Aged eleven, he served as a cadet during the Siege of Quebec in 1759. The following year he was gazetted second ensign with the French Army when they were stationed in Montreal before accompanying his father to France. In France, he resumed his studies with the thought of joining the French cavalry, but following the Treaty of Paris (1763) and the consequent loss of his father's land in America, he returned to Quebec and was commissioned as a military surveyor in 1768.
From 1770, his father had incurred many debts, so with the financial help of his father's friend Charles-François Tarieu de La Naudière, he kept the seigneuries of Lotbiniere, Vaudreuil, Rigaud and Rigaud de Vaudreuil (which he sold in 1772 to his uncle, Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry) in the family by purchasing them from his father. Although only in his early twenties, through his immense properties, prestigious name and family connections he was now one of the most influential Canadian seigneurs.
Unlike his father, he immediately recognised the importance of working with the British and he therefore adapted himself to the circumstances in which he found himself. After the American invasion of Montreal in 1775, he was one of the first Canadian seigneurs to offer his services to the Governor Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester. He helped to defend Fort St Johns (later Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu) against the Americans, but was captured and taken prisoner by them and removed to Albany, New York. It was during this time that he developed a strong friendship with William Bingham, whose only son later went on to marry one of his daughters. He was released in 1776, and on returning to Montreal in 1777, having won Carleton's trust, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace. He continued to serve in the Canadian militia and in 1794 became Lieutenant-Colonel of the Vaudreuil Battalion of Militia. In 1803, he was made a full Colonel, finally retiring from the militia in 1818. He died at his home in Montreal, 1822.
Language debate, 1793
Charles Huot's depiction of Lotbinière giving his famous speech in Le débat sur les langues, 1793
In the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, Lotbinière was elected Speaker in the 1st Parliament of Lower Canada, having entered with his brother-in-law, Pierre-Amable de Bonne, for the riding of York which took in his seigneuries of Vaudreuil and Rigaud, Quebec. Politically he is best remembered for his role in sanctioning the use of French in the Parliamentary records. The moment is captured in a painting by Charles Huot which hangs above the Speaker's Chair in the present-day National Assembly of Quebec. In this speech, recorded in the Quebec Gazette on 31 January 1793, he asked for French and English to be given equal recognition in the House,
Since the majority of our constituents are placed in a special situation, we are obliged to depart from the ordinary rules and forced to ask for the use of a language which is not that of the empire; but, being as fair to others as we hope they will be to us, we should not want our language eventually to banish that of His Majesty’s other subjects.
Three heiresses
Charlotte (Munro) Chartier de Lotbinière, the mother of Lotbinière's three childrenMrs Marie Charlotte Bingham, wife of William Bingham
Chartier de Lotbinière was married twice. In 1770, he married Josette, sister of Lt.-Colonel Joseph-Marie Godefroy de Tonnancour. She died without children in 1799. In 1802, at Vaudreuil, he married Mary Charlotte Munro (1776–1834), the youngest daughter of Captain The Hon. John Munro of Fowlis and his wife Marie Talbot Gilbert Brouwer, of Albany, New York. They were the parents of three daughters, the heiresses who were known in Quebec as The Three Graces or Les Trois Cannelles.
Their eldest daughter, Louise-Josephte (1803–1869), chose the family home of Vaudreuil as her dowry and married Robert Unwin Harwood. They were the parents of ten children, from whom descend the de Lotbinière-Harwood family.
Their second daughter, Marie-Charlotte (1805–1866), was given Rigaud as her dowry. In 1821, she married the American millionaire, William Bingham (whose sister was married to Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton), the only son of Senator William Bingham of Philadelphia (an old friend of Charlotte's father), and his wife Ann Willing Bingham, daughter of Thomas Willing. They lived at Montreal in the house that would become Donegana's Hotel before moving to Paris, and later separated. He remained in Paris and she died at Oxford Terrace in London. They were the parents of two sons who died in early manhood and three daughters. All three daughters lived in France and married French Counts. The youngest, Georgina, married Count Raoul d'Eprémesnil, grandson of Jean-Jacques Duval d'Eprémesnil. The Seigneury of Rigaud was passed to Charlotte's eldest niece, Marie-Louise de Lotbinière-Harwood who married Antoine Eustache de Bellefeuille MacDonald, son of John MacDonald of Garth.
