Why France laid down the Danton class after Dreadnought

The Danton class illustrates how a navy could remain committed to a transitional design after the strategic benchmark had changed. The ships were ordered in 1905-06 but laid down from 1907 into 1908, well after HMS Dreadnought's launch. Their mixed-battery concept therefore cannot be explained simply as a class already too advanced to reconsider. The sequence points instead to French procurement delay and the difficulty of turning an established programme toward a new battleship model.