Louis de Bonald (1754-1840) was not just a counter-revolutionary theorist and the father of social metaphysics. The elected member for the Aveyron département under the Restoration and spiritual leader of the ultra-royalists is now perhaps best remembered for the law that bears his name abolishing divorce. The law, passed on May 8th, 1816, marked the victory of Bonald’s long antidivorce campaign, begun years before when Napoleon first mooted a French Civil Code, prompting him to write the famous 1801 treatise Du Divorce considéré au XIXème siècle and other less wellknown works such as his Lettre to Portalis and various press articles, never since reprinted. A study of these works sheds new light on the divorce question. Bonald’s reputation as unyielding and politically oppressive is tempered by the image that emerges of a man with a full grasp of the key issues of the day and keen to ensure that post-revolutionary regeneration was not to the detriment of society’s weakest members – women and children.