[2] After studying at the Académie royale d'architecture in Paris, Arsène Lacarrière-Latour embarked for the French part of the island of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to oversee his family's properties.
After the defeat of the French army commanded by Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Rochambeau (son of the Count of Rochambeau, Marshal of France, the hero of the American Revolutionary War) he relocated to the United States, first in New York in 1804,[3] where he became friends with Edward Livingston, an American politician, and brother of the diplomat Robert R. Livingston, signatory in Paris of the treaty of the Louisiana Purchase by the United States from France.
[2] Although Laclotte and Latour dissolved their business partnership in 1813, the following year Nicolas Girod hired them to transform his property that later became known as the Napoleon House[5] He participated in the War of 1812 under the leadership of General Andrew Jackson, as a Field rank engineer officer (1814-1815).
[b] Having become Major Latour, he relocated to Philadelphia,[6] where he found himself within the entourage of French exiles from the Premier Empire gathered around Joseph Bonaparte, General Charles Lallemand whom he had known well in Haiti.
He would conspire with Jean Lafitte and Mexican independence fighters to devise mysterious missions in the west, without it being known whether it was on behalf of the American president (Monroe), or that of the Spanish ambassador Luis de Onis.