The Edgar Quinet class replaced the earlier mixture of heavy and intermediate weapons with fourteen 7.6-inch guns. Its remaining secondary armament used 2.6-inch guns, reducing the ship to two principal ammunition and spare-parts systems plus torpedoes. That simplification was a major logistical improvement over every preceding French example in the survey. The ships were built between 1905 and 1911, across HMS Dreadnought's arrival, when the advantages of a uniform main battery were becoming harder to ignore. Better standardization made the cruiser more coherent, even though it did not reverse the type's strategic obsolescence.
Chapter · 40:48-42:14
Edgar Quinet finally standardises the battery
Fourteen uniform 7.6-inch guns made the Edgar Quinet class a belated but important break with France's mixed-calibre cruiser batteries.