The previous pages may have created the illusion that Renaissance military memoirs were ‘democratic’ texts, claiming a more equal distribution of historical importance and political power than the royal-national Great Story allowed. This was true to a very limited extent only. Renaissance military memoirs claimed that any lifestory is history, and anyone with a lifestory has a right to a place in history and to autonomous political power. Yet, in their view, only a very few people had a lifestory. Thus while squeezing themselves and their colleagues into history, memoirists take great care to shut the door behind them.

Memoirists manage to keep history exclusive because, though they equate history with lifestory, they define lifestory by means of ‘honorable deeds’, not by means of experiences, personality, or personal development. All people have experiences, and the personalities of all people develop, be they warrior noblemen or peasant women. Yet if ‘lifestory’ is a collection of honorable deeds rather than a story of personal development, only a few people have a lifestory: only those who perform faits have a vie.

This too was a legacy from late-medieval aristocratic culture. Thus, suppose the chronicler Jean le Bel, Froissart's model, had gone on a trip of his own to the Pyrenees, just like his more famous successor. And suppose that on that trip he had met Pierre Maury, a shepherd from the village of Montaillou, who is one of the main heroes of le Roy Ladurie's classic, Montaillou.