Like the Républiques, their main armament consisted of four 305 mm (12 in) guns in two twin-gun turrets, and they had the same top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph).

Liberté was destroyed by an accidental explosion of unstable propellant charges in Toulon in 1911, prompting the fleet to enact strict handling controls to prevent further accidents.

Since Germany was France's primary potential opponent, a considerable strengthening of its fleet pressured the French parliament to authorize a similar program.

The staff submitted a revised proposal on 20 April 1898, with displacement now increased to 15,000 t (15,000 long tons), which was on par with contemporary British designs.

To ensure passage through the Suez Canal, draft was limited to 8.4 m (28 ft) and the standard main armament of four 305 mm (12 in) guns in two twin-gun turrets was specified.

The naval command approved the submission, but requested alterations to the design, particularly to the arrangement of the secondary battery layout.

These proved difficult to incorporate, as the requested changes increased topweight, which necessitated reductions in armor thicknesses to keep the ship from becoming too top-heavy.

Unfortunately for the French ships, they entered service shortly after the revolutionary all-big-gun battleship HMS Dreadnought was completed for the Royal Navy, rendering pre-dreadnoughts like them obsolescent.

Each battleship carried eighteen smaller boats, including pinnaces, cutters, dinghies, whalers, and punts.

[11] As completed, the ships wore the standard paint scheme of the French fleet: green for the hull below the waterline and black above, and buff for the superstructure.

[13] The propulsion system was rated at 17,500 metric horsepower (17,260 ihp) and provided a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) as designed.

[13] The main battery for the Liberté-class ships consisted of four Canon de 305 mm Modèle 1893/96 guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft.

[14][15] The secondary battery consisted of ten 194 mm (7.6 in) Modèle 1902 guns; six were mounted in single turrets and the remaining four were in casemates in the hull.

Each tube was supplied with three Modèle 1904 torpedoes, which had a range of 1,000 m (3,300 ft) at a speed of 32.5 kn (60.2 km/h; 37.4 mph), carrying a 100 kg (220 lb) warhead.

Sandwiched between the two decks and directly behind the belt was an extensively subdivided cofferdam, which Bertin intended to limit flooding in the event of battle damage.

A heavily armored tube that was 200 mm thick protected the communication system that connected the conning tower with the transmitting station lower in the ship.

Early on 25 September, while at Toulon, Liberté was destroyed by an accidental magazine explosion that killed nearly three hundred of her crew.

A subsequent investigation revealed the cause to be unstable Poudre B propellant used by the French Navy at the time; stricter controls were put in place to reduce the likelihood of another accident.

[25][26][27] The three surviving members of the class spent the following three years in a similar pattern of training exercises and cruises around the Mediterranean.

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 and during the ensuing July Crisis, the ships remained close to Toulon to be prepared for the possibility of war.

The German battlecruiser SMS Goeben was in the Mediterranean at the time, and the French high command feared it would try to interdict the convoys.

They thereafter joined the rest of the main French fleet and made a sweep into the Adriatic Sea to attempt to bring the Austro-Hungarian Navy to battle.

The French encountered just the protected cruiser SMS Zenta and a torpedo boat, sinking the former in the Battle of Antivari on 16 August.

After repeated attacks by Austro-Hungarian U-boats, the battleships of the fleet withdrew to Corfu and Malta, while lighter units continued the sweeps.

[29][30] While the bulk of the fleet remained at Corfu, Vérité was sent to strengthen the Anglo-French naval force that had gathered at the Dardanelles in September to trap Goeben, which had been sold to the Ottoman Empire.

The French and British fleets then blockaded the country, eventually forcing the Greek monarch, Constantine I, to abdicate in June 1917.

[34] There, during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, Justice's war-weary crew was involved in a mutiny in April 1919.

[35] Both ships left the area in May, with Démocratie carrying Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha to France so he could sign the Treaty of Sèvres that officially ended World War I for the Ottoman Empire.

Vérité initially went to Constantinople to supervise the surrender of Ottoman forces, but quickly returned to France where she was decommissioned on 1 August 1919.

Liberté, which had remained sunken at her berth in Toulon, was finally re-floated in 1925 and towed into a dry dock there, where she was broken up.