Vice-Admiral Pierre César Charles Guillaume, marquis de Sercey ( , ; 26 April 1753 – 10 August 1836) was a French Navy officer and politician who served in American Revolutionary War, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and Haitian Revolution.
Early life Coming from old Burgundian nobility, he lost his father Jean-Jacques, Marquis de Sercey, captain of the , at the age of five. His family moved to Paris, and at thirteen he obtained permission from his mother Marie-Madeleine du Crest, shortly before her death, to join the French Navy, inspired by the exploits of a brother who had distinguished himself during the boarding of a British ship. Now an orphan, he embarked in 1766 as a volunteer on the frigate Légère, leaving Brest for a nine-month campaign in the Windward Islands. Back in France, he embarked in Lorient on the corvette Heure-du-Berger for a twenty-seven month campaign in the Indian Ocean, at the end of which in 1770 he obtained the rank of garde-marine, sealing his engagement in the French Navy.
Disembarking at the Isle de France, he immediately went on to serve on the frigate Ambulante for a new two-year campaign in the Indian Ocean. In 1772, he joined the explorer Yves Joseph de Kerguelen, then in Port-Louis, in his first campaign of discovery of the southern Indian Ocean. He served on the fluyt Gros Ventre, as Louis Aleno de Saint-Aloüarn's second-in-command, and thus took part in the discovery of the Kerguelen Islands.Hennequin, p. 192. Separated from the expedition's lead ship, the frigate Fortune, by a storm, Gros Ventre was considered lost and Kerguelen returned to France, claiming to King Louis XV to have discovered a new southern continent and obtaining the means for a new expedition. Gros Ventre instead continued its initial mission, heading towards Australia, the contours of which were still poorly understood. After a difficult voyage, Shark Bay in Western Australia was reached and Saint-Aloüarn took possession of it in the name of the King of France on 30 March 1772. A few months later, Sercey joined the second Kerguelen expedition on the Isle de France and served on board the frigate Oiseau, this time participating in the more detailed reconnaissance of the Kerguelen, until 1774.
After this thirty-two month voyage, he returned to France and received a gratuity from King Louis XVI. In 1775, he served on the Amphitrite in the West Indies, more particularly around Saint-Domingue, under the command of the Comte de Grasse, then served on the famous Boudeuse, attached to the station of the Leeward Islands, until 1778.
American Revolutionary War
Sercey returned to France in June 1778, as tensions with Great Britain ran high because of French support for American revolutionaries in the American War of Independence. On 17 June, hostilities officially began after the French frigate Belle Poule clashed with the British frigate HMS Arethusa in the English Channel. Sent to rescue the Belle Poule damaged in this indecisive battle, with a hundred sailors, it was the Marquis de Sercey who led the ship from Plouescat Bay to Brest, in sight of the British, as the French commander, Jean Isaac Chadeau de la Clocheterie, had been wounded during the confrontation.Hennequin, p. 193. He remained on this ship, becoming its second-in-command and then its temporary commander. Assigned to a naval division under the orders of Comte de Tréville, he served for seven months in the Atlantic Ocean, capturing three ships. He reached the rank of ensign in May 1779 and served successively on the Triton, the Couronne, the Ville de Paris, and then on the frigate Concorde, before being given command of the cutter Sans-Pareil, a British privateer ship, the Non Such, captured by Concorde and renamed. Placed under the command of the Comte de Guichen, he was sent to scout the Windward Islands with a small squadron, but was ambushed by eight privateers, an encounter from which he escaped with difficulty.Hennequin, p. 194. He rejoined the Comte de Guichen for the battle of Martinique in April 1780, then, in charge of carrying missives to Saint-Domingue, he found himself upon a British naval division at night and was taken prisoner by HMS Phoenix on 26 June 1780.
He was exchanged in October of the same year, and obtained the command of the cutter Serpent, then quickly that of Levrette. It was while commanding the Levrette, assigned to a naval division under the command of François-Aymar de Monteil, that he participated in the siege of Pensacola and obtained a commission as a lieutenant when the city was taken in May 1781, as a reward for his accomplishments during the battle. Upon his return to Hispaniola, he was assigned to escort with his cutter and a small frigate under his command, Fée, a convoy of thirty ships bound for New England. Caught in pursuit by two British frigates, he armed a large ship, Tigre, and chose to go on the offensive: the British, superior but surprised by this daring maneuver, withdrew, and the convoy arrived intact at its destination. Now loaded with messages for France, he lost Levrette in a storm off the Azores, but managed to save his cargo and arrived in port in time to warn the authorities of the arrival of an important convoy, escorted by Actionnaire.Hennequin, p. 195. As a reward, he was made chevalier of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis in May 1782.
