Pierre César Charles Guillaume, Marquis de Sercey was born at the château du Jeu near Autun in east-central France on 26 April 1753. He went to sea at age 13, serving aboard ship in the Caribbean and in the Indian Ocean, and with the gardes de la marine on Mauritius. Sercey participated in the expedition that discovered the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean in 1772. After gaining the rank of ensign in 1777, he fought in a number of battles in the European and American theaters of the American Revolutionary War, including the siege of Pensacola. He was captured by the British in June 1780 and exchanged in October of the same year. From 1787 to 1792 he served in the West Indies. He gained the rank of capitaine de vaisseau in 1792 and contre-amiral (rear admiral) in January 1793. That year, aboard Éole, he commanded a division of four frigates based at the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue. He was arrested on his return to France in November 1793 because of his aristocratic background, but regained his rank with the institution of the Directory in 1795. He then was sent to Mauritius to command a French division in the Indian Ocean. His time there ended in 1799 when the last of his ships was destroyed by the British. He returned briefly to France in 1802 but political pressure drove him back to Mauritius after his retirement in August 1805. He married there and lived as a planter until the island was taken by the British in 1810. He returned to France and to military service, and was made a vice-admiral in 1814 and a peer in 1832. He died in Paris on 10 August 1836. His name is engraved on the western face of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.