title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: Android 16 kidnaps Android 18 and implants the player's soul within her. He requests 21 and the player's help in combating the clones created by the Red Ribbon Army. 21 becomes increasingly unstable after each battle, but 16 refuses to explain her condition to 17 and 18. When Krillin finds the androids, 21 forces 18 to fight Krillin and nearly kills him, but the player links with 21 and discovers two beings within her body. 16 takes 18 to a lab and explains that the cells that created Android 21 may be going berserk and that he used the link system to stop her from going mad.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: The androids are eventually confronted by Cell, who has regained most of his original power. 21 transforms into her temporarily purified Majin form to protect the androids but succumbs to her corrupted half's hunger again. She unintentionally kills 16 while she is struggling with her inner demon, causing her good and evil personas to split into two separate beings. Evil 21 devours Cell and the control to the power suppressor, drastically increasing her strength. Goku and Krillin rescue the androids and recruit them to combat Evil 21. The Z-Fighters battle Evil 21 for the last time on the Sacred World of the Kai. Once the fighters discover Evil 21's extraordinary regenerative capabilities, Goku attacks her with a Spirit Bomb. When Evil 21 starts resisting the attack, Good 21 pushes her into it, killing them both. Goku plans to request 21's reincarnation from King Yemma and to help the player return their original body.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: The game's producer, Tomoko Hiroki, stated the game was designed as a three-on-three fighting game because " [...] it would feel a bit odd to see [...] Goku being defeated by Krillin", in reference to the large difference of power between certain characters, which is common in "Dragon Ball", and added it would make it easier to implement aspects of the "Dragon Ball" license into the game with the three-on-three system. When she discovered that western news outlets and fans had persistently compared "FighterZ" to the "Marvel Vs. Capcom" series, she stated there was no intention to emulate the "Marvel vs. Capcom" series with the gameplay system.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: On June 9, 2017, a Japanese press release dated for June 12 prematurely revealed information about the game and two screenshots before its official announcement. The press release was eventually removed from Bandai Namco's website.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: On June 11, 2017, the game was revealed at Microsoft's E3 press conference. A closed beta for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions were also confirmed. Bandai Namco said there is a possibility the game could come to the Nintendo Switch if enough fans request it. "Dragon Ball" creator Akira Toriyama designed a new female character named for the game. The game uses Unreal Engine 4.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: On June 12, 2018, during Nintendo's E3 2018 installment of Nintendo Direct, Nintendo announced that a version of "Dragon Ball FighterZ" would be released on Nintendo Switch later in 2018, with a playable demo of the Switch version of the game being available for attendees on the show floor, where it was revealed that the game supported a simplified control scheme to accommodate single Joy-Con controller play in single-player and multiplayer modes.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: On August 7, 2022, during EVO 2022, Hiroki announced versions of "FighterZ" for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, with the addition of rollback netcode. Players who own versions on the PS4 and Xbox One are able to upgrade for free, and the PC version will receive a free update with rollback netcode.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: Players who preordered "Dragon Ball FighterZ" on console received early access to the game's open beta test period, as well as early unlocks for the SSGSS Goku and SSGSS Vegeta characters and an additional in-game stamp pack. Two digital bundles were released alongside the game: The "FighterZ Edition" includes the game and the FighterZ Pass, which includes eight additional downloadable characters. The "Ultimate Edition" includes all content from the FighterZ Edition, as well as a Commentator Voice Pack and additional music from the anime series which can be played during battle. A physical collector's edition for the game was also released, which includes a steel book case, three artboards, and a 7" statue of Goku. A Nintendo Switch version was released in September 2018.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: After its announcement, "Dragon Ball FighterZ" was met with great enthusiasm from fans of fighting games and the source material alike, with many saying it has the potential to be the next big competitive fighting game. The game gained praise regarding its art design and animation being faithful to the source material, as well as its fighting mechanics. A playable demo was available at the Evolution Championship Series 2017, where pros were able to get their hands on the title for a small tournament; many of the pros praised the game highly, regarding its versatility when it comes to play styles as well as being enjoyable.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: The game received generally favorable reviews from critics, who cited the art style, combat system, cast of playable characters, and story mode as positives. Several called it the best "Dragon Ball" game, and one of the best fighting games in years. The online connectivity is one of the aspects that was criticized about the game.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: The game has been compared to the "Marvel vs. Capcom" series of team-based fighting games, with news outlets and players believing the game to be better than the most recent game in the series at the time, "".


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: The game shipped over two million copies a week after release, becoming the fastest selling "Dragon Ball" title. It also set a Steam record for the highest number of concurrent users for a fighting game.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: It reached second in the sales charts in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US, behind "" in all cases. It also debuted second behind "" in Japan with 68,731 sales in its first week. By October 2018, the game had shipped over 3.5 million copies worldwide. Throughout 2018, it sold 112,258 physical copies for PS4 in Japan.


title: Dragon Ball FighterZ

text: On May 20, 2020, it was revealed that the game had surpassed sales of 5 million copies. By December 2020, the game had sold over copies worldwide. , the game has surpassed copies sold worldwide.


title: FC Nantes

text: Football Club de Nantes (; Gallo: "Naunnt"), commonly referred to as FC Nantes or simply Nantes (), is a French professional football club based in Nantes in Pays de la Loire. The club was founded on 21 April 1943, during World War II, as a result of local clubs based in the city coming together to form one large club. From 1992 to 2007, the club was referred to as FC Nantes Atlantique before reverting to its current name at the start of the 2007–08 season. Nantes play in Ligue 1, the first division of Football in France.


title: FC Nantes

text: Nantes is one of the most successful clubs in French football, having won eight Ligue 1 titles, four Coupe de France wins and attained one Coupe de la Ligue victory.


title: FC Nantes

text: The club is famous for its "jeu à la nantaise" ("Nantes-style play"), its collective spirit, mainly advocated under coaches José Arribas, Jean-Claude Suaudeau and Raynald Denoueix and for its youth system, which has produced players such as Marcel Desailly, Didier Deschamps, Mickaël Landreau, Claude Makélélé, Christian Karembeu and Jérémy Toulalan. As well as "Les Canaris" ("The Canaries"), Nantes is also nicknamed "Les jaunes et verts" ("The Green and Yellows") and "La Maison Jaune" ("The Yellow House").


title: FC Nantes

text: The club was founded in 1943. The first match played by Nantes as a professional team took place at the Stade Olympique de Colombes against CA Paris, where Nantes triumphed 2–0. The first home match was a defeat of the same score against Troyes. The club finished fifth at the end of this first season following which the club's manager Aimé Nuic left the club following a dispute, and was succeeded by Antoine Raab, who took over in a player-coach role. After winning 16 consecutive matches, Nantes lost 9–0 to Sochaux.


title: FC Nantes

text: The club became a professional football club in 1945 after winning the Western Region championship, and started that season in the second division. Under historic president , it spent a few years as a mid-table club in that division, with even threat of relegation in 1950, avoided on the last game only.


title: FC Nantes

text: Results improved from 1951 onwards, and the club just missed out on promotion in 1952, finishing 4th, under respected coach . His successor was able to recruit more prestigious players, including Dutch stars Gerrit Vreken and Jan van Geen, but despite this, the club stagnated again. A number of coaches followed, but the club did not progress, and promising early starts to seasons often petered out by their ends.


title: FC Nantes

text: In 1960, president Marcel Saupin selected the young and promising amateur coach José Arribas. He was credited with revolutionising the team's game, insisting on team-based, less individual play, and an attack-oriented game. He set up a 4-2-4 instead of the then traditional 4 banks of players. His system showed promise but results were not forthcoming right away: placings read 11th, 6th in his first 2 seasons, and finally 2nd in 1962, having led the second division for the first half of the season. In that time, the club took part in the short-lived Anglo-French-Scottish cup, losing 71 to Liverpool FC.


title: FC Nantes

text: José Arribas and Nantes found their place in the top division right away and finished 8th in their first season. The following season was even better: the club becomes French champions, and their star striker was the league's top goalscorer and became the first Nantes player to earn an international cap. The club also won the French League Cup.


title: FC Nantes

text: In 1965, the club confirmed its place at the top and won the league again. Best defence (36 goals conceded), best attack (84 goals scored), Philippe Gondet ended the season as the league's top goalscorer with 36 goals in 37 games. French success did not lead to European success however, and Nantes lost their first-round European Cup game to Partizan Belgrade, who went on to reach the final. At the end of that season, three Nantes players (, Gondet and Budzynski) wre part of the French team playing the World Cup in England.


