Three of the ships were assigned to the International Squadron off the island of Crete during the 1897–1898 uprising there and the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 to protect French interests and citizens.

The three survivors escorted troop convoys from French North Africa to France for several months after the beginning of World War I in August 1914.

They carried up to 535 tonnes (527 long tons) of coal and could steam for 4,000 nautical miles (7,400 km; 4,600 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

A watertight internal cofferdam, filled with cellulose, ran the length of the ship from the protective deck[8] to a height of 1.2 metres (4 ft) above the waterline.

Together with her sisters, Chanzy and Latouche-Tréville, the ship was assigned to the International Squadron off the island of Crete during the 1897-1898 upring there and the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 to protect French interests and citizens.

In 1902 she aided survivors of the devastating eruption of Mount Pelée on the island of Martinique and spent several years as guardship at Crete, protecting French interests in the region in the early 1910s.

She ran aground off the Chinese coast in mid-1907, where she proved impossible to refloat and was destroyed in place after her crew was rescued without loss.

[16] The surviving ships escorted troop convoys from French North Africa to France for several months after the beginning of World War I in August 1914.

Amiral Charner and Latouche-Tréville were then assigned to the Eastern Mediterranean where they blockaded the Ottoman-controlled coast and supported Allied operations.

Unlike her sisters, Bruix was transferred to the Atlantic to support Allied operations against the German colony of Kamerun in September 1914.

She was briefly assigned to support Allied operations in the Dardanelles in early 1915 before she began patrolling the Aegean Sea and Greek territorial waters.

Bruix was decommissioned in Greece at the beginning of 1918 and recommissioned after the end of the war in November for service in the Black Sea against the Bolsheviks.