twelve guns. The arrangement of the armament maximized broadside fire at the expense of end-on fire, reflecting the opinion of those who believed the torpedo had reduced the effectiveness of ramming attacks. The Conseil requested alterations to the design, which Pothuau approved on 7 September; he then forwarded the changes to Godron on the 20th. Godron completed his revised design on 6 November and submitted them to the Director of Material, Sabattier, who in turn presented in to Pothuau on 13 December. Pothuau approved it the same day and instructed the shipyards in Brest and Lorient to begin construction immediately. Three days later, Sabattier informed the Directorate of Artillery to begin work on the new 100-ton guns. The French 100-ton gun, with a bore diameter, prompted the Conseil des Travaux to call for an even larger 120-ton weapon, but the 100-ton gun was retained for the new ships. Though the ships were intended to carry the new 100-ton guns, problems aboard other vessels with new 76-ton guns prompted the naval command to abandon the as-yet untested 100-ton weapons. A modified version of the 76-ton gun with a longer barrel that had been adapted to use new propellant charges was developed; these changes gave it higher muzzle velocity, which allowed its shells to penetrate as well as the 100-ton gun had been expected to perform. Amiral Baudin and Formidable had already begun construction by the time these new guns had been developed, so they were simply substituted for the larger guns on a one-for-one basis. The class suffered from significant design faults, most significantly the arrangement of the guns; because they were placed on the centerline, they were arranged for fighting on the broadside. But their short belt, which was almost completely submerged under service conditions, did not sufficiently protect them from damage. At the time of their completion, they were the most powerful vessels in the French fleet despite their flaws. The Amiral Baudin design proved to be successful and led to the derivative ironclad and three-ship . The ships' period as state-of-the-art capital proved to be very brief; they were completed in 1888 and 1889, just before Britain passed the Naval Defence Act of 1889, authorizing the of what would become known as pre-dreadnought battleships. These were significantly more powerful vessels than the ironclad vessels of the 1870s and 1880s. The French in turn responded with their Naval Law