Originally intended to be similar to the Tonnerre class, Furieux was re-designed after the German Sachsen-class ironclads had begun construction, as the earlier French coastal defense ships were too weak to defeat the Sachsens.

Her design suffered from several problems, including insufficient freeboard and poor stability, both of which reduced her ability to operate in open water.

Throughout the 1890s, the French Navy considered multiple proposals to rebuild the ship to correct her deficiencies, but no work was done until 1902, when she received new, lighter guns, new engines and water-tube boilers, and increased armor protection for her conning tower.

The Navy intended to dismantle the ship in Brest, but the start of World War I in August 1914 interrupted all non-essential work.

The Navy deemed it too expensive to raise the wreck and so offered her for sale in situ, but after a series of attempts in the 1920s and early 1930s, no firm bought the salvage rights.

Furieux was designed in the late 1870s as part of a naval construction program that had begun under the post-Franco-Prussian War fleet plan of 1872.

The French ships included the four vessels of the Tonnerre and Tempête classes, which being built simultaneously in the early 1870s and were broadly similar.

In 1876, the French reconsidered the last two coastal defense ships—Furieux and Tonnant—that had been ordered but not yet built under the 1872 plan, since more powerful vessels would be needed to combat the Sachsens.

[2][3] At the same time, the naval engineer Carlet designed a new, significantly smaller turret for the new coastal defense ships in July 1877.

This led to further changes: the early gun turrets of the time were very heavy, and doubling the number, even at reduced size, would have prohibitively increased the ships' displacement.

The French firm Farcot & Sons, which was responsible for supplying the hydraulic gun handling equipment, conducted a pair of studies in March and April 1878 at the request of the Navy.

The Conseil des Travaux (Board of Construction) held a meeting on 25 June to consider the alterations to the original design, deeming it to be a significant improvement over the earlier coastal defense ships, though it noted deficiencies in some aspects of the armor layout, including the deck and the conning tower.

Since she was intended for coastal operations, the ship had a low freeboard and a short upper deck that supported the main battery guns and conning tower.

[6] The ship was protected with mild steel armor; her belt was 330 to 457 mm (13 to 18 in) thick and extended for the entire length of the hull.

[6] As was common to French capital ships of the period, she had little underwater protection, which was revealed during torpedo tests the Navy conducted while Furieux was still under construction; as a result, she was fitted with anti-torpedo nets.

She received eight water-tube Belleville boilers in place of her old fire-tube models and a pair of vertical triple-expansion steam engines were installed.

This led the Conseil de Traveaux to make several alterations on 20 October, including reducing the thickness of some armor plates, halving the number of shells carried per main gun, and eliminating spare parts carried aboard the ship, since as a coastal defense vessel, she was not expected to travel far from her home port.

Over the next year, additional alterations were made, including the decision to install electric lighting on 2 March 1886 and anti-torpedo nets on 7 February 1887.

Trials continued through late May, which revealed significant blast effects from the main gun and problems with the placement of the torpedo tubes, but these could not be corrected.

The ships then conducted a longer cruise south, visiting the ports of Lisbon, Portugal, Ferrol, Vigo, Villagarcia, and Cadiz, Spain, and Tangiers, French Algeria.

Furieux embarked on another tour of northern French ports from 26 May to 8 June, this time major cities in the English Channel, including Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk.

The major ships of the squadron embarked on a cruise to visit Russia on 19 June to mark the signing of the Franco-Russian Alliance, which was to occur on 27 August.

On the way, the ships visited a number of foreign ports, including Bergen and Larvik, Norway, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Stockholm, Sweden, before arriving in Kronstadt, Russia on 23 July.

She visited Brest and Quiberon Bay from 3 to 26 September, and in November, she conducted tests with mixed oil and coal fuel for her boilers.

[20] Over the next several years, the Navy considered a series of other options, including removing parts of the armor plate, to save enough weight to make the necessary improvements, but as with Penfentenyo's proposals, they came to nothing.

[22][23][24] By that time, the various reconstruction proposals had begun to mature, and in September 1897, plans were drawn up to replace the main battery with 240 mm guns and install new boilers, among other changes.

[25] Work finally began in July 1902 with the installation of the new boilers, which was completed by March 1904, when initial trials were conducted while still in dry dock on the 29th and 30th.

Testing continued into January 1905, and trials of the new guns during that period revealed defects that required corrections from Saint Chamond.

Over the course of the next six months, easily removable equipment, including bronze piping, valves, and bearings were salvaged from the ship, but on 4 April 1918, the government ordered the shipyard to stop work.

No bids were received until 26 December 1923, when the ship breakers Muzio-Olivi & Caselli, from Marseilles, offered to buy the wreck with certain requirements, but the government declined.