He claimed to have been an orphan taken from a burning building as a child and raised first by Gypsies before being put into an orphanage. He also claimed that the Gypsies taught him to beg, steal, and do acrobatic tricks. It is unclear what parts of his account of his childhood are true as there are no formal records of him before the age of 17 when he was enlisted in military school in Holics, Hungary (now Holíč, Slovakia), by a mysterious Jesuit priest.