" Plebian Absolutism

Thus we see that the advance of the common people in the state is closely linked with that of the state in the nation. The common people are to the state servants who buttress it; the state is to the common people the master who raises them.

In favoring the freeing of the serfs and limiting the rights of the barons to exploit their underlings, the king thereby weakens his natural enemies. In encouraging the formation of a stratum of well-to-do bourgeoisie, an oligarchy of commoners and a mercantile class, he gets himself servants and assures himself support. In instituting the farming of taxes, he opens to this bourgeoisie the gates of the state. In allowing these taxes to become a heritable property, he links with his own fortunes entire families among the bourgeoisie. He encourages the universities, which provide him with the most effective champions. These maintain his cause, whether against the Emperor or the Pope, in brilliant theses, but, also still more, they gnaw darkly and continuously at the foundations of baronial right. "

― Bertrand De Jouvenel , On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth