[1] The corvette was propelled by a single screw[2] turned by a 400 nominal horsepower two-cylinder trunk engine[1] powered by steam from oval boilers.

The ship was built at the Cherboug Dockyard under the supervision of Vésignié, Nathaniel Villaret and Adrien Joyeux.

During the bombardment of Shimonoseki (5 September 1864), Dupleix was second in the line of corvettes, between the British Tartar and the Dutch Metallkruz.

She was re-commissioned in Cherbourg in 1867, and sent back to serve in the "Far-East Naval Division", under Counter-Admiral Gustave Ohier.

On 8 March 1868, a skiff sent to Sakai was attacked by samurai retainers of the daimyō of Tosa; twelve sailors were killed.

The captain, Abel-Nicolas Bergasse du Petit-Thouars, protested so strongly that the culprits were arrested, and 20 of them were sentenced to death by seppuku.

She rescued the British corvette HMS Rattler, which was shipwrecked at Romanzoff Bay, in La Pérouse Strait.

She brought back Captain Jules Brunet and his companions from Hakodate to Yokohama after the fall of the Republic of Ezo.

From July 1870 to February 1871, Dupleix blockaded the German frigate Hertha in Nagasaki as part of operations during the Franco-Prussian War.