Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he was at first a musketeer, then a lieutenant of the Marchaux (guardsmen of the Ancien Régime), and embraced Liberalism. At the start of the French Revolution in 1789, he was elected deputy to the States-General by the Third Estate of Vitry-le-François, and joined the National Assembly (his portrait stands in the foreground in Jacques-Louis David's celebrated sketch of the Oath of the Tennis Court).