The ship was ordered during the tenure of Admiral Théophile Aube as the French Minister of Marine, who favored a fleet centered on large numbers of cruisers of various types.

The ship was reassigned to the Naval Division of the Atlantic Ocean in 1900, and she was one of the first responders to the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée in May, helping to rescue survivors from Saint-Pierre and its harbor, along with other towns on the island of Martinique.

The next month, she was involved in a minor diplomatic incident with Venezuela, where six Frenchmen had been arrested; Suchet's intervention secured their release.

Suchet was originally intended to be a sister ship to the protected cruiser Davout, which was designed during the tenure of Admiral Théophile Aube, who had become the French Minister of Marine in 1886.

Aube, who replaced Galiber in January 1886, was an ardent supporter of the Jeune École doctrine, which envisioned using a combination of cruisers and torpedo boats to defend France and attack enemy merchant shipping.

[1][2] By the time Aube had come to office, the French Navy had laid down three large protected cruisers that were intended to serve as commerce raiders: Sfax, Tage, and Amiral Cécille.

[4] By this time, a total of eleven designs were submitted to be evaluated by the Conseil des Travaux (Council of Works), and that prepared by Marie de Bussy was selected.

The required speed had by that time been increased to 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph); the naval historian Stephen Roberts states that Aube was probably responsible for the change.

[2] On reviewing Aube's plans and the French naval budget, Barbey decided that the proposed cruiser program would have to be reduced.

During construction of Suchet at Toulon, a number of changes were made to the original design, beginning with the addition of a torpedo tube to the bow, which was approved on 28 March 1887.

As work continued, Delphin Albert Lhomme, the supervisor of construction at the shipyard, decided that the ship's engine room lacked sufficient ventilation and did not permit easy maintenance of the propulsion system.

Her superstructure was minimal, consisting primarily of a small conning tower forward and a pair of heavy military masts with fighting tops that housed some of her light guns.

During voyages overseas, she could only steam at a speed of 13 or 14 knots (24 or 26 km/h; 15 or 16 mph), which allowed her crew to alternate sets of boilers so they could clean half of them at a time.

Amidships, the deck was 82 mm (3.2 in) thick on the flat portion over most of the width of the hull, where it covered her propulsion machinery spaces and magazines.

Above the armor deck was a closely subdivided cellular layer that was 460 mm (18 in) deep, which was intended to contain flooding by preventing it from penetrating far into the ship.

[6] In 1895, she remained in service with the Mediterranean Squadron, serving as part of the cruiser force for France's primary battle fleet.

[15] She was part of the squadron again in 1897,[16] but later that year she was transferred to the Levant Division to replace the cruiser Bugeaud, which was suffering from engine problems.

[17] In 1900, Suchet joined the Naval Division of the Atlantic Ocean, which also included the protected cruisers Amiral Cécille, D'Assas, and Troude.

[20] In late November, Suchet went to Colon, Colombia along with United States and British warships, where they were present during unsuccessful negotiations to bring the Thousand Days' War to an end.

The British merchant ship SS Roraima caught fire in the harbor, and Suchet came alongside and to help suppress the blaze, but it could not be put out; she instead evacuated the surviving twenty-five of her crew of sixty-eight.

Suchet then took the survivors to Fort-de-France and returned to join the evacuation effort for other towns in the area, including Le Prêcheur, over the following days.

[25] Later in that year, Troude was recommissioned to replace Suchet in the division, allowing the latter to return to France, where she was reduced to reserve status on 20 November to be reboilered.

Suchet was struck from the naval register on 24 April 1906, but continued on in her role through 1914, during which period she was allocated as an annex to the old floating battery Embuscade.