Early Life
![Picture](/uploads/1/0/4/6/10461357/4445822.jpg?276)
His mother Marie-Françoise de Pesnel, was a pious lady of partial English extraction. She brought to her husband a great increase in wealth in the valuable wine producing property of La Brède. When she died in 1696, the barony of La Brède passed to Charles-Louis, who was her eldest child. While his father, Jacques de Secondat, was a soldier that belonged to an old military family of modest wealth that had been ennobled in the 16th century for services to the crown. After his death in 1713, he was placed under the care of his uncle. He was first educated at home and then in the village. However, Montesquieu was sent away to school in the year 1700. The school was the Collège de Juilly, close to Paris and in the diocese of Meaux. It was much patronized by the prominent families of Bordeaux, and the priests of the Oratory, to whom it belonged, provided a sound education on enlightened and modern lines. He then later continued his studies at the faculty of law at the University of Bordeaux in 1705, graduated, and became an advocate in 1708. In 1715 he married Jeanne de Lartigue, a wealthy Protestant, who brought him a respectable dowry of 100,000 livres, and in due course presented him with two daughters and a son, Jean-Baptiste.(EBSCO, Robert)