also resulted in societal upheaval. In 1811, for example, a group of English textile workers known as the Luddites rebelled against their employers, destroying the machines that had begun to replace them. Also at this time, the French Revolution was a recent memory. Wordsworth was highly sympathetic to the French democratic causes, though disgusted by the ensuing Reign of Terror. While living in France in the early 1790s, Wordsworth met and fell in love with Annette Vallon, and in 1792 she gave birth to their daughter Caroline. According to the journals of Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy (who was also a poet), “Westminster Bridge” was conceived on the morning of her departure with her brother to Calais, France. The purpose of the trip was to visit Caroline, whom Wordsworth had never met, and inform Annette of Wordsworth’s plans to marry his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Wordsworth put down a record of this visit, too. In the sonnet "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," he describes walking on the beach with Caroline, at sunset.