title: FC Nantes

text: The late 60s and early 70s were not stellar years for the club, typically ending between the 10th and 7th place in the league. They made the French Cup final in 1970 but were routed by Saint-Etienne 5-0. Coach José Arribas's place was not under threat however, being very popular with players and fans alike. In parallel, the club worked hard behind the scene to modernise its structures and to develop its recruitment and player academy. Ex-players Jean-Claude Suaudeau and Robert Budzynski joined the coaching and recruitment team, and were tasked with deploying the club's playing philosophy at all levels of the club's teams. Young players such as Patrice Rio, allied with experienced Argentinians Ángel Marcos and Hugo Bargas, as well as Bayern Munich star Erich Maas enabled the club to turn its fortunes around and win the league in 1973. They also made the French Cup final but lost to Lyon.


title: FC Nantes

text: The club however could not break its European jinx: Danish amateur club Vejle eliminated Nantes in the first round of the European Cup. Results in the French league are good, although below that of high-flying club AS Saint-Etienne, but European results disappointed, year after year. In 1976, the club and José Arribas finally decided to part ways after 13 years together.


title: FC Nantes

text: New coach Jean Vincent was tasked with bringing more success in cups, both domestic and European. He started by reshuffling the team, putting aside a few stars and starting young academy players such as Loic Amisse, Eric Pécout and Bruno Baronchelli. The team still used a very watchable system of play and won the league in 1977, for the fourth time in its history. In 1978, the team finished second behind Monaco but European disappointments continued. That year, the club opened its start-of-the-art training complex (since renamed José Arribas Sporting Centre), the most advanced in France at the time.


title: FC Nantes

text: In 1979, Jean-Claude Suaudeau was promoted to assistant manager, and this association saw the club thrive, winning its first French Cup in 1979, while finishing 2nd in the league. And finally in Europe, the club enjoyed some success, reaching the semi-finals of the Cup Winners Cup competition where they lost to Spanish club Valencia. With Argentinian star player Enzo Trossero, and young up-and-coming academy players José Touré and William Ayache, the club remained 92 games unbeaten at home.


title: FC Nantes

text: Jean Vincent left the club in 1981, struggling to fit his new star striker, Yugoslav Vahid Halilhodzic, into Nantes system of play. Suaudeau took the reins by himself. He benefited from a star-studded defense, with French international goalkeeper Jean-Paul Bertrand-Demanes, centre-backs Patrice Rio and Maxime Bossis, and full backs Michel Bibard, Thierry Tusseau and William Ayache; Bruno Baronchelli still pulls the strings in midfield, helped by academy youngster Seth Adonkor protecting the defence; winger Loic Amisse enjoyed a purple patch in his twilight years; strikers José Touré (nicknamed 'the Brazilian') and particularly Vahid Halilhodzic enjoyed a great partnership. In their new La Beaujoire stadium, built for the 1984 Euro competition, Nantes won the title in 1983, and missed out on the double when they lost the French Cup final to Paris Saint-Germain.


title: FC Nantes

text: Several other French clubs then increased their budgets significantly, and Nantes could not compete. The club lost Thierry Tusseau to Bordeaux, William Ayache to PSG and Maxime Bossis to Matra Racing. Nantes were still among the premier clubs in France, attracting players such as Jorge Burruchaga (World Cup winner with Argentina in 1986), and managed to finish 6th in 1984, 2nd in 1985 and 2nd again in 1986. Other expensive recruits such as Maurice Johnston and Eddie Vercauteren did not gel and the results gradually declined. The constant influx of talented academy players such as Didier Deschamps and Marcel Desailly was not quite enough to compensate the departures and progress made by other clubs. The club finished 12th in 1987 and 10th in 1988.


title: FC Nantes

text: Suaudeau was then let go and the Croatian coach Miroslav Blazevic takes his place. The club however experienced financial difficulties (and was even nearly demoted in 1992), and had to rely almost exclusively on its young academy players to survive in the top division. The club became a "feeder club", selling its best young players to richer clubs: Deschamps and Yvon Le Roux to Olympique Marseille, Michel Der Zakarian to Montpellier, Antoine Kombouaré to Toulon, and Vincent Bracigliano to Nimes.


title: FC Nantes

text: In July 1991, the club re-appointed Jean-Claude Suaudeau, and in July 1992, after spending a fortnight in the second division due to an administrative decision by the "DNCG" (French Football's financial regulator), FC Nantes was renamed FC Nantes Atlantique, and was able to take its place in the first division back. Working closely with youth coach Raynald Denoueix, Suaudeau reinstated the "Nantes way of play" and, despite Marcel Desailly's departure to Marseille, stabilised the team. Soon the club could again show its trademark quick game with instant passing. The academy provided players who could mix the physical with the technical, particularly those such as Christian Karembeu, Patrice Loko, Claude Makélélé and Nicolas Ouédec. Midfield maestros Japhet N'Doram and Raynald Pedros delighted crowds all over France. The team reached the French Cup final in 1993 (losing to PSG) before winning the French league in 1995. Nantes registered ten 3–0 wins at home that season. In 1995–96 Nantes reached the semi-finals of the European Cup, coming close to eliminating Juventus after a superb performance in the return leg at home.


title: FC Nantes

text: However, Nantes continued to sell its best players, with Karembeu and Loko sold in 1995 and Ouédec, N'Doram, Makélélé, Benoît Cauet and goalkeeper David Marraud sold in the following two years. In 1997, frustrated by this, Suaudeau left the club and Denoueix took charge. The academy cane to the rescue once again, and nimble, technical, players such as Stéphane Ziani, Olivier Monterrubio, Eric Carrière, Mikael Landreau and Frédéric Da Rocha enabled the club to win two French Cups in a row (1999 and 2000) before winning the league in 2001. Denoueix's departure for Real Sociedad impacted the club somewhat, but Nantes still managed a French Cup semi-final, a League Cup final and 6th place in the league in 2004 under coaches Angel Marcos Loic Amisse.


title: FC Nantes

text: Nantes finished last in the league in 2007 and were relegated, triggering a pitch invasion and protests by fans. 44 consecutive seasons in the top division came to an end.


title: FC Nantes

text: In the summer of 2007 summer the club was sold to business Waldemar Kita. While the club had only five managers between 1960 and 2000, in the decade 2000 to 2010 ten were employed and sacked. The club was promoted back to the top division in 2008, only to be relegated again the next season. Nantes then finished in 15th place in Ligue 2 under the management of three different coaches.


title: FC Nantes

text: Ex-player Michel Der Zakarian took the helm in 2012, leading the club to promotion from the 2012–13 Ligue 2, with 20 goals from Filip Đorđević. The team made it to the semi-finals of the 2013–14 Coupe de la Ligue, losing 2–1 at home to PSG. In April 2016, after a tense relationship, club president Waldemar Kita announced that Der Zakarian would leave at the end of the season.


title: FC Nantes

text: René Girard was sacked after 15 games with Nantes second from bottom in December 2016, and was replaced by Sérgio Conceição. He took the team to 7th place, but left in June 2017 for FC Porto to be closer to his family.


title: FC Nantes

text: Following brief spells by Claudio Ranieri and Miguel Cardoso, former Nantes player Vahid Halilhodžić was hired in October 2018. The following January, the club transferred Argentine striker Emiliano Sala to Premier League club Cardiff City for £15 million; he died in a light aircraft crash in the English Channel. The club reached the semi-finals of the 2018–19 Coupe de France, losing 3–0 to PSG.


title: FC Nantes

text: After a year with Christian Gourcuff in charge and seven games under former France national team manager Raymond Domenech, 18th-placed Nantes hired Antoine Kombouaré on 10 February 2021. He finished the season in that position, before winning the play-off against Toulouse to stay up. On 7 May 2022, Nantes won their fourth Coupe de France with a 1–0 win over Nice, their first honour since 2001; Ludovic Blas scored the only goal from the penalty spot.


title: FC Nantes

text: FC Nantes played at Stade Marcel Saupin from 1937 to 1984. They moved to their current home ground Stade de la Beaujoire in 1984; the stadium has a capacity of 38,128.


title: FC Nantes

text: A new stadium dubbed 'YelloPark' was expected to be built as Nantes' home ground in 2022, but the project was abandoned on 26 February 2019 following refusal by the Nantes Metropolitan Council to sell lands needed for development of the site.


