was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the French Navy, commissioned in 1908. She was the second member of the , which included three other vessels, and was a derivative of the preceding , the primary difference being the inclusion of a heavier secondary battery. carried a main battery of four guns, like the , but mounted ten guns for her secondary armament in place of the guns of the earlier vessels. Like many late pre-dreadnought designs, was completed after the revolutionary British battleship had entered service, rendering her obsolescent.
On entering service, became the flagship of the 2nd Division of the Mediterranean Squadron, based in Toulon. She immediately began the normal peacetime training routine of squadron and fleet maneuvers and cruises to various ports in the Mediterranean. She also participated in several naval reviews for a number of French and foreign dignitaries. In September 1909, the ships of the 2nd Division crossed the Atlantic to the United States to represent France at the Hudson–Fulton Celebration. She collided with her sister ship twice, in December 1913 and August 1914, though she was not badly damaged in either accident.
Following the outbreak of war in July 1914, was used to escort troopship convoys carrying elements of the French Army from French North Africa to face the Germans invading northern France. She thereafter steamed to contain the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, taking part in the minor Battle of Antivari in August. The increasing threat of Austro-Hungarian U-boats and the unwillingness of the Austro-Hungarian fleet to engage in battle led to a period of monotonous patrols that ended with Italy's entry into the war on the side of France, which allowed the French fleet to be withdrawn. In mid-1916, she became involved in events in Greece, being stationed in Salonika to put pressure on the Greek government to enter the war on the side of the Allies, but she saw little action for the final two years of the war.
Immediately after the end of the war, she was sent to the Black Sea, first to oversee the surrender of German-occupied Russian warships there, and then to join the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, helping to defend Odessa and Sevastopol from the Bolsheviks. By April 1919, war-weary crews demanded to return to France, leading to quickly suppressed mutinies on and two other battleships. was used to tow the crippled battleship back to France, thereafter becoming a training ship. She served in this capacity only briefly, however, and was placed in reserve in April 1920, decommissioned in March 1921, and sold for scrap in December.
Design
The -class battleships were originally intended to be part of the , which was to total six ships. After work on the first two ships had begun, the British began construction of the s. These ships carried a heavy secondary battery of guns, which prompted the French Naval General Staff to request that the last four s be redesigned to include a heavier secondary battery in response. Ironically, the designer, Louis-Émile Bertin, had proposed such an armament for the class, but the General Staff had rejected it since the larger guns had a slower rate of fire than the smaller guns that had been selected. Because the ships were broadly similar apart from their armament, the s are sometimes considered to be a sub-class of the type.
was long overall and had a beam of and an average draft of . She displaced up to at full load. The battleship was powered by three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by twenty-four Niclausse boilers. They were rated at and provided a top speed of . Coal storage amounted to , which provided a maximum range of at a cruising speed of . She had a crew of 32 officers and 710 enlisted men.
s main battery consisted of four Modèle 1893/96 guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft of the superstructure. The secondary battery consisted of ten Modèle 1902 guns; six were mounted in single turrets, and four in casemates in the hull. She also carried thirteen Modèle 1902 guns and ten Modèle 1902 guns for defense against torpedo boats. The ship was also armed with two torpedo tubes, which were submerged in the hull on the broadside.
The ship's main belt was thick in the central citadel, and was connected to two armored decks; the upper deck was thick while the lower deck was thick, with sloped sides. The main battery guns were protected by up to of armor on the fronts of the turrets, while the secondary turrets had of armor on the faces. The casemates were protected with of steel plate. The conning tower had thick sides.
Modifications
The navy carried out tests to determine whether the main battery turrets could be modified to increase the elevation, and hence the range, of the guns, which determined that the turrets could not be altered. Instead, the navy found that tanks on either side of the vessel could be flooded to induce a heel of 2 degrees, increasing the maximum range of the guns from . New motors were installed in the secondary turrets in 1915–1916 to improve their training and elevation rates. Also in 1915, the 47 mm guns located on either side of the bridge were removed and the two on the aft superstructure were moved to the roof of the rear turret. On 8 December 1915, the naval command issued orders that the light battery was to be revised to eight 47 mm guns and ten guns. The light battery was revised again in 1916, with four 47 mm guns being converted with high-angle anti-aircraft mounts. They were placed atop the rear main battery turret and the number 7 and 8 secondary turret roofs.
In 1912–1913, the ship received two Barr & Stroud rangefinders; by the end of World War I, the ship had been fitted with two rangefinders in addition to the 2 m rangefinders. One of the latter was moved to the aft superstructure and configured for high-angle fire control.
