He is best known for his efforts, often daring and often placing him at personal risk, to save King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, He was born in Goutz-les-Tartas (Gers), and died in Chadieu, near Vic-le-Comte (Puy-de-Dôme).

At the end of October 1793, fraud was uncovered in the liquidation of the French East India Company, and de Batz was named as the leader of a vast conspiracy against the fledgeling republic.

[9] It was at about this time that de Batz, who still concealed his true loyalties, secretly proposed undermining the Revolution by printing counterfeit assignats, the paper currency the Republic depended on to finance its activities.

[10] Lestapis observes that Batz's plan was similar to one that historian Louis Blanc claimed was provided to the Pitt government by the Scottish banker William Playfair at about the same time.

[12] Both the popular historical author Meade Minnigerode's biography of de Batz and the proposal that Blanc attributed to Playfair claim that a goal of these economic warfare measures was to create chaos within the Revolution by turning its leaders against each other.

According to Minnigerode[13] and academic historians such as David Andress,[16] de Batz was also secretly aiding the royalists by skimming funds from the transactions he conducted for the French Republic that would be used to support counterrevolutionary activities.

[citation needed] Under the Bourbon Restoration, he was awarded the rank of maréchal de camp (field marshal) and the cross of St. Louis for his services, as well as the military command of Cantal, which was revoked after the Hundred Days period.