Searching for Pierre-Auguste Court in Gallica, I stumbled into this book (see link). Unfortunately, it is only partially digitalised.

Pierre-Auguste Court is mentioned, with some corrections to his biography :

Born in 1799, entered the Ecole Spéciale Militaire in april 1812 (not the Ecole Polytechnique) : so he could possibly learn 1 year 1/2 before going to war, as an officer, not as an engineer. And anyway it was a bit short to be an artillery expert.

He served in Orient and India from 1818 to 1843 as officer of general Allard.

Much more details, including physical and moral description, with the link (in french).