ABSTRACT
Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise de Bonald was born in 1754 in the town of Millau to a noble family that had been established since the 1300s in the Rouergue region of the south of France. After his graduation, Bonald entered the Musketeers, around the end of 1773, where he remained until the suppression of that corps in 1776. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1814, Bonald threw himself fully into public life, and emerged as one of the principal statesmen of the regime whose restoration his works had predicted. It fell to the new government either to confirm or to roll back the vast changes the Revolution had produced. As the leader of those opposed to divorce, he gave a crucial speech in the Chamber of Deputies, which essentially summarizes the argument of On Divorce, and was subsequently appointed to write the report of a government commission on the subject.
