He was born at Auzon (Haute-Loire), the son of a poor weaver, and went to the French West Indies to seek his fortune.
On the island of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), he began the manufacture of tafia (an inferior quality of rum), but lost everything in a fire.
[citation needed] He was on bad terms with the majority of the politicians (particularly with Jean-Paul Marat) and spent much of his time in prison, all governments regarding him as an agitator and accusing him of inciting to insurrection.
Arrested for the first time for trying to force an entrance into the club of the Cordeliers, from which he had been expelled, he was released, but was in prison from 12 December 1793, to 21 September 1794, and again from 9 March to 26 October 1795.
After 1816 he turned Royalist, and passed his last years in importuning the Restoration government for compensation for his lost property in Saint-Domingue.