At the age of 13, Joseph was enrolled by his father in "Académie royale polytechnique des armes et de l'équitation" (fencing and horsemanship). According to La Boëssière "fils", son of the Master: "At 15 his [Bologne's] progress was so rapid, that he was already beating the best swordsmen, and at 17 he developed the greatest speed imaginable." Bologne was still a student when he beat Alexandre Picard, a fencing-master in Rouen, who had been mocking him as "Boëssière's mulatto", in public. That match, bet on heavily by a public divided into partisans and opponents of slavery, was an important coup for Bologne. His father, proud of his feat, rewarded Joseph with a handsome horse and buggy. In 1766 on graduating from the Royal Polytechnique Academy, Bologne was made a "Gendarme du roi" (officer of the king's bodyguard) and a chevalier. Henceforth Joseph Bologne, by adopting the suffix of his father, would be known as the "Chevalier de Saint-Georges". As an illegitimate son, he was ineligible to inherit his father's title.