title: FC Nantes

text: Below are the notable former players who have represented Nantes in league and international competition since the club's foundation in 1943. To appear in the section below, a player must have played in at least 100 official matches for the club.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attributes. Battlecruisers typically had thinner armour (to a varying degree) and a somewhat lighter main gun battery than contemporary battleships, installed on a longer hull with much higher engine power in order to attain greater speeds. The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they were increasingly used alongside the better-protected battleships.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Battlecruisers served in the navies of the United Kingdom, Germany, the Ottoman Empire, Australia and Japan during World War I, most notably at the Battle of the Falkland Islands and in the several raids and skirmishes in the North Sea which culminated in a pitched fleet battle, the Battle of Jutland. British battlecruisers in particular suffered heavy losses at Jutland, where poor fire safety and ammunition handling practices left them vulnerable to catastrophic magazine explosions following hits to their main turrets from large-calibre shells. This dismal showing led to a persistent general belief that battlecruisers were too thinly armoured to function successfully. By the end of the war, capital ship design had developed, with battleships becoming faster and battlecruisers becoming more heavily armoured, blurring the distinction between a battlecruiser and a fast battleship. The Washington Naval Treaty, which limited capital ship construction from 1922 onwards, treated battleships and battlecruisers identically, and the new generation of battlecruisers planned by the United States, Great Britain and Japan were scrapped under the terms of the treaty.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Improvements in armour design and propulsion created the 1930s "fast battleship" with the speed of a battlecruiser and armour of a battleship, making the battlecruiser in the traditional sense effectively an obsolete concept. Thus from the 1930s on, only the Royal Navy continued to use "battlecruiser" as a classification for the World War I–era capital ships that remained in the fleet; while Japan's battlecruisers remained in service, they had been significantly reconstructed and were re-rated as full-fledged fast battleships.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Battlecruisers were put into action again during World War II, and only one survived to the end. There was also renewed interest in large "cruiser-killer" type warships, but few were ever begun, as construction of battleships and battlecruisers was curtailed in favor of more-needed convoy escorts, aircraft carriers, and cargo ships. Near the end, and after the Cold War era, the Soviet of large guided missile cruisers have been the only active ships termed "battlecruisers".


title: Battlecruiser

text: The battlecruiser was developed by the Royal Navy in the first years of the 20th century as an evolution of the armoured cruiser. The first armoured cruisers had been built in the 1870s, as an attempt to give armour protection to ships fulfilling the typical cruiser roles of patrol, trade protection and power projection. However, the results were rarely satisfactory, as the weight of armour required for any meaningful protection usually meant that the ship became almost as slow as a battleship. As a result, navies preferred to build protected cruisers with an armoured deck protecting their engines, or simply no armour at all.


title: Battlecruiser

text: In the 1890s, technology began to change this balance. New Krupp steel armour meant that it was now possible to give a cruiser side armour which would protect it against the quick-firing guns of enemy battleships and cruisers alike. In 1896–97 France and Russia, who were regarded as likely allies in the event of war, started to build large, fast armoured cruisers taking advantage of this. In the event of a war between Britain and France or Russia, or both, these cruisers threatened to cause serious difficulties for the British Empire's worldwide trade.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Britain, which had concluded in 1892 that it needed twice as many cruisers as any potential enemy to adequately protect its empire's sea lanes, responded to the perceived threat by laying down its own large armoured cruisers. Between 1899 and 1905, it completed or laid down seven classes of this type, a total of 35 ships. This building program, in turn, prompted the French and Russians to increase their own construction. The Imperial German Navy began to build large armoured cruisers for use on their overseas stations, laying down eight between 1897 and 1906.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The cost of this cruiser arms race was significant. In the period 1889–1896, the Royal Navy spent £7.3 million on new large cruisers. From 1897 to 1904, it spent £26.9 million. Many armoured cruisers of the new kind were just as large and expensive as the equivalent battleship.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The increasing size and power of the armoured cruiser led to suggestions in British naval circles that cruisers should displace battleships entirely. The battleship's main advantage was its 12-inch heavy guns, and heavier armour designed to protect from shells of similar size. However, for a few years after 1900 it seemed that those advantages were of little practical value. The torpedo now had a range of 2,000 yards, and it seemed unlikely that a battleship would engage within torpedo range. However, at ranges of more than 2,000 yards it became increasingly unlikely that the heavy guns of a battleship would score any hits, as the heavy guns relied on primitive aiming techniques. The secondary batteries of 6-inch quick-firing guns, firing more plentiful shells, were more likely to hit the enemy. As naval expert Fred T. Jane wrote in June 1902,Is there anything outside of 2,000 yards that the big gun in its hundreds of tons of medieval castle can affect, that its weight in 6-inch guns without the castle could not affect equally well? And inside 2,000, what, in these days of gyros, is there that the torpedo cannot effect with far more certainty?


title: Battlecruiser

text: In 1904, Admiral John "Jacky" Fisher became First Sea Lord, the senior officer of the Royal Navy. He had for some time thought about the development of a new fast armoured ship. He was very fond of the "second-class battleship" , a faster, more lightly armoured battleship. As early as 1901, there is confusion in Fisher's writing about whether he saw the battleship or the cruiser as the model for future developments. This did not stop him from commissioning designs from naval architect W. H. Gard for an armoured cruiser with the heaviest possible armament for use with the fleet. The design Gard submitted was for a ship between , capable of , armed with four 9.2-inch and twelve guns in twin gun turrets and protected with six inches of armour along her belt and 9.2-inch turrets, on her 7.5-inch turrets, 10 inches on her conning tower and up to on her decks. However, mainstream British naval thinking between 1902 and 1904 was clearly in favour of heavily armoured battleships, rather than the fast ships that Fisher favoured.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Battle of Tsushima proved conclusively the effectiveness of heavy guns over intermediate ones and the need for a uniform main caliber on a ship for fire control. Even before this, the Royal Navy had begun to consider a shift away from the mixed-calibre armament of the 1890s pre-dreadnought to an "all-big-gun" design, and preliminary designs circulated for battleships with all 12-inch or all 10-inch guns and armoured cruisers with all 9.2-inch guns. In late 1904, not long after the Royal Navy had decided to use 12-inch guns for its next generation of battleships because of their superior performance at long range, Fisher began to argue that big-gun cruisers could replace battleships altogether. The continuing improvement of the torpedo meant that submarines and destroyers would be able to destroy battleships; this in Fisher's view heralded the end of the battleship or at least compromised the validity of heavy armour protection. Nevertheless, armoured cruisers would remain vital for commerce protection.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Fisher's views were very controversial within the Royal Navy, and even given his position as First Sea Lord, he was not in a position to insist on his own approach. Thus he assembled a "Committee on Designs", consisting of a mixture of civilian and naval experts, to determine the approach to both battleship and armoured cruiser construction in the future. While the stated purpose of the committee was to investigate and report on future requirements of ships, Fisher and his associates had already made key decisions. The terms of reference for the committee were for a battleship capable of with 12-inch guns and no intermediate calibres, capable of docking in existing drydocks; and a cruiser capable of , also with 12-inch guns and no intermediate armament, armoured like , the most recent armoured cruiser, and also capable of using existing docks.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Under the Selborne plan of 1902, the Royal Navy intended to start three new battleships and four armoured cruisers each year. However, in late 1904 it became clear that the 1905–1906 programme would have to be considerably smaller, because of lower than expected tax revenue and the need to buy out two Chilean battleships under construction in British yards, lest they be purchased by the Russians for use against the Japanese, Britain's ally. These economies meant that the 1905–1906 programme consisted only of one battleship, but three armoured cruisers. The battleship became the revolutionary battleship , and the cruisers became the three ships of the . Fisher later claimed, however, that he had argued during the committee for the cancellation of the remaining battleship.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The construction of the new class was begun in 1906 and completed in 1908, delayed perhaps to allow their designers to learn from any problems with "Dreadnought". The ships fulfilled the design requirement quite closely. On a displacement similar to "Dreadnought", the "Invincible"s were longer to accommodate additional boilers and more powerful turbines to propel them at . Moreover, the new ships could maintain this speed for days, whereas pre-dreadnought battleships could not generally do so for more than an hour. Armed with eight 12-inch Mk X guns, compared to ten on "Dreadnought", they had of armour protecting the hull and the gun turrets. ("Dreadnought"s armour, by comparison, was at its thickest.) The class had a very marked increase in speed, displacement and firepower compared to the most recent armoured cruisers but no more armour.


title: Battlecruiser

text: While the "Invincible"s were to fill the same role as the armoured cruisers they succeeded, they were expected to do so more effectively. Specifically their roles were:


title: Battlecruiser

text: Confusion about how to refer to these new battleship-size armoured cruisers set in almost immediately. Even in late 1905, before work was begun on the "Invincible"s, a Royal Navy memorandum refers to "large armoured ships" meaning both battleships and large cruisers. In October 1906, the Admiralty began to classify all post-Dreadnought battleships and armoured cruisers as "capital ships", while Fisher used the term "dreadnought" to refer either to his new battleships or the battleships and armoured cruisers together. At the same time, the "Invincible" class themselves were referred to as "cruiser-battleships", "dreadnought cruisers"; the term "battlecruiser" was first used by Fisher in 1908. Finally, on 24 November 1911, Admiralty Weekly Order No. 351 laid down that "All cruisers of the “Invincible” and later types are for the future to be described and classified as “battle cruisers” to distinguish them from the armoured cruisers of earlier date."


