 Edgar Quinet in 1913
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| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name | Edgar Quinet class |
| Operators |  French Navy |
| Preceded by | Ernest Renan |
| Succeeded by | None |
| Built | 1905–1911 |
| In service | 1911–1932 |
| Completed | 2 |
| Lost | 1 |
| Retired | 1 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Armored cruiser |
| Displacement | 13,847 to 13,995 long tons (14,069 to 14,220 t) |
| Length | 158.9 m (521 ft) |
| Beam | 21.51 m (70 ft 7 in) |
| Draft | 8.41 m (27 ft 7 in) |
| Installed power | 40 Belleville boilers, 36,000 ihp (26,845 kW) |
| Propulsion | 3 triple expansion engines, 3 shafts |
| Speed | 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph) |
| Range | 10,000 nmi (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Crew | 859–892 |
| Armament |
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| Armor |
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The Edgar Quinet class was the last type of armored cruiser built for the French Navy. The two ships of this class—Edgar Quinet and Waldeck-Rousseau—were built between 1905 and 1911. They were based on the previous cruiser, Ernest Renan, the primary improvement being a more powerful uniform main battery of 194 mm (7.6 in) guns. The Edgar Quinet class was the most powerful type of armored cruiser built in France, but they entered service more than two years after the British battlecruiser HMS Invincible, which, with its all-big-gun armament, had rendered armored cruisers obsolescent.
Both ships operated together in the Mediterranean Fleet after entering service, and they remained in the fleet throughout World War I. They participated in the blockade of the Adriatic to keep the Austro-Hungarian Navy contained early in the war. During this period, Edgar Quinet took part in the Battle of Antivari in August 1914, and Waldeck-Rousseau was unsuccessfully attacked twice by Austro-Hungarian U-boats. Waldeck-Rousseau participated in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in the Black Sea in 1919–22, while Edgar Quinet remained in the Mediterranean during the contemporaneous Greco-Turkish War.
Edgar Quinet was converted into a training ship in the mid-1920s before running aground off the Algerian coast in January 1930. She could not be pulled free and sank five days later. Waldeck-Rousseau served as the flagship of the Far East fleet from 1929 to 1932 and was decommissioned after returning to France. She was hulked in 1936 and scrapped in 1941–44.