The Marceau class was group of three of ironclad barbette ships of the French Navy built in the 1880s and early 1890s. The class comprised , the lead ship, , and ; a fourth member of the class, was substantially re-designed after defects in the original plans for the class could not be rectified. The ships were based on the earlier of barbette ships, but with smaller guns: four weapons compared to the three guns of the earlier vessels. They introduced the lozenge arrangement for their main battery that became common for many French capital ships built in the 1890s. Continuous tinkering with the Marceau design during their long construction produced badly flawed vessels that were superseded by more powerful pre-dreadnought battleships almost immediately after the French commissioned them in the early 1890s. The three ships served in the Mediterranean Squadron in the 1890s and saw little activity beyond routine training exercises. They were quickly reduced to the Reserve Division of the squadron as the French commissioned their own pre-dreadnoughts. All three Marceaus were modernized in the early 1900s, receiving new water-tube boilers and having their top-heavy superstructures and masts cut down, but they saw little activity afterward. Marceau and Magenta were used as training ships, while Neptune saw no further use. The latter two vessels were discarded between 1908 and 1913, while Marceau lingered on as a floating workshop. She was used in that role during World War I. She was sold to ship breakers in 1921, but was wrecked while being towed off Bizerte and could not be re-floated. Design In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the French Navy embarked on a construction program to strengthen the fleet in 1872. By that time, the Italian (Royal Navy) had begun its own expansion program under the direction of Benedetto Brin, which included the construction of several very large ironclad warships of the and es, armed with 100-ton guns. The French initially viewed the ships as not worthy of concern, though by 1877, public pressure over the new Italian vessels prompted the Navy's (Board of Construction) to design a response, beginning with the barbette ship and following with six vessels carrying 100-ton guns of French design. The first of these were the two s, which carried their guns in open barbettes, all on the centerline, with one forward and two aft. Problems aboard other vessels with new