Cluseret was born on 13 June 1823 in Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine. In 1841 he entered the Saint-Cyr military academy, and was commissioned in the French Army in 1843. He was made captain of the 23rd Mobile Guard battalion following the February revolution of 1848, and participated in the suppression of the June Days Uprising which was to later earn him hostility in certain socialist quarters. His support for an anti-Bonapartist demonstration on 29 January 1849 saw him demoted from command of his battalion, and he fled to London after Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's December 1851 coup.