Abstract
The historian of the seventeenth century who bewails the absence of a creditable biography of Louis XIV or of William III underlines a significant development of historical writing in the twentieth century. Overpowered by those who deny that biography can be history and convinced that the masses have never secured their due share of attention in early modern times, the scholar uneasily plots an investigation of underground discontent in the gilds of Colbert's day or resolutely pens an essay that destroys once and for all the idea that the workers of France admired Napoleon. Meanwhile, in classes which race from Petrarch to Waterloo, the scholar turned teacher admits that there actually were an age of absolutism and an age of enlightened despotism, for the royal touch is inescapable.
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