title: Battlecruiser

text: Along with questions over the new ships' nomenclature came uncertainty about their actual role due to their lack of protection. If they were primarily to act as scouts for the battle fleet and hunter-killers of enemy cruisers and commerce raiders, then the seven inches of belt armour with which they had been equipped would be adequate. If, on the other hand, they were expected to reinforce a battle line of dreadnoughts with their own heavy guns, they were too thin-skinned to be safe from an enemy's heavy guns. The "Invincible"s were essentially extremely large, heavily armed, fast armoured cruisers. However, the viability of the armoured cruiser was already in doubt. A cruiser that could have worked with the Fleet might have been a more viable option for taking over that role.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Because of the "Invincible"s size and armament, naval authorities considered them capital ships almost from their inception—an assumption that might have been inevitable. Complicating matters further was that many naval authorities, including Lord Fisher, had made overoptimistic assessments from the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 about the armoured cruiser's ability to survive in a battle line against enemy capital ships due to their superior speed. These assumptions had been made without taking into account the Russian Baltic Fleet's inefficiency and tactical ineptitude. By the time the term "battlecruiser" had been given to the "Invincible"s, the idea of their parity with battleships had been fixed in many people's minds.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Not everyone was so convinced. "Brasseys Naval Annual", for instance, stated that with vessels as large and expensive as the "Invincible"s, an admiral "will be certain to put them in the line of battle where their comparatively light protection will be a disadvantage and their high speed of no value." Those in favor of the battlecruiser countered with two points—first, since all capital ships were vulnerable to new weapons such as the torpedo, armour had lost some of its validity; and second, because of its greater speed, the battlecruiser could control the range at which it engaged an enemy.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Between the launching of the "Invincible"s to just after the outbreak of the First World War, the battlecruiser played a junior role in the developing dreadnought arms race, as it was never wholeheartedly adopted as the key weapon in British imperial defence, as Fisher had presumably desired. The biggest factor for this lack of acceptance was the marked change in Britain's strategic circumstances between their conception and the commissioning of the first ships. The prospective enemy for Britain had shifted from a Franco-Russian alliance with many armoured cruisers to a resurgent and increasingly belligerent Germany. Diplomatically, Britain had entered the Entente cordiale in 1904 and the Anglo-Russian Entente. Neither France nor Russia posed a particular naval threat; the Russian navy had largely been sunk or captured in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, while the French were in no hurry to adopt the new dreadnought-type design. Britain also boasted very cordial relations with two of the significant new naval powers: Japan (bolstered by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, signed in 1902 and renewed in 1905), and the US. These changed strategic circumstances, and the great success of the "Dreadnought" ensured that she rather than the "Invincible" became the new model capital ship. Nevertheless, battlecruiser construction played a part in the renewed naval arms race sparked by the "Dreadnought".


title: Battlecruiser

text: For their first few years of service, the "Invincible"s entirely fulfilled Fisher's vision of being able to sink any ship fast enough to catch them, and run from any ship capable of sinking them. An "Invincible" would also, in many circumstances, be able to take on an enemy pre-dreadnought battleship. Naval circles concurred that the armoured cruiser in its current form had come to the logical end of its development and the "Invincible"s were so far ahead of any enemy armoured cruiser in firepower and speed that it proved difficult to justify building more or bigger cruisers. This lead was extended by the surprise both "Dreadnought" and "Invincible" produced by having been built in secret; this prompted most other navies to delay their building programmes and radically revise their designs. This was particularly true for cruisers, because the details of the "Invincible" class were kept secret for longer; this meant that the last German armoured cruiser, , was armed with only guns, and was no match for the new battlecruisers.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Royal Navy's early superiority in capital ships led to the rejection of a 1905–1906 design that would, essentially, have fused the battlecruiser and battleship concepts into what would eventually become the fast battleship. The 'X4' design combined the full armour and armament of "Dreadnought" with the 25-knot speed of "Invincible". The additional cost could not be justified given the existing British lead and the new Liberal government's need for economy; the slower and cheaper , a relatively close copy of "Dreadnought", was adopted instead. The X4 concept would eventually be fulfilled in the and later by other navies.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The next British battlecruisers were the three , slightly improved "Invincible"s built to fundamentally the same specification, partly due to political pressure to limit costs and partly due to the secrecy surrounding German battlecruiser construction, particularly about the heavy armour of . This class came to be widely seen as a mistake and the next generation of British battlecruisers were markedly more powerful. By 1909–1910 a sense of national crisis about rivalry with Germany outweighed cost-cutting, and a naval panic resulted in the approval of a total of eight capital ships in 1909–1910. Fisher pressed for all eight to be battlecruisers, but was unable to have his way; he had to settle for six battleships and two battlecruisers of the . The "Lion"s carried eight 13.5-inch guns, the now-standard caliber of the British "super-dreadnought" battleships. Speed increased to and armour protection, while not as good as in German designs, was better than in previous British battlecruisers, with armour belt and barbettes. The two "Lion"s were followed by the very similar .


title: Battlecruiser

text: By 1911 Germany had built battlecruisers of her own, and the superiority of the British ships could no longer be assured. Moreover, the German Navy did not share Fisher's view of the battlecruiser. In contrast to the British focus on increasing speed and firepower, Germany progressively improved the armour and staying power of their ships to better the British battlecruisers. "Von der Tann", begun in 1908 and completed in 1910, carried eight 11.1-inch guns, but with 11.1-inch (283 mm) armour she was far better protected than the "Invincible"s. The two s were quite similar but carried ten 11.1-inch guns of an improved design. , designed in 1909 and finished in 1913, was a modified "Moltke"; speed increased by one knot to , while her armour had a maximum thickness of 12 inches, equivalent to the s of a few years earlier. "Seydlitz" was Germany's last battlecruiser completed before World War I.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The next step in battlecruiser design came from Japan. The Imperial Japanese Navy had been planning the ships from 1909, and was determined that, since the Japanese economy could support relatively few ships, each would be more powerful than its likely competitors. Initially the class was planned with the "Invincible"s as the benchmark. On learning of the British plans for "Lion", and the likelihood that new U.S. Navy battleships would be armed with guns, the Japanese decided to radically revise their plans and go one better. A new plan was drawn up, carrying eight 14-inch guns, and capable of , thus marginally having the edge over the "Lion"s in speed and firepower. The heavy guns were also better-positioned, being superfiring both fore and aft with no turret amidships. The armour scheme was also marginally improved over the "Lion"s, with nine inches of armour on the turrets and on the barbettes. The first ship in the class was built in Britain, and a further three constructed in Japan. The Japanese also re-classified their powerful armoured cruisers of the "Tsukuba" and "Ibuki" classes, carrying four 12-inch guns, as battlecruisers; nonetheless, their armament was weaker and they were slower than any battlecruiser.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The next British battlecruiser, , was intended initially as the fourth ship in the "Lion" class, but was substantially redesigned. She retained the eight 13.5-inch guns of her predecessors, but they were positioned like those of "Kongō" for better fields of fire. She was faster (making on sea trials), and carried a heavier secondary armament. "Tiger" was also more heavily armoured on the whole; while the maximum thickness of armour was the same at nine inches, the height of the main armour belt was increased. Not all the desired improvements for this ship were approved, however. Her designer, Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt, had wanted small-bore water-tube boilers and geared turbines to give her a speed of , but he received no support from the authorities and the engine makers refused his request.


title: Battlecruiser

text: 1912 saw work begin on three more German battlecruisers of the , the first German battlecruisers to mount 12-inch guns. These ships, like "Tiger" and the "Kongō"s, had their guns arranged in superfiring turrets for greater efficiency. Their armour and speed was similar to the previous "Seydlitz" class. In 1913, the Russian Empire also began the construction of the four-ship , which were designed for service in the Baltic Sea. These ships were designed to carry twelve 14-inch guns, with armour up to 12 inches thick, and a speed of . The heavy armour and relatively slow speed of these ships made them more similar to German designs than to British ships; construction of the "Borodino"s was halted by the First World War and all were scrapped after the end of the Russian Civil War.


title: Battlecruiser

text: For most of the combatants, capital ship construction was very limited during the war. Germany finished the "Derfflinger" class and began work on the . The "Mackensen"s were a development of the "Derfflinger" class, with 13.8-inch guns and a broadly similar armour scheme, designed for .


