'William Beik culminates his years of scholarship with a stunning picture of the social groupings, political dynamics, beliefs and customary practices of early modern France. We look at France from its provinces and its center, we see it through the eyes of peasants, townsfolk, and nobles. We savor the difference between its village tax-payers, its enterprising tax-collectors, and its sumptuously supported king and his courtiers. Especially, Beik gives us a lucid analysis of how the whole political and social system worked, its tensions and means of equilibrium, its sources of resistance and renewal. By the end we understand both the self-congratulation of the French elite and the deep dissatisfaction that led to revolution.' Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto and author of Society and Culture in Early Modern France