Why was Louis XIV successful in pacifying the same aristocrats who had been troublesome for Richelieu and Mazarin? What role did absolutism play in reinforcing or changing the traditional social system in seventeenth-century France? This analysis of the provincial reality of absolutism argues that the answers to these questions lie in the relationship between the regional aristocracy and the crown. Starting with a critical examination of current approaches to state and society by institutional, social "Annales," and Marxist historians, the author calls for a new class analysis based on the findings of all these schools.