In 1815 he played a pivotal part in the Patriot army victory at the Battle of the Palo River, where he personally led a bayonet charge on foot, and later chased after the retreating Spanish forces.

He hailed from a lineage of minor nobility who traditionally served in the military, his father was Emmanuel-Gervais Roergas de Serviez, then a lieutenant in the Royal-Roussillon Regiment.

His mother was Marie-Henriette de Trelliard, the two married on December 25, 1784, in Cutry, Meurthe-et-Moselle, her family was dedicated to industry and public affairs.

In 1811 Serviez traveled to Venezuela and joined General Francisco de Miranda's Venezuelan patriot army that had begun its war of independence from Spain.

The federalist congress of the United Provinces of New Granada commissioned Serviez into the Neogranadine army of the union, as a lieutenant colonel, and tasked him with training the troops in the south of the country.

While in Ibague, Cabal tasked Serviez with recruiting and training new troops that would be destined for the upcoming campaign to liberate Popayán and the south of the country led by Lieutenant General Antonio Nariño.

After a few months, Serviez led this cavalry group to the town of Purificación in September 1813, where General Nariño had ordered that the rendezvous point be so that the various battalions and troops from other parts of the country would gather to form the army.

[9] This would culminate with the arrest of both Serviez and Campomanes after they were accused of by Nariño and his general staff of trying to cause insubordination among the troops and attempting to remove him as commander of the army to take control.

Nariño's campaign while successful as first, would end in disaster with many historians arguing that not having present two experienced officers such as Serviez and Campomanes in their ranks contributed to the defeat.

At the end of that month both officers left the city, with Campomanes traveling to Cartagena, meanwhile Serviez was transferred to Medellín in the Antioquia Province where the provincial authorities had hired him to become an instructor at the military academy being established there.

At this short lived academy Serviez worked alongside scientist Francisco José de Caldas who had been tasked with teaching and creating a military engineer corps.

[13] Serviez was then called up by the congress to join General Simón Bolívar's army that was tasked with subjugating the centralist Cundinamarca state into the United Provinces of New Granada where he would participate in the Battle of Bogotá.

After the federalist victory, Serviez was sent to join the army of the south under the command of Brigadier General José María Cabal to assist him in his defense of the Cauca Valley from a royalist offensive.

Despite the victory at El Palo, the 1st republic was plunged into crisis as in August 1815 the 10,000 strong Spanish Expeditionary Army under the command of Lieutenant General Pablo Morillo arrived on the Neogranadine shores.

[17] Shortly after sending that letter, Serviez conceived the idea of conducting a strategic retreat to the Casanare province in the eastern plains with the troops of the union.

[19] Their presence in the town was brief as the rapid advance of the Spanish troops coming from the north forced Serviez to accelerate the retreat and they departed in good order marching in the direction of Chocontá.

[20] The army continued its withdrawal arriving at Chocontá, by then news of Serviez's decision to retreat to the Llanos had reached the new president of New Granada, José Fernández Madrid.

Madrid and his secretary war Jose Maria del Castillo y Rada sent a serious of letters to Serviez ordering him to halt his withdrawal.

Serviez wrote back that he would not change his plan and intended to leave for the Llanos de Casanare and also argued that it would be safer too for the president of the Union and the armed corps Guard of Honor of the national authority, composed of officers and troops from all the sovereign provinces of the Union, which obeyed orders directly from the executive branch to retreat to the llanos as well.

Serviez, who was undoubtedly an experienced military officer, had at that time a much more appropriate strategic vision than the thesis of President Fernández Madrid proposed.

As a result, the government then tried through a letter written by the Secretary of War José María del Castillo Rada dated April 23, to get the second in command of the army, Colonel Santander, to depose Servíez from his position if he did not follow the order to march south, and take command and march the army to the south to which Santander refused to do so even when the government offered him his promotion to general.

The troops who remained were forced to throw their artillery and heavy equipment into the moats and ravines of the mountain pass because it was so numerous and because they had few mules to transport them.

[22] The same day May 6, the Spanish troops of Brigadier Miguel de la Torre entered Santafé, he immediately ordered Captain Antonio Gómez, commander of the "loyal carabineros of Fernando VII’’, to take his unit along with a company of Cazadores of from the Numancia regiment to chase after Serviez.

[23] During the following days, Serviez and his army marched through the eastern Andes mountain range using the royal road that led to the town of Cáqueza.

They then proceeded to abandon the drawer that contained the painting Virgin of Chiquinquirá in a hut located at the height of Sáname, where some clergymen lived, who eventually transported it back to Santafé.

This presented a problem, since it was winter rain season, the river was heavily flooded and the only means of getting across was via a narrow suspension bridge which complicated the crossing.

This tactic greatly hampered the Spanish's effort with de la Torre himself admitting this problem in a letter to General Morillo, stating “where I go everything was ruined by Serviez with the effect that we had no resources left.”[26] After 4 weeks marching eastward the tattered forces of General Serviez, along with the civilians who accompanied them arrived in the provincial capital of Pore on June 23.

Morillo, as a career soldier, knew that the greatest threat to the Spanish in New Granada would be a rebel insurgency based in the Eastern Plains, a region difficult to operate European troops in, so he scolded and ordered de la Torre to do everything possible to annihilate them before it was too late.

One group was led by Venezuelan Colonel Miguel Valdés, commander of the Casanare troops or army of the East, whose main operations center was located in the town Guasdualito.

Cordova blamed his mentor's death solely on Paez and expressed this in a letter written to General Francisco de Paula Santander in 1826 where he referred to Paez in a negative tone stating: "What good can come from the man who ordered the assassination of General Serviez, the one who disobeyed the Liberator repeatedly in campaigns of 18' and 19'"[28] Although Serviez has often been forgotten, he is considered one of the heroes of the Colombian War of Independence.