Biography of Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne was born in 1533 to a wealthy family.  He had a very unusual childhood as his father had created an elaborate plan to mold him.  For his first few years he lived with a peasant family so he could learn what it was to live like the poor.  Then he moved back to the family chateau and he was taught Latin.  In fact, he was assigned a German doctor who was fluent in Latin but spoke no French at all.  The rest of the family and the servants were also instructed to only speak Latin to him.  Montaigne was given constant intellectual and spiritual instruction.  Every morning he was woken by a musician with various instruments.
He was sent away for the finest education available and rose to great heights.  Before he was thirty he became a courtier of King Charles IX (a different king than helped Rabelais).  He was there until his close friend, Etienne de la Boetie died. 
Montaigne was forced into marriage and had six daughters, only one of which lived past childhood.  At his father's urging, he worked on translating Latin works and moved back to the family chateau.  After his father's death, he became lord of the house. 
At the age of 38 (my age!) he withdrew from family and social life.  He isolated himself in his tower, a library which contained more than 1000 books.  He created this inscription for himself:

'In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michael de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.'

 It was there that he started writing his 'Essais', the very first collection of essays.  The word is French for 'Attempts' and the essay certainly represents a step forward in the struggle for men to educate each other. 
Montaigne eventually went back out into the world and helped various kings during the French 'wars of religion'.  He fell ill in 1592 and died of something like tonsillitis.  Before he died he was struck mute, which bothered him greatly.  Near the end he called for a mass to be celebrated and died while it was going on.