the.com/populace

means The ordinary people of a place, taken together as a body distinct from their rulers.

from From French populace, borrowed from Italian popolaccio — and there's a sting in that Italian form: the suffix -accio is pejorative, so popolaccio literally meant something like 'the rabble' or 'the common mob,' from popolo, 'people' (ultimately Latin populus). The word has since softened in English into a fairly neutral term for 'the general public,' but its roots remember a time when naming the masses and sneering at them were nearly the same act.