Embarked as a lieutenant on the frigate Nymphe and becoming second-in-command of the Vicomte de Mortemart, he participated with the Concorde in January 1783 in the recapture of HMS Raven, a British sloop captured in 1778, renamed Cérès, and then recaptured in April 1782 by the Viscount Hood. A month later, he was with Amphitrite in the capture of HMS Argo, with on board the Governor of the British Leeward Islands, Thomas Shirley. It was Sercey, who, after bitter fighting and in the midst of a storm, embarked to take possession of the ship and its illustrious passenger. Mortemart died of a sudden illness on their return to Saint-Domingue in March 1783, and the Marquis took command of Nymphe until the end of hostilities, his last mission being to escort a convoy headed to Brest. He obtained from the king a pension and a letter of satisfaction.Hennequin, p. 196.
At the age of thirty, the Marquis de Sercey was far from retirement and was one of a limited number of officers who were allowed to remain in service. In 1784, he spent only a few months on land before embarking on the ship Séduisant, which carried the French ambassador to the Sublime Porte Choiseul-Gouffier to Constantinople, and then commanded Ariel, a frigate stationed in the Windward Islands, from 1785 on.
Revolution, Saint-Domingue and the Mascarenes
Still stationed in the West Indies at the dawn of the French Revolution, Sercey did not take part in the events transpiring in France but was favourable to a certain extent to the ideas of the revolution.Robert and Cougny, p. 303. In July 1790, he took command of the frigate Surveillante in a division led by Counter Admiral Charles Louis du Chilleau de La Roche: he quickly faced mutiny among the men under his command, but with the experience of more than twenty years of service, he succeeded in bringing back calm and discipline. He also succeeded in reasoning with the men of Jupiter who had taken their commander, Counter Admiral Joseph de Cambis, prisoner and returning them to their duties. Promoted to the rank of captain on 1 January 1792, he was assigned to a squadron under the command of Vice Admiral de Girardin, tasked with quelling the royalist rebellion then wrecking Martinique. In April 1792, he married Amélie de Sercey, his niece, daughter of his elder brother who had settled in Saint-Domingue. He witnessed the frantic developments of the first days of the Haitian revolution and Surveillante became the refuge of many colonists fleeing the slave revolt: he took in, for example, about a hundred inhabitants of Cayes and took care of them at his own expense for several months.Hennequin, p. 197.
Promoted to the rank of Counter Admiral on 1 January 1793, he was appointed to head a naval division in charge of gathering all the commercial vessels still in the various ports of Saint-Domingue, and then to bring them back to the French mainland. In April 1793 he left Brest on Éole and upon his arrival in Cap-Français in June 1793, he discovered the capital of the French colony ravaged by political divisions between the supporters of the governor-general of the island Galbaud du Fort and those of the revolutionary commissioners Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel, all the while revolting slaves were getting dangerously close to the city. Taking command of the ships in port, he helplessly witnessed the terrible confusion of the battle of Cap-Français: Galbaud, attempting a coup de force against the commissioners, proclaimed his authority over the Sercey division, consigned him to his quarters, turned his men against him and used his ships to fire the first shots of his attempted insurrection.
After two days of bloody street fighting and short-lived success, the governor was forced to take refuge on Jupiter: the embattled commissioners had called on the insurgent slaves, and some ten thousand of them had invested the city, pushing the governor's forces back to shore.Guérin, p. 6. Cap-Francais then fell prey to ravaging fires and massacre, with colonists rushing by the thousands towards the port. Sercey succeeded in regaining control of his men, ordered and organized the evacuation, against the orders of the commissioners, and a large convoy of several hundred ships with thousands of colonists on board set sail in the following hours. The admiral then led this makeshift fleet to the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, his wife organising the care of the survivors, receiving for her action among them the nickname of "tutelary angel".Guérin, p. 9.
Passing under the authority of Edmond-Charles Genêt, French ambassador to the United States, he was ordered to escort a convoy of American goods bound for the French mainland, but also to carry out an expedition to recapture the Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon archipelago. Setting sail on 9 October, bad weather conditions and the spectre of mutiny forced the ships under Sercey's authority to abandon this latter particularly ambitious objective. He arrived in Brest on 4 November 1793, in the midst of the Reign of Terror, and was arrested on 30 November as a former aristocrat suspected of royalism and a desire to emigrate, then was imprisoned in Luxembourg prison for over a year. Saved from execution by the events of Thermidor 9th, he was reinstated in his rank by the minister Laurent Truguet in January 1795, under the Directory.