According to information he provided to his masonic lodge in New Orleans, he was born in Cette (now Sète) in Languedoc, France. (Contrary to the spurious "Diary of Jean Laffite", he was not the older brother of Pierre and Jean Laffite.) He may have joined the army of Revolutionary France as an artillerist. He served in the French Republic's artillery corp. In 1802 he accompanied General Charles Leclerc to Saint-Domingue to quell Toussaint Louverture's slave revolt. Yellow fever took the lives of many of the French soldiers including General Leclerc.