Divorce was unknown in France until the Revolution. But the exponents of the new gospel of Liberty and Equality soon discovered that the system of indissoluble marriage was logically incompatible with their fundamental principles. And so in 1792, the Legislative Assembly decided, after three minutes of discussion, that’ the right to divorce was a necessary corollary of individual liberty, which could not permit of any indissoluble tie.’ On this principle the Assembly authorised divorce by mutual consent, with a minimum of formalities; at the same time it abolished the old system of legal separations. The result of the change was more rapid than anyone had anticipated, and in Paris there were in the years 1793 and 1794 half as many divorces as marriages. Napoleon, who was a convinced believer in the necessity for a strict marriage law—apart from the special circumstances of his own career—made drastic changes in the revolutionary system when he promulgated the Code Civil in 1804. He revived the old system of legal separations and, while he retained the right to divorce by mutual consent, he introduced many formal requirements before it could be obtained, and also insisted upon the fulfilment of certain conditions. Thus, divorce by mutual consent could not be obtained either before two years had elapsed after the marriage (and under the Code Civil a French woman is obliged to live with her husband unless she has obtained either a separation or a divorce), or after the marriage had lasted twenty years. Also no woman over forty-five could obtain a divorce by consent. The consent of the parents on both sides must also be obtained.