Modern sources tend to agree that he was the son of the postmaster at Nuits-St-Georges (although some continue to support the claim that one of his grandfathers was an O'Farrell from Ireland who had served in the Irish Brigade of the French army). As a teenager Thurot rebelled against a Jesuit education, and was apprenticed in 1743 to a surgeon in Dijon. His father had died in 1739, and to help pay his mother's debts he pawned some silver he found at his aunt's house. It did not belong to his aunt, and he decided to leave Dijon to keep out of the way of the angry owner, a town councillor. Since March of that year, 1744, France and Britain had been on opposite sides in the War of the Austrian Succession, and François enrolled as surgeon aboard the Cerf Volant, a privateer at Le Havre. In Au