He was born 4 February 1766 at Pointe-aux-Trembles in Quebec, which was then the British colony, Province of Québec, the son of an officer in the French military.

[5] He married later to an Alsatian, Louise Zäpffel or Zöpffel, the sister of Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke.

He and his second wife had a son, Adolphe Hastrel de Rivedoux (1805–1875), artillery captain and traveler, but best known as a painter and print maker.

[1] Étienne d'Hastrel was admitted to the Royal Military School in Paris as a gentleman-cadet, with the rank of sous-lieutenant on 11 September 1781.

At the moment when the flag was blessed and given to the battalion, the commander gave the orders to leave the church, but the soldiers would not budge.

Then Capitaine Sermizelles, who had stayed, took the flag and gave it to the priest to be hung in the church.... [T]he battalion...returned to the barracks in order.

[4] In 1799, he was appointed to Jean-Baptiste Jourdan's general staff of the Army of the Danube, garrisoned initially in Strasbourg.

After crossing the Rhine in early March, the Army engaged Archduke Charles' Austrian troops at the battles of Ostrach and Stockach.

In 1800, he described Hastrel to François Nicolas Fririon: "The talents he has received from nature have been expanded by a careful education.

[4] In 1809, Napoleon sent Etienne Hastrel to Spain, to command the engineer park attached to French army.

[1] Sixty-one of his letters, written between 1806 and 1841, are preserved at the Public Library of France, under the title Belgique, Les fètes de Bruges.