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== Career ==
He was the son of a lawyer named Corret, and was certainly baptised and perhaps born at [[Carhaix-Plouguer]] in [[Brittany]], though nearby [[Saint-Hernin]] where his father had a position is one of a number of other places in the area put forward as his place of birth. His desire for a military career being strongly marked, he was enabled by the not uncommon device of producing a certificate of nobility signed by his friends, first to be nominally enlisted in the [[Maison du Roi]], and soon afterwards to receive a commission in the line, under the name of [[Corret de Kerbaufret]]. Four years after joining, in 1771, he assumed with the help of a letter from the [[Duke of Bouillon]] the surname of [[La Tour d'Auvergne]], claiming descent from an illegitimate half-brother of the great
[[Image:LaTour d'Auvergne.jpg|thumb|left|Statue of de la Tour d'Auvergne in Carhaix]]In 1784 he was promoted captain, and in 1791 he received the [[Cross of St. Louis]]. In the early part of the [[French Revolution]] his patriotism was still more conspicuously displayed in his resolute opposition to the proposals of many of his brother officers in the Angoumois regiment to emigrate rather than to swear to the constitution, and he fought in the revolutionary army in the [[French Revolutionary Wars]], refusing promotion beyond the grade of captain. In 1792 his lifelong interest in [[numismatics]] and questions of language was shown by a work which he published on the Bretons. At this time he was serving under [[Montesquiou]] in the [[Alps]], and although there was only outpost fighting he distinguished himself by his courage and audacity, qualities which were displayed in more serious fighting in the [[Pyrenees]] the next year. He declined well-earned promotion to colonel, and, being broken in health and compelled, owing to the loss of his teeth, to live on milk, he left the army in 1795.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}
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