two ships—Gaulois and —were briefly assigned to the Northern Squadron before being moved to the Mediterranean Squadron in 1899, where they were joined by the next year. The last member of the class became the squadron flagship. The ships were involved in a number of accidents: Gaulois collided with the destroyer in 1900 and Bouvet in 1903, Saint Louis was struck by the destroyer and rammed the submarine in 1911 and 1912, respectively. The new battleship replaced Saint Louis as the flagship in 1904, and the three Charlemagnes were moved to the North Sea in 1909 and returned to the Mediterranean in 1912. They escorted convoys at the start of World War I and later took part in the Dardanelles campaign, where Gaulois was badly damaged by Ottoman artillery fire. Gaulois was later torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in 1916 and the other two vessels saw little activity thereafter, being withdrawn from service in mid-1917. Charlemagne was sold for scrap in 1923, while Saint Louis remained in the navy's inventory as a barracks ship until 1931, when she was struck from the naval register and sold two years later. Iéna The Board of Construction requested an improved version of the Charlemagne class in 1897, which was to correct the stability problems that perennially plagued French battleships of the period. The Navy Minister asked Thibaudier to design a larger version of the ship, with displacement increased to 12,000 t, as the naval staff had determined that, like the ships of the 1890 program, the Charlemagnes represented an attempt to fit too much into a limited displacement. Thibaudier prepared the next design, which was in many respects a simple repeat of the Charlemagnes, incorporating relatively minor improvements, including a more effective armor layout (the result of using Harvey armor to reduce the thickness but not the effectiveness of armor) and a heavier secondary battery. Iéna retained the pronounced tumblehome of the earlier French battleships, which was a primary cause of the ships' poor stability. She was nevertheless a good sea-boat and very maneuverable. On entering service, Iéna became the flagship of the 2nd Battle Division in the Mediterranean Squadron. She thereafter embarked on the routine of training exercises and cruises with the rest of the fleet. Her career passed uneventfully, apart from a collision with a torpedo boat off Toulon in 1906 that resulted in the latter's sinking. The ship's