The class consisted of a pair of pre-dreadnought battleships—, the lead ship, and —built for the French Navy in the early 1900s. They were ordered as part of a naval expansion program directed at countering German warship construction authorized by the German Naval Law of 1898. The French program called for six new battleships; the last four became the very similar . and , designed by Louis-Émile Bertin, were a significant improvement over previous French battleships. They carried a similar offensive armament of four guns and eighteen guns, though most of the 164 mm guns were now mounted in more flexible gun turrets rather than in casemates. They also had a much more effective armor protection arrangement that remedied the tendency of earlier battleships to lose stability from relatively minor damage.
Both ships entered service with the fleet in 1907, after the revolutionary British battleship had been commissioned into the Royal Navy and made all existing battleships obsolescent. They nevertheless served as front-line units in the French fleet for most of their careers, well into World War I. Their peacetime careers were largely uneventful, consisting of a normal routine of training exercises, visits to French and foreign ports, and naval reviews for French politicians and foreign dignitaries. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the ships escorted troop ship convoys carrying units of the French Army from French North Africa to France before joining the rest of the main fleet to seek battle with the Austro-Hungarian Navy; this resulted in the minor Battle of Antivari in September, where the French battle fleet caught and sank the Austro-Hungarian cruiser .
The fleet thereafter patrolled the southern end of the Adriatic Sea until repeated attacks from Austro-Hungarian U-boats forced them to withdraw. was transferred to the Gallipoli campaign in May 1915 and joined her there in January 1916 to cover the Allied evacuation from the Gallipoli Peninsula. The two ships thereafter became involved in Greece, where they assisted a coup against the neutral but pro-German government that ultimately led to Greece's entry into the war on the side of the Allies. and were then sent to Mudros, but they saw no further action during the war. In January 1918, had two of her 305 mm guns removed for use by the army and was converted into a training ship. After the war ended, was similarly converted for training purposes. was decommissioned in 1921 and broken up in Italy, but lingered on in her training role until 1936, when she was decommissioned. She was sold for scrap the following year.
Design ("Republic") and ("Fatherland") were authorized by the Fleet Law of 1900, which called for a total of six battleships. The law was a reaction to the German 1898 Naval Law, which marked a significant expansion of their fleet under Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Since Germany was France's primary enemy, a considerable strengthening of its fleet pressured the French parliament to authorize a similar program. Louis-Émile Bertin, who had become the (DCCN—Central Director of Naval Construction) in 1896, was responsible for preparing the new design. Bertin had campaigned through the early 1890s for revisions to the battleships then being built, as he correctly determined that their shallow belt armor would render them vulnerable to flooding from hits above the belt that could dangerously destabilize the vessels.
Upon becoming the DCCN, Bertin was in a position to advance his ideas on battleship construction. In November 1897, he called for a battleship displacing , a significant increase in size over earlier battleships, which would allow him to incorporate the more comprehensive armor layout he deemed necessary to protect against contemporary armor-piercing shells. The new ship would be protected by a tall belt that covered most of the length of the hull topped with a flat armored deck; combined, these created a large armored box which was highly subdivided with watertight compartments to reduce the risk of uncontrollable flooding.
Design work on the ship continued for the next two years as the staff worked out various particulars. The staff submitted a revised proposal on 20 April 1898, with the displacement now increased to , which was on par with contemporary British designs. To ensure passage through the Suez Canal, draft was limited to . The staff specified the standard main armament of four guns in two twin-gun turrets. The naval command approved the submission, but requested alterations to the design, particularly to the arrangement of the secondary battery layout. These proved difficult to incorporate, as the requested changes increased top weight, which necessitated reductions in armor thicknesses to keep the ship from becoming too top-heavy. The navy refused to allow the reductions, so further rearrangements were considered.
On 23 December, the designers evaluated a pair of proposals for the secondary gun turrets from Schneider-Creusot and the government-run (Artillery Directorate), and that from the latter was adopted for the new ship. These were new two-gun turrets that allowed for more secondary weapons to be carried in turrets, which were more flexible mounts than traditional casemates. Another meeting on 28 April 1899 settled on the final characteristics of the design, and on 29 May, Bertin was directed to alter the design to conform to the adopted specifications. Final design work took another two months, and Bertin submitted the finalized version on 8 August. After nearly a year of inaction, Jean Marie Antoine de Lanessan, the Minister of the Navy approved the design on 10 July 1900, and on 9 December parliament approved the 1900 Fleet Law that authorized a total of six ships.
