Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, was born at Château La Brède, near Bordeaux, in 1689. He received a classical education at the Collège de Juilly in Meaux, run by the Oratorians. Leaving the college and continuing his studies in the department of law at Bordeaux University, he became an advocate at the Bordeaux Parliament in 1708 and a councilor in 1714. His reflections on history and politics led Montesquieu to publish the Lettres Persanes (Persian Letters ) in 1721, a little masterpiece of humor. Under the pretext of describing the journey of two Persian travelers in Europe, the author presented a caustic satire on French customs and political institutions, attacking religious obscurantism and absolute monarchy in particular.

In 1728, despite the opposition of the king, he was elected a member of the Académie F rançaise, and the same year set off on a journey to the most important cities in Europe for the purpose of study. The fruit of this journey was his work Voyages (Impr. Gounouilhou, Bordeaux 1894-96). The volume, written in the form of a journal, is filled with the author's observations and annotations, in a style that had little in common with other travel writings of the period. With the publication of the Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence (Reflections on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans) in 1733, Montesquieu presented an ethical reflection on history, a prelude to his most important work, the De l'esprit des lois (The Spirit of Laws) . Taking fourteen years to write, this constituted a true encyclopedia of politics and jurisprudence in the 18th century and opened the way to a secular and progressive vision of the state.

The publication of the work was greeted with fierce controversy, especially on the part of the Jesuits and Jansenists, and it was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1751. During the last years of his life, Montesquieu continued to work on a series of books, many of which were published after his death.