Career
He was the youngest of a large family belonging to the poorer nobility. He was elected as a stand-in diplomat from the nobility of bailiwick of Clermont-Ferrand to the Estates-General, where he was a member from September 1789. Later, in 1791, he was also elected to the National Constituent Assembly, where he sat on the Royalist side.
In September 1791, after the dissolution of the Assembly, Montlosier fled to Germany where he tried to join the counter-revolutionary Army of Condé at Coblenz.
After some protest concerning the liberal leanings he had shown in the Assembly, he was finally accepted. After the cannonade of Valmy, Montlosier withdrew to Hamburg, and thence to London, where he avoided English society, moving exclusively among the French exiles.
In his Courrier de Londres, published in London, he advocated moderation and the abandonment by the exiles of any idea of revenge. He was recalled to Paris in 1801, with permission to publish his paper in London.
The Courrier was soon suppressed, nevertheless, its editor being compensated by a comfortable sinecure in the ministry of foreign affairs
Next year he sold his pen to the government to edit the violent anti-English Bulletin de Paris.