Service history Construction – 1910
With an initial budget of 41,565,620 French francs, was laid down at the La Seyne shipyard in Toulon on 1 April 1903, launched on 27 October 1904, and completed on 15 April 1908. This was over a year after the revolutionary British battleship entered service, which had rendered pre-dreadnoughts like outdated. After commissioning, was assigned to the 2nd Division of the Mediterranean Squadron, serving as its flagship, along with her sisters and . (CA—Rear admiral) Jules Le Pord was the divisional commander at that time, and he came aboard the ship on 16 April. From 10 June into July the Mediterranean and Northern Squadrons conducted their annual maneuvers off Bizerte. The 2nd Division ships visited Bizerte in October. On 30 December, , , and the destroyers and carried relief aid to Messina, Sicily to help survivors of an earthquake there.
The entire squadron was moored in Villefranche in February 1909 and thereafter conducted training exercises off Corsica, followed by a naval review in Villefranche for President Armand Fallières on 26 April. During this period of training, on 17 March, and the battleships , , and conducted gunnery training, using the old ironclad as a target. In June, , , and the protected cruiser got underway for training in the Atlantic; they met , , , and the armored cruiser at Cádiz, Spain on 12 June. Training included serving as targets for the fleet's submarines in the Pertuis d'Antioche strait. The ships then steamed north to La Pallice, where they conducted tests with their wireless sets and gunnery training in Quiberon Bay. From 8 to 15 July, the ships lay at Brest and the next day, they steamed to Le Havre. There, they met the Northern Squadron for another fleet review for Fallières on 17 July. Ten days later, the combined fleet steamed to Cherbourg, where they held another fleet review, this time during the visit of Czar Nicholas II of Russia.
On 12 September, and the other 2nd Division battleships departed from Brest, bound for the United States. There they represented France during the Hudson–Fulton Celebration, which marked the 300th anniversary of the European discovery of the Hudson River. The ships arrived back in Toulon on 27 October. joined , , , , and for a simulated attack on the port of Nice on 18 February 1910. The ships of the 1st Squadron held training exercises off Sardinia and Algeria from 21 May to 4 June, followed by combined maneuvers with the 2nd Squadron from 7 to 18 June. began having trouble with her main battery, so she went into the shipyard in Toulon from 13 to 21 July for repairs. An outbreak of typhoid among the crews of the battleships in early December forced the navy to confine them to Golfe-Juan to contain the fever. By 15 December, the outbreak had subsided.
1911–1914
On 16 April 1911, and the rest of the fleet escorted , which had aboard Fallières, the Naval Minister Théophile Delcassé, and Charles Dumont, the Minister of Public Works, Posts and Telegraphs, to Bizerte. They arrived two days later and held a fleet review that included two British battleships, two Italian battleships, and a Spanish cruiser on 19 April. The fleet returned to Toulon on 29 April, where Fallières doubled the crews' rations and suspended any punishments to thank the men for their performance. and the rest of 1st Squadron and the armored cruisers and went on a cruise in the western Mediterranean in May and June, visiting a number of ports including Cagliari, Bizerte, Bône, Philippeville, Algiers, and Bougie. By 1 August, the battleships of the had begun to enter service, and they were assigned to the 1st Squadron, displacing the and -class ships to the 2nd Squadron. On 4 September, both squadrons held a major fleet review for Fallières off Toulon. The fleet then departed on 11 September for maneuvers off Golfe-Juan and Marseille, returning to Toulon on 16 September.
On 25 September, was destroyed by a magazine explosion; a commission was convened aboard the following day to investigate the accident. Just a month later, on 26 October, also caught fire, and two of her 194 mm and one of her 47 mm magazines had to be flooded to prevent a similar explosion. The fire was believed to have been started by a short circuit in the electrical system near the forward magazines. The fire had reached the ammunition in the magazines when the ship's commander ordered the magazines to be flooded, averting a catastrophic explosion. This occurred just days after the battleship had to flood her magazines to put out another accidental fire. The fleet thereafter made cruises to Les Salins d'Hyères, Le Lavandou, and Porquerolles through 15 December. At some point in 1911, the ship was featured in the film A Day on the French battleship "".
On 19 January 1912, and the battleship steamed to Malta in company with the destroyers and . joined the ships en route from Bizerte, and the five vessels arrived in Valletta on 22 January. There, they met King George V and Queen Mary of Britain, then returning from their voyage to India that year. On 24 April, went to sea with for gunnery training off the Hyères roadstead; they were joined by and the next day. Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère inspected both battleship squadrons in Golfe-Juan from 2 to 12 July, after which the ships cruised first to Corsica and then to Algeria. The rest of the year passed uneventfully for .