After the war France and her sister ship Jean Bart participated in the occupation of Constantinople and were then sent to the Black Sea in 1919 to support Allied troops in the Southern Russia Intervention.

By 1909, the French Navy was finally convinced of the superiority of the all-big-gun battleship like HMS Dreadnought over the mixed-calibre designs like the Danton class which had preceded the Courbets.

The following year, the new Minister of the Navy, Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, selected a design that was comparable to the foreign dreadnoughts then under construction as part of the 1906 Naval Programme.

The Courbet-class ships carried enough coal and fuel oil to give them a range 4,200 nautical miles (7,800 km; 4,800 mi) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

Escorted by Jean Bart, France arrived at Kronstadt on 20 July after encountering the battlecruisers of the German I Scouting Group in the Baltic Sea en route.

They were met off Valencia, Spain, on the 6th by their sister Courbet and the semi-dreadnoughts Condorcet and Vergniaud because Jean Bart was having problems with her 305 mm ammunition and France had yet to load any.

[10] The torpedoing of Jean Bart on 21 December by the Austro-Hungarian submarine U-12 showed that the battleships were vulnerable to this threat and they were withdrawn to spend the rest of the month further south at an anchorage in Navarino Bay.

[11] On 11 January 1915, the French were alerted that the Austro-Hungarian fleet was going to sortie from its base at Pola, so France and her sisters Courbet and Paris led the 1st Naval Army north to the Albanian coast.

In the meantime, the ships patrolled the Ionian Sea as the danger of submarine attacks in the restricted waters of the Strait forced the battleships south.

Two days later Vice-Admiral (Vice-amiral) Louis Dartige du Fournet assumed command of the 1st Naval Army and hoisted his flag aboard France, which remained in Malta for the rest of the year.

At the beginning of 1917, the French began to use the Greek island of Corfu as well, but growing shortages of coal severely limited the battleships' ability to go to sea.

[13] The situation was so bad that Vice-Admiral Gabriel Darrieus wrote in 1917: The military capabilities of the Armée Navale, which has already been badly affected by the shortages of personnel and constant changes in the general staff, need to be maintained by frequent exercises, and although from March to June we were able to follow a normal pattern, the coal crisis is currently preventing any manoeuvres or gunnery training, even for the ships returning from repairs.

In early 1919, France, flagship of Vice-Admiral Jean-Françoise-Charles Amet, and Jean Bart were transferred to the Black Sea to reinforce the French forces opposing the Bolsheviks.

Delegates from the other mutinous crews were not allowed aboard and the mutiny collapsed when Amet agreed to meet their main demand to take the ships home.