The second of Barzun's four revolutions was that of and on behalf of the monarchs. Or, more strictly, it was of and on behalf of kings and queens, and it is the way in which they made themselves into monarchs properly speaking. Monarchs in the strict sense are monocrats, the only rulers of their realms. Anyone else who exercises authority in a realm is doing so as the agent of the monocrat, or is in rebellion. That was not true of kings in medieval times. Indeed, King Louis XIV, in a memoir, complains that it still wasn't true enough in his own day. He said that every provincial gentleman feels free to "act the tyrant toward his peasants," and that rather than a single ruler, the people "have a thousand." If that same King also said, "I am the state," (Barzun doubts it, but the legend is tenacious) he meant it in a rather different sense from the way in which it is usually quoted. It was an aspiration . One could paraphrase it this way: ...