Enlightenment evolved out of necessity. It may indeed have had its philosophical and ideological concepts elaborated by the elite but it was to affront the evident shortcomings and bankruptcy of the absolutist models. If one inquires into issues such as the administration of justice, the waging of wars, the resistance of feudal concepts, recurrent popular uprisings and taxation for example, it is apparent that there was the humus and the need for change.

Louis XIV reactive absolutist reign owes much to la fronde upheaval that would have granted new powers to the parliament and the judiciary. The defeat of la fronde "exiled" progressive thought to the parlors (the salons) and the province. The fables of La Fontaine are political treatise, just as the careful extraordinary works of the Bordeaux landholder Montaigne.

It is fitting that Louis XIV left the state in shambles. His reign simply postponed an inevitable revolution.

I do find that qualifying any major intellectual movement as elite is reductive and somewhat a tautology. There are simple requirements for philosophical speculation in periods of repressive zeitgeist- education, free time, a minimum guarantee of livelihood, a tolerated or clandestine network for the diffusion of works, a knack for dissimulation. It is rare that a serf or peasant could fill the bill. In the rare occasions someone rose from the lower classes, usually through the Church, he or she became "elite."