He later led a group of French royalists to settle in Upper Canada, but returned to England after a few years, when that effort proved largely unsuccessful.

[3] Family connections through his maternal grandmother allowed Puisaye to obtain a commission as a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment near the German border in February 1775.

[2][4] His liberal reformist political position enabled him to be made the commander of the National Guard in the Évreux district in 1790.

[2] In Normandy Puisaye was in command of a local troop of federalists and royalists who were surprised by Republican forces in a July 1793 attack.

The troops scattered and De Puisaye went into hiding in the Pertre forest, while his estate was sacked by Republican forces.

In England, he persuaded the British Prime Minister William Pitt to back an invasion of France to restore the monarchy.

His offer to support the Comte d'Artois in seeking the French throne was rejected, and Puisaye resigned his position as lieutenant-general in the king's armies.

In England, Puisaye and his fellow "French émigrés" were supported with public money and private charity, which quickly made them unwelcome.

Puisaye arranged for the French royalists to be settled in Upper Canada on the same terms as the United Empire Loyalists some two decades before.

[2] On 22 November 1798, the Executive Council of Upper Canada approved land grants for the settlers in Uxbridge, Gwillimbury, Whitchurch and an unnamed county north of Whitby, all in Ontario.

Puisaye himself expressed his dissatisfaction with the area where the settlers were granted plots to Peter Russell, the administrator of Upper Canada; Russell wrote to Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe that "[Puisaye] now thinks the distance too great for navigation, the roads impracticable, and the consequent difficulties of transport insuperable, and in short that his people are unequal to the hardships of reducing such heavy timbered forests into cultivation.

Most of the settlers abandoned the project, including Puisaye, who returned to England in May 1802 to find more funding to support the colony.