Built in response to a naval expansion program of the British Royal Navy, she was one of a group of five roughly similar battleships, including Masséna, Bouvet, Carnot, and Charles Martel.

Constraints on displacement imposed by the French naval command produced a series of ships that were significantly inferior to their British counterparts, suffering from poor stability and a mixed armament that was difficult to control in combat conditions.

She supported French troops during the Gallipoli Campaign, including during the landing at Cape Helles in April 1915, before she became guardship at Port Said from 1916 until the end of the war.

The first stage of the program was to be a group of four squadron battleships built to different designs, but meeting the same basic requirements, including armor, armament, and displacement.

Though the program called for four ships to be built in the first year, five were ultimately ordered: Jauréguiberry, Charles Martel, Masséna, Carnot, and Bouvet.

A small vessel, Capitán Prat had adopted twin-gun turrets for her secondary battery to save space that would have been taken up by traditional casemate mountings.

Lagane incorporated that solution in Jauréguiberry, though she was the only French battleship of the program to use that arrangement owing to fears that the rate of fire would be reduced and that the turrets would be more vulnerable to being disabled by a single lucky hit.

[6] She and her half-sisters were disappointments in service; they generally suffered from stability problems, and Louis-Émile Bertin, the Director of Naval Construction in the late 1890s, referred to the ships as "chavirables" (prone to capsizing).

[9] Jauréguiberry had two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, also built by Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, which were designed to give the ship a speed of 17.5 knots (32.4 km/h; 20.1 mph).

[6][10] Jauréguiberry's main armament consisted of two 45-caliber Canon de 305 mm (12 in) Modèle 1887 guns in two single-gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure.

[12] The ship's offensive armament was completed by a secondary battery of eight 45-caliber Canon de 138.6 mm (5.5 in) Modèle 1891 guns mounted in manually operated twin-gun turrets.

[16] Gibbons and Gardiner agree that eight 37 mm (1.5 in) Hotchkiss 5-barrel revolving guns were mounted on the fore and aft superstructures,[9][15] although none are listed by d'Ausson.

During this period, she was fitted with a new electric order-transmission system that relayed instructions from the ship's fire-control center to the guns, a marked improvement over the voice tubes that were in standard use in the world's navies at the time.

[8][18] Immediately on entering service, she and her half-sisters Charles Martel and Carnot were sent to join the International Squadron that had been assembled beginning in February.

On 6 March, Jauréguiberry joined the battleships Brennus, Gaulois, Charlemagne, Charles Martel, and Bouvet and four protected cruisers for maneuvers off Golfe-Juan, including night-firing training.

In October, Jauréguiberry and the rest of the Mediterranean Squadron battleships steamed to Palma de Mallorca, and on the return to Toulon they conducted training exercises.

She was lightly damaged when she touched a rock while entering Brest in fog on 18 July and, in another incident, her steering compartment was flooded when a torpedo air chamber burst between her screws during a torpedo-launching exercise on 18 May 1905.

On 13 January 1908, she joined the battleships République, Patrie, Gaulois, Charlemagne, Saint Louis, and Masséna for a cruise in the Mediterranean, first to Golfe-Juan and then to Villefranche-sur-Mer, where the squadron stayed for a month.

The French fleet was tasked with guarding against a possible attack by the German battlecruiser Goeben, which instead fled to the Ottoman Empire.

Beginning in December, Jauréguiberry was stationed at Bizerte, remaining there until February 1915 when she sailed to Port Said to become flagship of the Syrian Division,[28] commanded by Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet.

[29] On 25 March, Jauréguiberry departed Port Said for the Dardanelles, where the French and British fleets were attempting to break through the Ottoman defenses guarding the straits.

An earlier Anglo-French attack on 18 March had cost the French fleet the battleship Bouvet, and two other battleships—Suffren and Gaulois—had been badly damaged and forced to withdraw.

To make good his losses, Admiral Émile Guépratte requested that Jauréguiberry and Saint Louis be transferred to his command.

By late May, the French squadron had been restored to effective strength, and included the battleships Saint Louis, Charlemagne, Patrie, Suffren, and Henri IV.

During the operation, Jauréguiberry and the other French ships kept the Ottoman guns on that side of the strait largely suppressed, and prevented them from interfering with the main landing at Cape Helles.

The ship participated in the occupation of Ile Rouad on 1 September and other missions off the Syrian coast until she was transferred to Ismailia in January 1916 to assist in the defense of the Suez Canal, although she returned to Port Said shortly afterward.