French and Italian cruisers in the Mediterranean

France built twenty-two armoured cruisers and Italy eleven, with many of the newer French ships serving in the Mediterranean. Italy's repeated exports of the Giuseppe Garibaldi class complicate any claim that the design answered a uniquely Mediterranean requirement. The wartime fates of French and Italian ships show the threat from submarines and mines rather than triumph in cruiser combat. Amiral Charner, Léon Gambetta, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and other ships make the inventory a study in operational vulnerability as well as procurement scale.