title: Battlecruiser

text: In Britain, Jackie Fisher returned to the office of First Sea Lord in October 1914. His enthusiasm for big, fast ships was unabated, and he set designers to producing a design for a battlecruiser with 15-inch guns. Because Fisher expected the next German battlecruiser to steam at 28 knots, he required the new British design to be capable of 32 knots. He planned to reorder two s, which had been approved but not yet laid down, to a new design. Fisher finally received approval for this project on 28 December 1914 and they became the . With six 15-inch guns but only 6-inch armour they were a further step forward from "Tiger" in firepower and speed, but returned to the level of protection of the first British battlecruisers.


title: Battlecruiser

text: At the same time, Fisher resorted to subterfuge to obtain another three fast, lightly armoured ships that could use several spare gun turrets left over from battleship construction. These ships were essentially light battlecruisers, and Fisher occasionally referred to them as such, but officially they were classified as "large light cruisers". This unusual designation was required because construction of new capital ships had been placed on hold, while there were no limits on light cruiser construction. They became and her sisters and , and there was a bizarre imbalance between their main guns of 15 inches (or in "Furious") and their armour, which at thickness was on the scale of a light cruiser. The design was generally regarded as a failure (nicknamed in the Fleet "Outrageous", "Uproarious" and "Spurious"), though the later conversion of the ships to aircraft carriers was very successful. Fisher also speculated about a new mammoth, but lightly built battlecruiser, that would carry guns, which he termed ; this never got beyond the concept stage.


title: Battlecruiser

text: It is often held that the "Renown" and "Courageous" classes were designed for Fisher's plan to land troops (possibly Russian) on the German Baltic coast. Specifically, they were designed with a reduced draught, which might be important in the shallow Baltic. This is not clear-cut evidence that the ships were designed for the Baltic: it was considered that earlier ships had too much draught and not enough freeboard under operational conditions. Roberts argues that the focus on the Baltic was probably unimportant at the time the ships were designed, but was inflated later, after the disastrous Dardanelles Campaign.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The final British battlecruiser design of the war was the , which was born from a requirement for an improved version of the "Queen Elizabeth" battleship. The project began at the end of 1915, after Fisher's final departure from the Admiralty. While initially envisaged as a battleship, senior sea officers felt that Britain had enough battleships, but that new battlecruisers might be required to combat German ships being built (the British overestimated German progress on the "Mackensen" class as well as their likely capabilities). A battlecruiser design with eight 15-inch guns, 8 inches of armour and capable of 32 knots was decided on. The experience of battlecruisers at the Battle of Jutland meant that the design was radically revised and transformed again into a fast battleship with armour up to 12 inches thick, but still capable of . The first ship in the class, , was built according to this design to counter the possible completion of any of the Mackensen-class ship. The plans for her three sisters, on which little work had been done, were revised once more later in 1916 and in 1917 to improve protection.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Admiral class would have been the only British ships capable of taking on the German "Mackensen" class; nevertheless, German shipbuilding was drastically slowed by the war, and while two "Mackensen"s were launched, none were ever completed. The Germans also worked briefly on a further three ships, of the , which were modified versions of the "Mackensen"s with 15-inch guns. Work on the three additional Admirals was suspended in March 1917 to enable more escorts and merchant ships to be built to deal with the new threat from U-boats to trade. They were finally cancelled in February 1919.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The first combat involving battlecruisers during World War I was the Battle of Heligoland Bight in August 1914. A force of British light cruisers and destroyers entered the Heligoland Bight (the part of the North Sea closest to Hamburg) to attack German destroyer patrols. When they met opposition from light cruisers, Vice Admiral David Beatty took his squadron of five battlecruisers into the Bight and turned the tide of the battle, ultimately sinking three German light cruisers and killing their commander, Rear Admiral Leberecht Maass.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The German battlecruiser perhaps made the most impact early in the war. Stationed in the Mediterranean, she and the escorting light cruiser evaded British and French ships on the outbreak of war, and steamed to Constantinople (Istanbul) with two British battlecruisers in hot pursuit. The two German ships were handed over to the Ottoman Navy, and this was instrumental in bringing the Ottoman Empire into the war as one of the Central Powers. "Goeben" herself, renamed "Yavuz Sultan Selim", fought engagements against the Imperial Russian Navy in the Black Sea before being knocked out of the action for the remainder of the war after the Battle of Imbros against British forces in the Aegean Sea in January 1918.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The original battlecruiser concept proved successful in December 1914 at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The British battlecruisers and did precisely the job for which they were intended when they chased down and annihilated the German East Asia Squadron, centered on the armoured cruisers and , along with three light cruisers, commanded by Admiral Maximilian Graf Von Spee, in the South Atlantic Ocean. Prior to the battle, the Australian battlecruiser had unsuccessfully searched for the German ships in the Pacific.


title: Battlecruiser

text: During the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915, the aftermost barbette of the German flagship "Seydlitz" was struck by a British 13.5-inch shell from HMS "Lion". The shell did not penetrate the barbette, but it dislodged a piece of the barbette armour that allowed the flame from the shell's detonation to enter the barbette. The propellant charges being hoisted upwards were ignited, and the fireball flashed up into the turret and down into the magazine, setting fire to charges removed from their brass cartridge cases. The gun crew tried to escape into the next turret, which allowed the flash to spread into that turret as well, killing the crews of both turrets. "Seydlitz" was saved from near-certain destruction only by emergency flooding of her after magazines, which had been effected by Wilhelm Heidkamp. This near-disaster was due to the way that ammunition handling was arranged and was common to both German and British battleships and battlecruisers, but the lighter protection on the latter made them more vulnerable to the turret or barbette being penetrated. The Germans learned from investigating the damaged "Seydlitz" and instituted measures to ensure that ammunition handling minimised any possible exposure to flash.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Apart from the cordite handling, the battle was mostly inconclusive, though both the British flagship "Lion" and "Seydlitz" were severely damaged. "Lion" lost speed, causing her to fall behind the rest of the battleline, and Beatty was unable to effectively command his ships for the remainder of the engagement. A British signalling error allowed the German battlecruisers to withdraw, as most of Beatty's squadron mistakenly concentrated on the crippled armoured cruiser "Blücher", sinking her with great loss of life. The British blamed their failure to win a decisive victory on their poor gunnery and attempted to increase their rate of fire by stockpiling unprotected cordite charges in their ammunition hoists and barbettes.


title: Battlecruiser

text: At the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, both British and German battlecruisers were employed as fleet units. The British battlecruisers became engaged with both their German counterparts, the battlecruisers, and then German battleships before the arrival of the battleships of the British Grand Fleet. The result was a disaster for the Royal Navy's battlecruiser squadrons: "Invincible", "Queen Mary", and exploded with the loss of all but a handful of their crews. The exact reason why the ships' magazines detonated is not known, but the plethora of exposed cordite charges stored in their turrets, ammunition hoists and working chambers in the quest to increase their rate of fire undoubtedly contributed to their loss. Beatty's flagship "Lion" herself was almost lost in a similar manner, save for the heroic actions of Major Francis Harvey.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The better-armoured German battlecruisers fared better, in part due to the poor performance of British fuzes (the British shells tended to explode or break up on impact with the German armour). —the only German battlecruiser lost at Jutland—had only 128 killed, for instance, despite receiving more than thirty hits. The other German battlecruisers, , "Von der Tann", "Seydlitz", and , were all heavily damaged and required extensive repairs after the battle, "Seydlitz" barely making it home, for they had been the focus of British fire for much of the battle.


title: Battlecruiser

text: In the years immediately after World War I, Britain, Japan and the US all began design work on a new generation of ever more powerful battleships and battlecruisers. The new burst of shipbuilding that each nation's navy desired was politically controversial and potentially economically crippling. This nascent arms race was prevented by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, where the major naval powers agreed to limits on capital ship numbers. The German navy was not represented at the talks; under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was not allowed any modern capital ships at all.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Through the 1920s and 1930s only Britain and Japan retained battlecruisers, often modified and rebuilt from their original designs. The line between the battlecruiser and the modern fast battleship became blurred; indeed, the Japanese "Kongō"s were formally redesignated as battleships after their very comprehensive reconstruction in the 1930s.


title: Battlecruiser

text: "Hood", launched in 1918, was the last World War I battlecruiser to be completed. Owing to lessons from Jutland, the ship was modified during construction; the thickness of her belt armour was increased by an average of 50 percent and extended substantially, she was given heavier deck armour, and the protection of her magazines was improved to guard against the ignition of ammunition. This was hoped to be capable of resisting her own weapons—the classic measure of a "balanced" battleship. "Hood" was the largest ship in the Royal Navy when completed; thanks to her great displacement, in theory she combined the firepower and armour of a battleship with the speed of a battlecruiser, causing some to refer to her as a fast battleship. However, her protection was markedly less than that of the British battleships built immediately after World War I, the .


