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.

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.

In the 1890s, naval theorists of the Jeune École (Young School) in France, particularly Admiral Ernest François Fournier, advocated building a fleet of armored cruisers based on the first French ship of that type, Dupuy de Lôme.

The ships were to be capable of long-range commerce raiding, action in the line of battle against older battleships, and reconnaissance for the main fleet.

[1] The French Navy subsequently built a series of twenty-four armored cruisers after Dupuy de Lôme, culminating in the two Edgar-Quinet-class ships that were ordered under the 1904 and 1905 construction programs.

Their armor layout was also modified and the adopted the same vertical stem that characterized the latest French pre-dreadnought battleships.

The Edgar Quinets were the most powerful armored cruisers built by France, but they entered service two years after the British Invincible-class battlecruisers, and the British ships' all-big-gun armament and steam turbine propulsion rendered all armored cruisers obsolescent.

Compared to the British vessels, the Edgar Quinets retained less effective triple-expansion steam engines, though they were the last major warship to use them.

Maximum coal capacity amounted to 2,300 long tons (2,300 t), which permitted a cruising range of 10,000 nautical miles (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

[10] Close-range defense against torpedo boats was provided by a battery of twenty 65 mm (2.6 in) 9-pounder guns in casemates in the ship's hull.

[14] In 1913, Edgar Quinet participated in an international naval demonstration that also included British, German, and Austro-Hungarian vessels off Albania.

[16] Later in August, Edgar Quinet was present at the Battle of Antivari, which saw the sinking of the Austro-Hungarian cruiser SMS Zenta.

[20] Edgar Quinet meanwhile remained in the Mediterranean during the Greco-Turkish War, and during the Great Fire of Smyrna, at the climax of the conflict, she rescued 1,200 people from the city.