Servan was born in the village of Romans in south-eastern France. His older brother was the lawyer and publicist Joseph Michel Antoine Servan. He volunteered for the regiment of Guyenne on 20 December 1760. He rose to Engineering Officer, then Deputy Governor of the pages of King Louis XVI, then colonel, then brigadier general on 8 May 1792. Another of Servan's ministerial initiatives was the deletion of the eighth verse of the anthem La Marseillaise in 1792. Servan claimed its references to God undermined the Republic.