194 mm guns. Ironically, Bertin had suggested the exact same caliber during the initial design process, which the General Staff rejected over fears that the rate of fire would fall. The two classes were otherwise nearly identical, which has led some historians, including John Jordan and Philippe Caresse, to consider them to be one class with two variants. The four ships' service history largely mirrored that of the République class. In 1909, , , and traveled to the United States for the Hudson–Fulton Celebration and, in 1911, they joined the Républiques in the 2nd Squadron. In September that year, Liberté was destroyed by an accidental explosion while moored in Toulon; the cause of the blast was determined to be the same unstable Poudre B that had destroyed Iéna in 1907. Along with their squadron mates, the three surviving Libertés escorted convoys early in World War I and took part in the Battle of Antivari. Vérité briefly took part in operations against the Ottomans in November and December, and later took part in the operations in Greece in 1916 and early 1917. After securing Greece's alliance, the ships returned to the fleet's main wartime anchorage at Corfu, where it remained for the rest of the war. Immediately after the German surrender, Justice and Démocratie were sent to the Black Sea to oversee German demilitarization and then to take part in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. War-weary sailors later mutinied in several vessels and forced the French to withdraw in 1919. The three ships saw no further significant service and all were discarded in 1921–1922 Danton class Following the beginning of construction of Liberté, France began planning for the next major construction program. By this time, France had concluded the Entente Cordiale with Britain, and the increasingly powerful German fleet was viewed as the most significant threat; the program of 1906 called for a total of sixteen new battleships to be built by 1919 to counter the Germans. In an effort to control the cost of the next ships to be built, the Minister of the Navy, Gaston Thomson, imposed a limit of . The design staff began its work in the aftermath of the Battle of Tsushima; the French Navy determined that Japanese success in the battle had been the result of the high speed of their ships and the large number of medium-caliber guns that inflicted significant