[2] Jean-Chrysostôme Calès entered military service at the beginning of the wars of the French Revolution, at the age of 23, on 10 March 1792, as Lieutenant in the 5th battalion of volunteers of Haute-Garonne.

At the beginning of 1796, captain Calès was sent to the Army of Italy[5] commended by the young General in Chief Bonaparte, invested on 2 March 1796 by the Directory,[6] the new republican regime, in which his elder brother Jean-Marie was elected a few months before representative at the Council of Five Hundred.

With these reinforcements, this small army, with a strength of 50,000 men, was composed in large majority of battalions of volunteers coming from Southern France.

The 4th regiment returned to France at the beginning of the year 1798, but did not, however, follow General Bonaparte in his campaign of Egypt and Syria conducted between 1798 and 1801.

On 13 Floreal Year VIII (3 May 1800), at the Battle of Engen, while his demi-brigade was being enveloped by the enemy's cavalry, captain Calès succeeded in opening a passage, and, although wounded, he did not leave his service.

Six days later, on 19 Floreal Year VIII (9 May 1800), at the Battle of Biberach, Calès commanded the battalion of the reunited Grenadiers: he repulsed the enemy and seized two pieces of cannon.

Captain Calès was sent to the Camp of Boulogne (established near Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1803), where General Bonaparte, now head of the government since 1799 and First Consul for Life since 1802, assembled for the first time his famous « Grande Armée » (or Army of the Ocean Coasts), to plan an invasion of the United Kingdom.

[10] Captain Calès was also promoted battalion Commander in the 4th Infantry regiment of line of the Grande Armée on 3 Germinal Year XIII (24 March 1805).He served in the famed IV Corps commended by Marchal Soult, under the orders of Colonel Joseph Bonaparte[11] (Napoleon's elder brother, and later King of Naples and Sicily and of Spain) first, and soon later, under the orders of Colonel Louis-Léger Boyeldieu (fr).

This decisive victory was marked, by the signature of the treaties of Tilsit (7 and 9 July 1807) by Emperor Napoleon I and Tzar Alexander I, the end of the war of the Fourth Coalition and the beginning of a short period of peace in Europe.

Colonel Calès was made Officer of the Legion of Honor (Officier de la Légion d'Honneur) on the following 11 July (1807).

In September 1808, Colonel Calès and his regiment were reassigned to the Army of Spain, still within the I Corps commanded by Marchal Victor, to take part to the Spanish War.

[19] But following Napoleon's severe defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, and his second abdication four days later, the Chamber was dissolved on 13 July 1815, by order of King Louis XVIII.