title: Battlecruiser

text: The navies of Japan and the United States, not being affected immediately by the war, had time to develop new heavy guns for their latest designs and to refine their battlecruiser designs in light of combat experience in Europe. The Imperial Japanese Navy began four s. These vessels would have been of unprecedented size and power, as fast and well armoured as "Hood" whilst carrying a main battery of ten 16-inch guns, the most powerful armament ever proposed for a battlecruiser. They were, for all intents and purposes, fast battleships—the only differences between them and the s which were to precede them were less side armour and a increase in speed. The United States Navy, which had worked on its battlecruiser designs since 1913 and watched the latest developments in this class with great care, responded with the . If completed as planned, they would have been exceptionally fast and well armed with eight 16-inch guns, but carried armour little better than the "Invincible"s—this after an increase in protection following Jutland. The final stage in the post-war battlecruiser race came with the British response to the "Amagi" and "Lexington" types: four G3 battlecruisers. Royal Navy documents of the period often described any battleship with a speed of over about as a battlecruiser, regardless of the amount of protective armour, although the G3 was considered by most to be a well-balanced fast battleship.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Washington Naval Treaty meant that none of these designs came to fruition. Ships that had been started were either broken up on the slipway or converted to aircraft carriers. In Japan, "Amagi" and were selected for conversion. "Amagi" was damaged beyond repair by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and was broken up for scrap; the hull of one of the proposed "Tosa"-class battleships, , was converted in her stead. The United States Navy also converted two battlecruiser hulls into aircraft carriers in the wake of the Washington Treaty: and , although this was only considered marginally preferable to scrapping the hulls outright (the remaining four: "Constellation", "Ranger", "Constitution" and "United States" were scrapped). In Britain, Fisher's "large light cruisers," were converted to carriers. "Furious" had already been partially converted during the war and "Glorious" and "Courageous" were similarly converted.


title: Battlecruiser

text: In total, nine battlecruisers survived the Washington Naval Treaty, although HMS "Tiger" later became a victim of the London Naval Conference 1930 and was scrapped. Because their high speed made them valuable surface units in spite of their weaknesses, most of these ships were significantly updated before World War II. and were modernized significantly in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1934 and 1936, "Repulse" was partially modernized and had her bridge modified, an aircraft hangar, catapult and new gunnery equipment added and her anti-aircraft armament increased. "Renown" underwent a more thorough reconstruction between 1937 and 1939. Her deck armour was increased, new turbines and boilers were fitted, an aircraft hangar and catapult added and she was completely rearmed aside from the main guns which had their elevation increased to +30 degrees. The bridge structure was also removed and a large bridge similar to that used in the battleships installed in its place. While conversions of this kind generally added weight to the vessel, "Renown"s tonnage actually decreased due to a substantially lighter power plant. Similar thorough rebuildings planned for "Repulse" and "Hood" were cancelled due to the advent of World War II.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Unable to build new ships, the Imperial Japanese Navy also chose to improve its existing battlecruisers of the "Kongō" class (initially the , , and —the only later as it had been disarmed under the terms of the Washington treaty) in two substantial reconstructions (one for "Hiei"). During the first of these, elevation of their main guns was increased to +40 degrees, anti-torpedo bulges and of horizontal armour added, and a "pagoda" mast with additional command positions built up. This reduced the ships' speed to . The second reconstruction focused on speed as they had been selected as fast escorts for aircraft carrier task forces. Completely new main engines, a reduced number of boilers and an increase in hull length by allowed them to reach up to 30 knots once again. They were reclassified as "fast battleships," although their armour and guns still fell short compared to surviving World War I–era battleships in the American or the British navies, with dire consequences during the Pacific War, when "Hiei" and "Kirishima" were easily crippled by US gunfire during actions off Guadalcanal, forcing their scuttling shortly afterwards. Perhaps most tellingly, "Hiei" was crippled by medium-caliber gunfire from heavy and light cruisers in a close-range night engagement.


title: Battlecruiser

text: There were two exceptions: Turkey's "Yavuz Sultan Selim" and the Royal Navy's "Hood". The Turkish Navy made only minor improvements to the ship in the interwar period, which primarily focused on repairing wartime damage and the installation of new fire control systems and anti-aircraft batteries. "Hood" was in constant service with the fleet and could not be withdrawn for an extended reconstruction. She received minor improvements over the course of the 1930s, including modern fire control systems, increased numbers of anti-aircraft guns, and in March 1941, radar.


title: Battlecruiser

text: In the late 1930s navies began to build capital ships again, and during this period a number of large commerce raiders and small, fast battleships were built that are sometimes referred to as battlecruisers. Germany and Russia designed new battlecruisers during this period, though only the latter laid down two of the 35,000-ton . They were still on the slipways when the Germans invaded in 1941 and construction was suspended. Both ships were scrapped after the war.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Germans planned three battlecruisers of the as part of the expansion of the Kriegsmarine (Plan Z). With six 15-inch guns, high speed, excellent range, but very thin armour, they were intended as commerce raiders. Only one was ordered shortly before World War II; no work was ever done on it. No names were assigned, and they were known by their contract names: 'O', 'P', and 'Q'. The new class was not universally welcomed in the Kriegsmarine. Their abnormally-light protection gained it the derogatory nickname "Ohne Panzer Quatsch" (without armour nonsense) within certain circles of the Navy.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Royal Navy deployed some of its battlecruisers during the Norwegian Campaign in April 1940. The and the were engaged during the action off Lofoten by "Renown" in very bad weather and disengaged after "Gneisenau" was damaged. One of "Renown"s 15-inch shells passed through "Gneisenau"s director-control tower without exploding, severing electrical and communication cables as it went and destroyed the rangefinders for the forward 150 mm (5.9 in) turrets. Main-battery fire control had to be shifted aft due to the loss of electrical power. Another shell from "Renown" knocked out "Gneisenau"s aft turret. The British ship was struck twice by German shells that failed to inflict any significant damage. She was the only pre-war battlecruiser to survive the war.


title: Battlecruiser

text: In the early years of the war various German ships had a measure of success hunting merchant ships in the Atlantic. Allied battlecruisers such as "Renown", "Repulse", and the fast battleships "Dunkerque" and were employed on operations to hunt down the commerce-raiding German ships. The one stand-up fight occurred when the battleship and the heavy cruiser sortied into the North Atlantic to attack British shipping and were intercepted by "Hood" and the battleship in May 1941 in the Battle of the Denmark Strait. The elderly British battlecruiser was no match for the modern German battleship: within minutes, the "Bismarck"s 15-inch shells caused a magazine explosion in "Hood" reminiscent of the Battle of Jutland. Only three men survived.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The first battlecruiser to see action in the Pacific War was "Repulse" when she was sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers north of Singapore on 10 December 1941 whilst in company with "Prince of Wales". She was lightly damaged by a single bomb and near-missed by two others in the first Japanese attack. Her speed and agility enabled her to avoid the other attacks by level bombers and dodge 33 torpedoes. The last group of torpedo bombers attacked from multiple directions and "Repulse" was struck by five torpedoes. She quickly capsized with the loss of 27 officers and 486 crewmen; 42 officers and 754 enlisted men were rescued by the escorting destroyers. The loss of "Repulse" and "Prince of Wales" conclusively proved the vulnerability of capital ships to aircraft without air cover of their own.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Japanese "Kongō"-class battlecruisers were extensively used as carrier escorts for most of their wartime career due to their high speed. Their World War I–era armament was weaker and their upgraded armour was still thin compared to contemporary battleships. On 13 November 1942, during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, "Hiei" stumbled across American cruisers and destroyers at point-blank range. The ship was badly damaged in the encounter and had to be towed by her sister ship "Kirishima". Both were spotted by American aircraft the following morning and "Kirishima" was forced to cast off her tow because of repeated aerial attacks. "Hiei"s captain ordered her crew to abandon ship after further damage and scuttled "Hiei" in the early evening of 14 November. On the night of 14/15 November during the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, "Kirishima" returned to Ironbottom Sound, but encountered the American battleships and . While failing to detect "Washington", "Kirishima" engaged "South Dakota" with some effect. "Washington" opened fire a few minutes later at short range and badly damaged "Kirishima", knocking out her aft turrets, jamming her rudder, and hitting the ship below the waterline. The flooding proved to be uncontrollable and "Kirishima" capsized three and a half hours later.


title: Battlecruiser

text: Returning to Japan after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, "Kongō" was torpedoed and sunk by the American submarine on 21 November 1944. "Haruna" was moored at Kure, Japan when the naval base was attacked by American carrier aircraft on 24 and 28 July 1945. The ship was only lightly damaged by a single bomb hit on 24 July, but was hit a dozen more times on 28 July and sank at her pier. She was refloated after the war and scrapped in early 1946.


