10th Light Division while , and belonged to the 8th. The ship departed Brest on 4 December 1935 to represent the Marine Nationale at the celebration of the tercentenary of the French colonization of the Antilles where she joined the cruiser and the submarine in making port visits to Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, and Fort de France, Martinique. Albert Lebrun, President of France, inaugurated the new building of the Naval Academy () in Brest and reviewed the 2nd Squadron on 30 May 1936, including L'Audacieux, L'Indomptable, Le Fantasque, and Le Terrible. Between 15 January and 26 February 1937, the 2nd Light Squadron cruised as far south as Conakry, French West Africa. On 27 May, Alphonse Gasnier-Duparc, Minister of the Navy, reviewed the fleet, including the Le Fantasques. L'Audacieux briefly served as flagship of the 2nd Light Squadron from 9 August 1938 until she was relieved on 7 November. World War II Both the 8th and 10th Scout Divisions were assigned to the , which was tasked to hunt down German commerce raiders and blockade runners, when war was declared in September 1939; it made only a single sortie as a complete unit on 2–6 September when it responded to an erroneous report that German ships had left port. Afterwards it was dispersed into smaller groups to better execute its mission. The 10th Scout Division, which consisted of L'Audacieux, Le Terrible, and Le Fantasque, together with British ships, was assigned to Force X that was based in Dakar, French West Africa, from 10 October to 18 November. During 21–30 October, the , including all of the Le Fantasques, screened Convoy KJ 4 against a possible attack by the heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee. The ships of the 10th Scout Division escorted the and the British aircraft carrier as they searched for German ships in the Central Atlantic between 7 and 13 November, then escorted Strasbourg and the heavy cruiser back to France on 18 November. L'Audacieux was one of the escorts for Strasbourg and her sister as the reassembled at Mers-el-Kébir, French Algeria, in late April 1940 in an effort to intimidate the Italians from entering the war. She took part in a sortie by the into the Western Mediterranean on 12–13 June, after Italy declared war on the Allies on the 10th. L'Audacieux then began escorting convoys evacuating personnel from mainland France to French North Africa and screened cruisers fruitlessly searching for