The French originally planned to build six vessels of the class, which is sometimes referred to as the class, but developments abroad, particularly the construction of the British s, led to a re-design of the last four members of the class. Foreign battleships began to carry a heavy secondary battery, such as the guns of the King Edward VIIs, which prompted an increase in French secondary batteries from , producing the , though these are sometimes considered to be a sub-class of the class rather than a distinct class of their own. Unfortunately for and , they entered service shortly after the revolutionary all-big-gun battleship entered service with the Royal Navy, rendering pre-dreadnoughts like them obsolescent.
General characteristics
The ships were long at the waterline, long between perpendiculars, and long overall. They had a beam of at the waterline and an average draft of . The -class ships had a designed displacement of , though in service displaced at full load, and displaced slightly more, at full load. The ships' hulls were modelled on the s, which Bertin had also designed. The hulls were divided into 15 watertight compartments below the lower armor deck. Bilge keels were fitted to improve their stability.
and were built with a tall forecastle deck that extended all the way to the mainmast. and retained a small fighting mast for the foremast, but had a lighter pole mast for the mainmast. The forward superstructure consisted of a four-deck structure erected around the forward mast and the conning tower. The charthouse, commander's quarters, and bridge were located here. In service, the arrangement proved to have several problems; the conning tower was too small to accommodate the crew, and the bridge wings obstructed views aft, which forced the commander to leave the safety of the armored conning tower to see all around the ship. In 1912–1913, the wings were removed to reduce the problem. Similar problems caused difficulties in the aft superstructure as well, particularly with the rear fire control system.
They had a crew of 32 officers and 710 enlisted men, though while serving as a flagship, their crews were increased to 44 officers and 765 enlisted men to include an admiral's staff. Each battleship carried eighteen smaller boats, including pinnaces, cutters, dinghies, whalers, and punts. As a flagship, these boats were augmented with an admiral's gig, another cutter, and three more whalers. As completed, the ships wore the standard paint scheme of the French fleet: green for the hull below the waterline and black above, and buff for the superstructure. This scheme was replaced in 1908 with a medium blue-gray that replaced the black and buff, while the green hull paint was eventually replaced with dark red.
Machinery The ships were powered by three vertical triple-expansion steam engines with twenty-four Niclausse boilers. s engines were four-cylinder models, while had three-cylinder machinery. The boilers were divided into four boiler rooms, the forward three trunked into two funnels and the aft room ducted into the rear funnel. The engines were located amidships in separate watertight compartments, between the forward group of three boiler rooms and the aft one. Each engine drove a bronze, three-bladed screw; the centerline propeller was in diameter for both ships, and had outer screws while had screws. The ships were equipped with six electric generators; two 500-amp generators were used to power the main battery turrets and ammunition hoists and four 800-amp generators provided power for the rest of the ships' systems.
The propulsion system was rated at and provided a top speed of as designed. On speed trials shortly after entering service, both vessels handily exceeded these figures, reaching from and making from . Coal storage amounted to normally and up to at full load. At an economical cruising speed of , the ships could steam for .
Armament
The main battery for the -class ships consisted of four Canon de 305 mm Modèle 1893/96 guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft. These guns fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of . At their maximum elevation of 12 degrees, the guns had a range of . Their rate of fire was one round per minute. Both the turrets and the guns were electrically operated; both guns were typically elevated together, but they could be decoupled and operated independently if the need arose. The guns had to be depressed to a fixed loading position, −5 degrees, between shots. Ready ammunition storage amounted to eight rounds per turret. Though earlier French battleships had carried a mix of several types of shells, including armor-piercing (APC), semi-armor-piercing (SAPC), cast iron, high-explosive, and shrapnel shells, and standardized on a load-out of just APC and SAPC shells. In peacetime, each gun was supplied with 65 shells, for a total of 260 per ship, of which 104 were APC and the remaining 156 were SAPC. The wartime supply was three times that, at 780 shells in total.
The secondary battery consisted of eighteen Canon de 164 mm Modèle 1893 guns; twelve were mounted in twin wing turrets and six in casemates in the hull. The turret guns had a maximum range of while the casemate guns could engage targets out to . They were supplied with APC and SAPC ammunition, weighing and , respectively, which was fired at a muzzle velocity of . Their rate of fire was three rounds per minute. As with the main battery turrets, the secondary turrets were electrically operated, though elevation was done by hand. Unlike the main battery guns, they could be loaded at any angle. The casemate guns were entirely hand-operated.