As a young man, he fought in the West Indies; upon the dissolution of his regiment, he served as a mercenary in several armies of northern Europe.

His father, Lauthier de Chabanon, was an officer in the French army and reported by most sources as an aide to the Marshal of Armentieres, and either a count or an earl.

His father was probably Dominique-Nicholas Lauthier, the commandant at Sarrebourg (1738–1742) (M. le Chevalier Lauthier de Chabanon) in Louis XV's service, who was awarded pensions totaling 1,000 livres, upon his retirement, as former captain of Strasbourg militia battalion and as former captain of grenadiers of the provincial artillery regiment of Strasbourg.

[3] In 1792 he regained his commission at the onset of the War of the First Coalition,[4] as a brevet captain in the 6th battalion of infantry légère, in the Army of the Rhine.

At the outbreak of the campaign, he covered the left wing, with responsibility for the invasion of the Grisons, with two brigades under command of Nicolas Oudinot and Ruby.

[7] This wing was to maintain communication with the Army of the Danube via Ruby's brigade, which stood at the farthest left, in the vicinity of Schaffhausen.

This wing spread in the direction of the Rhine, where Souham's force covered Frickthal and Basel, between the Aare and Hüningen, and Legrand's brigade held Altbreisach and Kehl, and observed the debouches from the Black Forest.

[11] In addition, Massena sent Xaintrailles to Valais, with 6,000 men, where some of the inhabitants had mounted an insurgency against the republican forms adopted by the new Swiss government.

[13] On 24 May 1799, several thousand insurgents, reinforced with French deserters, recruits from some of the minor cantons, some Austrian battalions, and emboldened with the news of approaching Russian forces, emerged from the wood at Finge and attacked Xaintrailles' encampment.

Xaintrailles sent two flanking detachments to the crest of the mountains, well out of artillery range, while the main body in the valley attacked the position in front of them.

It received such a storm of musketry and canister fire at the foot of the entrenchments that it began to waver; at this point, a well-sustained fusilade from the crest of the mountains showered the insurgents' flanks.

While he was reforming his troops, he offered the insurgents an olive branch: if they would lay down their arms and return to their homes, he promised an amnesty for the past.

A number of the insurgents did submit, but many withdrew to Lax where, reinforced by a couple of Austrian battalions, they rejected all offers of amnesty and placed their reliance on nature's formidable position.

He established his headquarters at Brig, from which he could control the passes at Great St. Bernard and Simplon and access to northern Italy, and awaited his instructions from Massena.

[15] Xaintrailles was charged with excessive exactions on the population, according to Jean-de-Dieu Soult, who replaced him with Jean Victor Tharreau at the end of the summer.