title: Battlecruiser

text: A late renaissance in popularity of ships between battleships and cruisers in size occurred on the eve of World War II. Described by some as battlecruisers, but never classified as capital ships, they were variously described as "super cruisers", "large cruisers" or even "unrestricted cruisers". The Dutch, American, and Japanese navies all planned these new classes specifically to counter the heavy cruisers, or their counterparts, being built by their naval rivals.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The first such battlecruisers were the Dutch Design 1047, designed to protect their colonies in the East Indies in the face of Japanese aggression. Never officially assigned names, these ships were designed with German and Italian assistance. While they broadly resembled the German "Scharnhorst" class and had the same main battery, they would have been more lightly armoured and only protected against eight-inch gunfire. Although the design was mostly completed, work on the vessels never commenced as the Germans overran the Netherlands in May 1940. The first ship would have been laid down in June of that year.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The only class of these late battlecruisers actually built were the United States Navy's "large cruisers". Two of them were completed, and ; a third, , was cancelled while under construction and three others, to be named "Philippines", "Puerto Rico" and "Samoa", were cancelled before they were laid down. They were classified as "large cruisers" instead of battlecruisers. These ships were named after territories or protectorates. (Battleships, were named after states and cruisers after cities.) With a main armament of nine 12-inch guns in three triple turrets and a displacement of , the "Alaska"s were twice the size of s and had guns some 50% larger in diameter. They lacked the thick armoured belt and intricate torpedo defence system of true capital ships. However, unlike most battlecruisers, they were considered a balanced design according to cruiser standards as their protection could withstand fire from their own caliber of gun, albeit only in a very narrow range band. They were designed to hunt down Japanese heavy cruisers, though by the time they entered service most Japanese cruisers had been sunk by American aircraft or submarines. Like the contemporary fast battleships, their speed ultimately made them more useful as carrier escorts and bombardment ships than as the surface combatants they were developed to be.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Japanese started designing the B64 class, which was similar to the "Alaska" but with guns. News of the "Alaska"s led them to upgrade the design, creating Design B-65. Armed with 356 mm guns, the B65s would have been the best armed of the new breed of battlecruisers, but they still would have had only sufficient protection to keep out eight-inch shells. Much like the Dutch, the Japanese got as far as completing the design for the B65s, but never laid them down. By the time the designs were ready the Japanese Navy recognized that they had little use for the vessels and that their priority for construction should lie with aircraft carriers. Like the "Alaska"s, the Japanese did not call these ships battlecruisers, referring to them instead as super-heavy cruisers.


title: Battlecruiser

text: In spite of the fact that most navies abandoned the battleship and battlecruiser concepts after World War II, Joseph Stalin's fondness for big-gun-armed warships caused the Soviet Union to plan a large cruiser class in the late 1940s. In the Soviet Navy, they were termed "heavy cruisers" ("tjazholyj krejser"). The fruits of this program were the Project 82 ("Stalingrad") cruisers, of standard load, nine guns and a speed of . Three ships were laid down in 1951–1952, but they were cancelled in April 1953 after Stalin's death. Only the central armoured hull section of the first ship, "Stalingrad", was launched in 1954 and then used as a target.


title: Battlecruiser

text: The Soviet is sometimes referred to as a battlecruiser. This description arises from their over displacement, which is roughly equal to that of a First World War battleship and more than twice the displacement of contemporary cruisers; upon entry into service, "Kirov" was the largest surface combatant to be built since World War II. The "Kirov" class lacks the armour that distinguishes battlecruisers from ordinary cruisers and they are classified as heavy nuclear-powered missile cruisers ("T'Yazholiy atomn'iy raketn'iy Krey'Ser") by Russia, with their primary surface armament consisting of twenty P-700 Granit surface to surface missiles. Four members of the class were completed during the 1980s and 1990s, but due to budget constraints only the is operational with the Russian Navy, though plans were announced in 2010 to return the other three ships to service. As of 2021, was being refitted, but the other two ships are reportedly beyond economical repair.


title: Louis Vuitton (designer)

text: Louis Vuitton (; 4 August 1821 – 27 February 1892) was a French fashion designer and businessman. He was the founder of the Louis Vuitton brand of leather goods now owned by LVMH. Prior to this, he had been appointed as trunk-maker to Empress Eugénie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon III.


title: Louis Vuitton (designer)

text: Vuitton was born to a family of artisans, carpenters, and farmers. At the age of 10, his mother, a hat-maker, died, and his father followed soon after. Following a difficult relationship with his adoptive stepmother, Vuitton left his home in Anchay, Franche-Comté in the spring of 1835, at the age of 13. Taking odd jobs along the way, Vuitton traveled approximately 292 miles (470 km) to Paris. Arriving in 1837, in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, he apprenticed under Monsieur Marechal, a successful trunk maker and packer. Within a few years, Vuitton gained a reputation amongst Paris' more fashionable class as one of the city's premier practitioners of the craft.


title: Louis Vuitton (designer)

text: After the reestablishment of the French Empire under Napoleon III, Vuitton was hired as a personal trunk maker and packer for the Empress of The French. She charged him with "packing the most beautiful clothes in an exquisite way." This provided Vuitton with a gateway to other elite and royal clients who provided him with work for the rest of his career.


title: Louis Vuitton (designer)

text: In 1854, at age 33, Vuitton married 16-year-old Clemence-Emilie Parriaux. Soon after, he left Marechal's shop and opened his own trunk making and packing workshop in Paris. Outside of his shop hung a sign that read: "Securely packs the most fragile objects. Specialising in packing fashions." In 1858, inspired by H.J. Cave & Sons of London, Vuitton introduced his revolutionary rectangular canvas trunks at a time when the market had only rounded-top leather trunks. The demand for Vuitton's durable, lightweight designs spurred his expansion into a larger workshop in Asnières-sur-Seine. The original pattern of the shellac embedded canvas was named "Damier".


title: Louis Vuitton (designer)

text: Vuitton also designed the world's first pick-proof lock. All lock patterns were safely kept at Vuitton's workrooms and registered with the owner's name in case another key was needed.


title: Louis Vuitton (designer)

text: In 1871, as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, demand fell sharply, and Vuitton's workshop was in shambles. Many of his tools were stolen and his staff were gone. Vuitton rebuilt immediately, erecting a new shop at 1 Rue Scribe, next to a prestigious jockey club in the heart of Paris. In 1872, Vuitton introduced a new line, featuring beige monogrammed designs with a red stripe that would remain a signature of his brand long after he died in 1892 due to a severe and aggressive cancer in his brain (glioblastoma).


