Career
Destouches was a lieutenant-general of the artillery in the Royal Army. He served under Kings Louis XIV and Louis XV, gaining the nickname Canon. He became a chevalier of the ordre de Saint-Lazare in 1690, and a chevalier of the ordre de Saint-Louis in 1720, then commandeur in 1725.
From an affair with his mistress Claudine Guérin de Tencin, Destouches fathered a child in 1716.
In later life, the child would become famous as Jean le Rond d"Alembert, mathematician, philosophe, and co-editor of the Encyclopédie. Destouches then secretly funded his illegitimate son"s education, and when he died in Paris in 1726, he left d"Alembert a healthy income of 1,200 livres a year.