Intended for service in the French colonial empire, she was designed as a "station ironclad", smaller versions of the first-rate vessels built for the main fleet.

They carried their main battery of four 240 mm (9.4 in) guns in open barbettes, two forward side-by-side and the other two aft on the centerline.

The Bayard class of barbette ships was designed in the late 1870s as part of a naval construction program that began under the post-Franco-Prussian War fleet plan of 1872.

The Bayard class was intended to serve in the second role, and they were based on the high-seas ironclad Amiral Duperré, albeit a scaled-down version.

The ship was protected with wrought iron armor; her belt was 150 to 250 mm (5.9 to 9.8 in) thick and extended for the entire length of the hull.

In early June Courbet left for the Far East with the ironclads Bayard and Atalante and the screw corvette Châteaurenault.

[6] Bayard arrived in Ha Long Bay on 10 July, and for the next eleven months served as flagship of the Tonkin Coasts naval division.

[7] In August 1883, in the Battle of Thuận An, she bombarded the coastal defences of Hué, receiving minor shot damage from the Vietnamese shore batteries.

[8] From October 1883 to June 1884, during the period of growing tension that preceded the outbreak of the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885), she took part in a French naval blockade of the coast of Tonkin.

[16] In February 1885 five warships of China's Nanyang Fleet made a sortie from Shanghai in an attempt to break the French blockade of Formosa.

At the Battle of Shipu on the night of 14 February 1885, two of Bayard's launches, used as improvised torpedo boats, attacked the Chinese squadron at anchor and disabled the frigate Yuyuan (馭遠) and the composite sloop Chengqing (澄慶).

Bayard left the Pescadores on 23 June to return Courbet's body to France; by that time, her sister Turenne had arrived to relieve her as the squadron flagship.

She was moored in Port Courbet (now Hạ Long) as the flagship of the Annam and Tonkin Division, which included the aviso Kersaint and three gunboats.

[33] On 26 April 1899, she was struck from the naval register and was converted into a hulk,[5] and was employed in that role until 1904 when she was sold for scrap and broken up in Saigon.