 Turenne in Toulon, March 1890
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Operators |  French Navy |
| Preceded by | Amiral Duperré |
| Succeeded by | Vauban class |
| Built | 1876–1882 |
| In commission | 1882–1899 |
| Completed | 2 |
| Scrapped | 2 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | ironclad warship |
| Displacement | 6,363 t (6,263 long tons; 7,014 short tons) |
| Length | 81.22 m (266 ft 6 in) lwl |
| Beam | 17.45 m (57 ft) |
| Draft | 7.49 m (24 ft 7 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion | |
| Sail plan | Full-ship rig |
| Speed | 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) |
| Crew |
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| Armament |
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| Armor | |
The Bayard class was a pair of two ironclad warships built for the French Navy in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The class comprised two ships: Bayard and Turenne. The class is sometimes referred to as the Turenne class. They were based on the ironclad Amiral Duperré, adopting the same general arrangement, but were scaled down in size. They were intended for use overseas in the French colonial empire, and as such, they retained a sailing rig for long-range cruising and copper sheathing for their hulls to protect them when they would be unable to be dry-docked regularly. They carried a main battery of four 240 mm (9.4 in) guns that were mounted in individual barbettes; two were in sponsons forward, abreast of the conning tower, and the other two were on the centerline aft.
Turenne was laid up upon completion in 1882, while Bayard was sent to East Asian waters, where she served much of her career as a flagship. She saw action during the Tonkin campaign that established France's colonial empire in what became French Indochina, as well as the Sino-French War that immediately followed. After Vice Admiral Amédée Courbet died in 1885, Bayard carried his remains back to France. Turenne replaced her as the flagship in East Asia, but she had a much less eventful stint in the region, remaining there until 1889, when she returned to France to be placed in reserve once more in 1890. Bayard returned to Indochina in 1893, and she remained there until being decommissioned in 1899 and reduced to a storage hulk, a role she filled until 1904. By that time, Turenne had been sold for scrapping in 1901, and Bayard followed her to the breakers' yard in 1904.