Claude Petiet was born at Châtillon-sur-Seine, Côte-d'Or, France in February 1749. He began his military career as a gendarme of the king and later became an army commissary. From 1774 until the beginning of the French Revolution, he was war commissary of Brittany.

During the Revolution, Petiet first served as a war commissary for the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, and then as war commisary for the Army of the Coasts of Brest, where he took command... of Nantes to defend it from the Vendéens. He was defeated and taken prisoner, but the Vendéens released him.

In 1795, Petiet was elected to the Council of Ancients. He was then appointed Minister of War in 1796 and ousted out of power the following year in July, under suspicion of royalist sympathies. However, the people soon thereafter elected him to the Council of 500, and when Petiet supported Napoleon Bonaparte's seize of power, Bonaparte named him a Councillor of State. Petiet governed Lombardy from 1800 to 1802 and later served as an Indendent General at the camp of Boulogne. Petiet died in May 1806, a week after being named a senator. His name appears on the Arc de Triomphe on the north pillar.

[Information retrieved from Jensen, Nathan D., "Intendent General Claude Petiet," https://www.frenchempire.net/biographies/petiet/.]