Between 1889 and 1949, the French Navy built a series of pre-dreadnought, dreadnought, and fast battleships, ultimately totaling thirty-four vessels: twenty-three pre-dreadnoughts, seven dreadnoughts, and four fast battleships. Another seven—five dreadnoughts and two fast battleships—were cancelled in various stages of construction (one of which was converted into an aircraft carrier while being built) and seven more were cancelled before work began. The first battleship construction program followed a period of confusion in strategic thinking in France over the optimal shape of the fleet. At the time, the French naval command consisted of competing factions, with one that favored building fleets of capital ships, continuing the program of traditional ironclad warships that had dominated the fleet in the 1860s and 1870s. The other major faction preferred the Jeune École doctrine, which emphasized the use of cheap torpedo boats to destroy expensive capital ships. During the period, naval construction decisions often depended on the Minister of the Navy in office at the time. A pair of ironclad battleships were cancelled by Admiral Théophile Aube, an adherent of the Jeune École, but one of the two was redesigned as the pre-dreadnought following Aube's departure. By the end of the decade, the British Naval Defence Act of 1889 that considerably strengthened the Royal Navy provided the justification the battleship faction needed to embark on a similar naval expansion program. The French replied with the Statut Naval (Naval Law) of 1890 that projected a total force of twenty-eight battleships. The initial program ordered four ships, with a fifth added during the design process: , , , , and . These were experimental ships, built to different designs but all to the same broad specifications; they were all characterized by pronounced tumblehome and a lozenge arrangement of a mixed-caliber main battery. All five proved to be disappointments, owing to poor stability and poor resistance to underwater attacks. The navy then began a series of standardized ships designed by a single architect; these were the three and the derivatives and . The initial series of French battleships saw relatively little activity, being primarily occupied with training activities through the 1890s and 1900s. They alternated between the Northern and Mediterranean Squadrons before being withdrawn from front-line service at the end of the first decade of the 20th century as more modern battleships entered service. In 1900, the French government passed a new Statut Naval to counter growing German