He enlisted in the French Army at sixteen, joined his uncle Marchand in Warsaw and was promoted to sergeant on 11 April 1812.

He was made a Count in 1852 (by reversion of the title of his uncle General Marchand), and Marshal of France in 1856, at the same time as Canrobert and Bosquet.

[3] In 1859, botanist Ernest Saint-Charles Cosson published Randonia, a monotypic genus of flowering plant from North Africa, belonging to the family Resedaceae and was named in Jacques Louis Randon's honour.

He was nevertheless accused to have a part of responsibility in French defeat for having neglected to prepare for it during his second ministry and for having dissuaded Napoleon III of acting in favour of Austria at the time of the Battle of Sadova in 1866.

[citation needed] Modern research has shown that the latter accusation is unfounded and that, quite contrarily, Randon had advocated an immediate action against Prussia.