The La Motte-Picquet class were a planned series of light cruisers for the French Navy and named after French admiral Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte. Although designed in 1912, the scheduled construction of La Motte-Picquet was suspended due to the outbreak of World War I before the ships could be laid down. The design would be revived and used as the basis for the s after the war. The name of the planned 1912 lead ship, would be reused by the . Design and development The design work on the La Motte-Picquet class has its origins in the early 1900s. France, had lagged behind neighbouring European powers such as the United Kingdom and the German Empire in naval construction. This was due to France's continued focus on building armoured cruisers. These ships were powerful, heavily armoured but costly, and increasingly obsolete (Britain and Germany having stopped building armoured cruisers several years earlier) compared to newer types of warships such as battlecruisers. By 1912, the deficit of newer modern classes of ships such as super-dreadnought-type battleships, and light cruisers in the French navy had become increasingly obvious. The French Minister of Marine issued an ambitious Statut Naval (Naval Law) on 30 March 1912, to reverse the perceived decline in French naval power. The 1912 Statut Naval called for the construction of 28 battleships, 10 scout cruisers, 52 fleet torpedo boats, 94 submarines and 10 ships for "distant stations" by 1920. Initial plans were for 6,000-tonne éclaireurs d'escadre (fleet scouts), but shortly after a smaller design was chosen, similar to the British and German and es. Three of these ships, which were subsequently reclassified as convoyeurs d'escadrilles (flotilla leaders) were to be initially laid down in the Toulon Naval Dockyard on November 1914. Two more of the class were planned to be built in private shipyards. Shortly after Germany declared war on France on 3 August 1914, all naval construction in France was suspended and the design plans for the La Motte-Picquet class laid in abeyance. The plans were reviewed in July 1915 by the STCN (Service technique des constructions navales), with several suggestions to improve the design. These suggestions were, enlarging the ship, the addition of four 65 mm/50 Modèle 1902 high-angle guns, suppression of the main mast and the reduction of shafts from four to two. These proposals were not adopted and the plans remained dormant. France would not operate