Absolute monarchies sought a new reliable class and failed against the bourgeoisie.

Evidence

For a long time the absolute monarchies looked about society for a class upon which to rely as securely as the feudal monarchy had upon the nobility. In France an incessant struggle between the guilds and the monarchy, which wanted to incorporate them into the state system, had been going on since the fifteenth century. The most interesting of these experiments were doubtless the rise of mercantilism and the attempts of the absolute state to get an absolute monopoly over national business and industry. The resulting disaster, and the bankruptcy brought about by the concerted resistance of the rising bourgeoisie, are sufficiently well known. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 95

Categorization

• XREF: The monarchy’s search for a reliable non-noble class frames why Jews became the state’s chosen financiers — the direct setup for the next stage of Arendt’s argument.