He based his subsequent fortune not only on this company, but also on transatlantic trade (supplying the American colonies with basics, in return for far more financially interesting products such as tropical fruits, rare trees and enslaved people) and his sugar plantations on Saint-Domingue (Haiti).

[3] His rapid rise, comparable to that of several bourgeois men of the Age of Enlightenment, gained him promotion to noble rank and allowed him to acquire several estates.

Laborde was named marquis and in 1784 acquired the Château de Méréville, rebuilding it to his taste.

However, this was not enough to save him from being guillotined in Paris under the "loi des suspects" on the orders of Louis de Saint-Just, in one of the last fits of the Reign of Terror in May 1794.

In 1792, much of the fabulous Orleans Collection of paintings was briefly his, before he was forced by events to abandon his ambition to exhibit them in his Paris house, and sold them.