Using older French battleships for second-line duties

Courbet- and Bretagne-class battleships were obsolete beside modern capital ships. Their useful jobs lay in shore bombardment, amphibious support, convoy protection, and guarding confined waters. Geography can make a slow battleship dangerous when an attacker cannot use speed to avoid it. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau illustrate the problem: meeting even an old battleship with a convoy would force them either to abandon the attack or risk damage far from repair. Any damage would make a raider easier for faster Allied pursuers to catch, so second-line ships could still restrict German options.