Before becoming an admiral, he was an advisor, Chamberlain, Grand Master of France (French: maître d'hôtel du roi), then the seneschal of Beaucaire and Nimes from 1325 to 1332.

After several victories, he commanded the French fleet at the Battle of Sluys in 1340, during the Hundred Years' War between France and England, and was wounded, captured and beheaded by the English.

[7] Quiéret was good at organising the fleet, playing a large part in improving the arsenals at Leure (beside Harfleur) and at the Cloes des Galées.

The preparations are evidenced by a command of 8 November 1338 in which Quiéret commissioned Thomas Fouques, Custodian of the Park of the Galleys of the King (French: garde du clos aux Galées du roi), which installation was then at Rouen (and known as the Cloes des Galées, or the Clos de Rouen; the oldest arsenal in France), to buy at any price the weapons which the mercenaries gathered at Leure and Harfleur had sold off to merchants, and which he proposed they instead take on the expedition.

[9] The Collection des chroniques nationales françaises writes: Thus, very early, Hugues Quier and his companions, having heard that their suspicions had proved right and that war had broken out between France and England, came one Sunday morning into the haven of Hantonne (Southampton), while the people were at mass; and the said Normans and Genoese entered the town, and took it, and pillaged it, and robbed it completely, and killed many people, and raped several women and virgins, which was a shameful thing, and charged their nefs and ships with much plunder which they had found in the town, which was fully, thickly and well guarded, and then got back in their nefs[10]It continues ... you have heard that king Philip of France who retired to Paris, and had given notice to all his great host, and strongly reinforced his great navy which held the sea, of which messire Hugues Quieret, Bahuchet et Barbevaire were captains and commanders.

[12] The Battle of Arnemuiden was a naval battle on 23 September 1338, at the start of the Hundred Years' War, featuring a French fleet under Admirals Hugues Quiéret and Nicolas Béhuchet against a small squadron of five English great cogs, transporting a cargo of wool to the Count of Flanders, ally of Edward III of England.

The chronicles write: Still the king of France greatly reinforced the army that held the sea, and the great army of écumeurs, and ordered messire Hugues Quieret, Barbevaire and the other captains to take care to hold the borders of Flanders, and not to give the king of England any respite, nor let him take any port in Flanders; and if they failed by their own fault, they would all die by execution.

[13]On 24 June 1340, the Battle of Sluys in the Zwin estuary (an arm of the sea, now silted up, which led to Bruges) pitched the numerically dominant French fleet against 150 English ships commanded by Edward III.

The French fleet was commanded by Quiéret and Béhuchet, but they were administrators ordered in principal merely to guarantee an army's safe passage, not frontline fighting sailors.

Some sources have Quiéret drowning during the battle, but others state he was captured and immediately beheaded by the English, despite his wounds, in vengeance for the massacre he had allowed at Arnemuiden two years earlier, with his body being thrown into the sea.