They also had a much more effective armor protection arrangement that remedied the tendency of earlier battleships to lose stability from relatively minor damage.

The fleet thereafter patrolled the southern end of the Adriatic Sea until repeated attacks from Austro-Hungarian U-boats forced them to withdraw.

Since Germany was France's primary enemy, 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 the displacement now increased to 15,000 t (14,800 long tons), which was on par with contemporary British designs.

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 top weight, which necessitated reductions in armor thicknesses to keep the ship from becoming too top-heavy.

[3] On 23 December, the designers evaluated a pair of proposals for the secondary gun turrets from Schneider-Creusot and the government-run Direction de l'artillerie (Artillery Directorate), and that from the latter was adopted for the new ship.

[9] 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.

[11] 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.

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

[15][16] The secondary battery consisted of eighteen Canon de 164 mm Modèle 1893 guns; twelve were mounted in twin wing turrets and six in casemates in the hull.

The remaining eight 47 mm Modèle 1902 guns, which were located in the foremast fighting top and in the forward and aft superstructure, were retained.

Each tube was supplied with three Modèle 1904 torpedoes, which had a range of 1,000 m (1,100 yd) 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 consisted of 200 mm thick steel protected the communication system that connected the conning tower with the transmitting station lower in the ship.

[23] Tests were carried out to determine whether the main-battery turrets could be modified to increase the elevation of the guns (and hence their range), but the modifications proved to be impractical.

Also in 1915, the 47 mm guns located on either side of the bridge were removed and the two on the aft superstructure were moved to the roof of the rear turret.

Tests revealed the wider rangefinders were more susceptible to working themselves out of alignment, so the navy decided to retain the 2 m version for the other battleships of the fleet.

[25] Despite having been built to counter German naval expansion, République and Patrie spent their careers in the Mediterranean Sea.

During maneuvers in February 1910, Patrie accidentally hit République with a torpedo, forcing her to return to port for repairs.

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 in September.

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

Patrols in the southern Adriatic followed, but after repeated attacks by Austro-Hungarian U-boats, the battleships of the fleet withdrew to Corfu and Malta, while lighter units continued the sweeps.

[31][32] In May 1915, Patrie was sent to reinforce the Dardanelles Division fighting Ottoman forces in the Gallipoli campaign; she provided gunfire support to Allied troops ashore until they were evacuated in January 1916, which République was sent to help cover.

The Greek monarch, Constantine I, was forced to abdicate in June 1917 and his replacement led the country into the war on the side of the Allies.

Both ships were then sent to Mudros off the Dardanelles to guard against the possibility of a sortie by Goeben, which had fled to the Ottoman Empire at the start of the war, transferred to Ottoman service, and had been renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim, though the only attempt made ended in failure when the battlecruiser struck several mines and ran aground.

[35][36] In late January 1918, République steamed to Toulon for maintenance, and while there, had two of her main battery guns removed for use by the French Army.

Patrie's crew suffered an outbreak of influenza that killed eleven men while at Mudros in July, and was used as a barracks ship in Constantinople during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1919.