Michel was brought up at the Jesuit College in Quebec before becoming a cadet with the colonial troupes de la marine, breaking family tradition by being the first not to preside over the Sovereign Council of New France.

In 1749, his relation, the Commandant General of New France, Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière, promoted him to ensign and entrusted him to lead a reconnaissance mission into the region between Montreal and Michilimackinac.

Three years later he returned to New France as a Lieutenant and with the title of King's Engineer in the Colonial Regular Army, working under his father-in-law on the construction of the Ramparts of Quebec City.

The court instead appointed Nicolas Sarrebouce, an engineer in the French Army, who wasted no time in hindering Lotbinière's career, sending reports to Paris accusing him of incompetence and malfeasance, ruining his credibility with the Ministry of Marine.

In 1760 he was put in charge of fortifying Ile aux Noix to impede the British advance from the south, but was forced to fall back to Montreal, Quebec.

Another of his first cousins, Nicolas Renaud d'Avene des Meloizes-Fresnoy (1729-1803), Marquis de Fresnoy, served as major-general in the French victory at the Battle of Sainte-Foy, for which he was rewarded the Grand Cross Order of Saint Louis.

After the capitulation, Lotbiniere left his wife and newly born daughter in Canada and returned to France with his 12-year-old son, cadet Michel-Eustache-Gaspard-Alain Chartier de Lotbinière.

Before returning to Canada he spent a year in London to try to make sure that Alainville and Hocquart (which since the Royal Proclamation of 1763 fell within the boundaries of the Province of New York) would be recognized as his by the British Board of Trade.

In 1776, the British Board of Trade rejected his claims to Alainville and offered him a grant of an equal size of land in Quebec in compensation for his loss of Hocquart.

His son, Michel-Eustache-Gaspard-Alain Chartier de Lotbinière, inherited the title but being politically astute did not use it in order to maintain favour with the new British regime in Canada.

On arriving at New York he had asked permission to return to his home country but Quebec Governor Guy Carleton (Lord Dorchester) categorically refused him re-entry.

Embittered and at odds with his family, Chartier de Lotbinière, who had set himself apart from the other seigneurs by the bold stance he had adopted against Governor Carleton, ended his days alone in New York.