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Alfons Maria Mucha (; 24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator and graphic artist, living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, best known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt. He produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, as well as designs, which became among the best-known images of the period.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: In the second part of his career, at the age of 57, he returned to his homeland and devoted himself to a series of twenty monumental canvases known as "The Slav Epic", depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world, which he painted between 1912 and 1926. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha was born on 24 July 1860 in the small town of Ivančice in southern Moravia, then a province of the Austrian Empire (currently a region of the Czech Republic). His family had a very modest income; his father Ondřej was a court usher, and his mother Amálie was a miller's daughter. Ondřej had six children, all with names starting with A. Alphonse was his first child with Amálie, followed by Anna and Anděla.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha showed an early talent for drawing; a local merchant impressed by his work provided him with paper for free, though it was considered a luxury. In the preschool period, he drew exclusively with his left hand. He also had a talent for music: he was an alto singer and violin player.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: After completing Volksschule, he wanted to continue with his studies, but his family was not able to fund them, as they were already funding the studies of his three step-siblings. His music teacher sent him to Pavel Křížkovský, choirmaster of St Thomas's Abbey in Brno, to be admitted to the choir and to have his studies funded by the monastery. Křížovský was impressed by his talent, but he was not able to admit and fund him, as he had just admitted another talented young musician, Leoš Janáček.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Křížovský sent him to a choirmaster of the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, who admitted him as a chorister and funded his studies at the gymnasium in Brno, where he received his secondary school education. After his voice broke, he gave up his chorister position, but played as a violinist during masses.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: He became devoutly religious, and wrote later, "For me, the notions of painting, going to church, and music are so closely knit that often I cannot decide whether I like church for its music, or music for its place in the mystery which it accompanies." He grew up in an environment of intense Czech nationalism in all the arts, from music to literature and painting. He designed flyers and posters for patriotic rallies.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: His singing abilities allowed him to continue his musical education at the Gymnázium Brno in the Moravian capital of Brno, but his true ambition was to become an artist. He found some employment designing theatrical scenery and other decorations. In 1878 he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, but was rejected and advised to "find a different career". In 1880, at the age of 19, he traveled to Vienna, the political and cultural capital of the Empire, and found employment as an apprentice scenery painter for a company which made sets for Vienna theaters. While in Vienna, he discovered the museums, churches, palaces and especially theaters, for which he received free tickets from his employer. He also discovered Hans Makart, a very prominent academic painter, who created murals for many of the palaces and government buildings in Vienna, and was a master of portraits and historical paintings in grand format. His style turned Mucha in that artistic direction and influenced his later work. He also began experimenting with photography, which became an important tool in his later work.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: To his misfortune, a terrible fire in 1881 destroyed the Ringtheater, the major client of his firm. Later in 1881, almost without funds, he took a train as far north as his money would take him. He arrived in Mikulov in southern Moravia, and began making portraits, decorative art and lettering for tombstones. His work was appreciated, and he was commissioned by Count Eduard Khuen Belasi, a local landlord and nobleman, to paint a series of murals for his residence at Emmahof Castle, and then at his ancestral home in the Tyrol, Gandegg Castle. The paintings at Emmahof were destroyed by fire in 1948, but his early versions in small format exist (now on display at the museum in Brno). He showed his skill at mythological themes, the female form, and lush vegetal decoration. Belasi, who was also an amateur painter, took Mucha on expeditions to see art in Venice, Florence and Milan, and introduced him to many artists, including the famous Bavarian romantic painter, Wilhelm Kray, who lived in Munich.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Count Belasi decided to bring Mucha to Munich for formal training, and paid his tuition fees and living expenses at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He moved there in September 1885. It is not clear how Mucha actually studied at the Munich Academy; there is no record of his being enrolled as a student there. However, he did become friends with a number of notable Slavic artists there, including the Czechs Karel Vítězslav Mašek and Ludek Marold and the Russian Leonid Pasternak, father of the famous poet and novelist Boris Pasternak. He founded a Czech students' club, and contributed political illustrations to nationalist publications in Prague. In 1886 he received a notable commission for a painting of the Czech patron saints Cyril and Methodius, from a group of Czech emigrants, including some of his relatives, who had founded a Roman Catholic church in the town of Pisek, North Dakota. He was very happy with the artistic environment of Munich: he wrote to friends, "Here I am in my new element, painting. I cross all sorts of currents, but without effort, and even with joy. Here, for the first time, I can find the objectives to reach which used to seem inaccessible." However, he found he could not remain forever in Munich; the Bavarian authorities imposed increasing restrictions upon foreign students and residents. Count Belasi suggested that he travel either to Rome or to Paris. With Belasi's financial support, he decided in 1887 to move to Paris.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha moved to Paris in 1888 where he enrolled in the Académie Julian and the following year, 1889, Académie Colarossi. The two schools taught a wide variety of different styles. His first professors at the Académie Julian were Jules Lefebvre who specialized in female nudes and allegorical paintings, and Jean-Paul Laurens, whose specialties were historical and religious paintings in a realistic and dramatic style. At the end of 1889, as he approached the age of thirty, his patron, Count Belasi, decided that Mucha had received enough education and ended his subsidies.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: When he arrived in Paris, Mucha found shelter with the help of the large Slavic community. He lived in a boarding house called the Crémerie at 13 rue de la Grande Chaumière, whose owner, Charlotte Caron, was famous for sheltering struggling artists; when needed she accepted paintings or drawings in place of rent. Mucha decided to follow the path of another Czech painter he knew from Munich, Ludek Marold, who had made a successful career as an illustrator for magazines. In 1890 and 1891, he began providing illustrations for the weekly magazine "La Vie populaire", which published novels in weekly segments. His illustration for a novel by Guy de Maupassant, called "The Useless Beauty", was on the cover of 22 May 1890 edition. He also made illustrations for "Le Petit Français Illustré", which published stories for young people in both magazine and book form. For this magazine he provided dramatic scenes of battles and other historic events, including a cover illustration of a scene from the Franco-Prussian War which was on 23 January 1892 edition.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: His illustrations began to give him a regular income. He was able to buy a harmonium to continue his musical interests, and his first camera, which used glass-plate negatives. He took pictures of himself and his friends, and also regularly used it to compose his drawings. He became friends with Paul Gauguin, and shared a studio with him for a time when Gauguin returned from Tahiti in the summer of 1893. In late autumn 1894 he also became friends with the playwright August Strindberg, with whom he had a common interest in philosophy and mysticism.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: His magazine illustrations led to book illustration; he was commissioned to provide illustrations for "Scenes and Episodes of German History" by historian Charles Seignobos. Four of his illustrations, including one depicting the death of Frederic Barbarossa, were chosen for display at the 1894 Paris Salon of Artists. He received a medal of honor, his first official recognition.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha added another important client in the early 1890s; the Central Library of Fine Arts, which specialized in the publication of books about art, architecture and the decorative arts. It later launched a new magazine in 1897 called "Art et Decoration", which played an early and important role in publicizing the Art Nouveau style. He continued to publish illustrations for his other clients, including illustrating a children's book of poetry by Eugène Manuel, and illustrations for a magazine of the theater arts, called "La Costume au théâtre".


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: At the end of 1894 his career took a dramatic and unexpected turn when he began to work for French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. As Mucha later described it, on 26 December Bernhardt made a telephone call to Maurice de Brunhoff, the manager of the publishing firm Lemercier which printed her theatrical posters, ordering a new poster for the continuation of the play "Gismonda". The play, by Victorien Sardou, had already opened with great success on 31 October 1894 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance on the Boulevard Saint-Martin. Bernhardt decided to have a poster made to advertise the prolongation of the theatrical run after the Christmas break, insisting it be ready by 1 January 1895. Because of the holidays, none of the regular Lemercier artists were available.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: When Bernhardt called, Mucha happened to be at the publishing house correcting proofs. He already had experience painting Bernhardt; he had made a series of illustrations of her performing in "Cleopatra" for "Costume au Théâtre" in 1890. When "Gismonda" opened in October 1894, Mucha had been commissioned by the magazine "Le Gaulois" to make a series of illustrations of Bernhardt in the role for a special Christmas supplement, which was published at Christmas 1894, for the high price of fifty centimes a copy.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Brunhoff asked Mucha to quickly design the new poster for Bernhardt. The poster was more than life-size; a little more than two meters high, with Bernhardt in the costume of a Byzantine noblewoman, dressed in an orchid headdress and floral stole, and holding a palm branch in the Easter procession near the end of the play. One of the innovative features of the posters was the ornate rainbow-shaped arch behind the head, almost like a halo, which focused attention on her face; this feature appeared in all of his future theater posters. Probably because of a shortage of time, some areas of the background were left blank, without his usual decoration. The only background decoration were the Byzantine mosaic tiles behind her head. The poster featured extremely fine draftsmanship and delicate pastel colors, unlike the typical brightly-colored posters of the time. The top of the poster, with the title, was richly composed and ornamented, and balanced the bottom, where the essential information was given in the shortest possible form: just the name of the theater.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: The poster appeared on the streets of Paris on 1 January 1895 and caused an immediate sensation. Bernhardt was pleased by the reaction; she ordered four thousand copies of the poster in 1895 and 1896, and gave Mucha a six-year contract to produce more. With his posters all over the city, Mucha found himself quite suddenly famous.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Following "Gismonda", Bernhardt switched to a different printer, F. Champenois, who, like Mucha, was put under contract to work for Bernhardt for six years. Champenois had a large printing house on Boulevard Saint Michel which employed three hundred workers, with twenty steam presses. He gave Mucha a generous monthly salary in exchange for the rights to publish all his works. With his increased income, Mucha was able to move to a three-bedroom apartment with a large studio inside a large historic house at 6 rue du Val-de-Grâce originally built by François Mansart.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha designed posters for each successive Bernhardt play, beginning with a reprise of one of her early great successes, "La Dame aux Camelias" (September 1896), followed by "Lorenzaccio" (1896); "Medea" (1898); "La Tosca" (1898) and "Hamlet" (1899). He sometimes worked from photographs of Bernhardt, as he did for "La Tosca". In addition to posters, he designed theatrical programs, sets, costumes, and jewelry for Bernhardt. The enterprising Bernhardt set aside a certain number of printed posters of each play to sell to collectors.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: The success of the Bernhardt posters brought Mucha commissions for advertising posters. He designed posters for JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart Champagne, Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moët-Chandon champagne, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles. With Champenois, he also created a new kind of product, a decorative panel, a poster without text, purely for decoration. They were published in large print runs for a modest price. The first series was "The Seasons", published in 1896, depicting four different women in extremely decorative floral settings representing the seasons of the year. In 1897 he produced an individual decorative panel of a young woman in a floral setting, called "Reverie", for Champenois. He also designed a calendar with a woman's head surrounded by the signs of the zodiac. The rights were resold to Léon Deschamps, the editor of the arts review "La Plume", who brought it out with great success in 1897. "The Seasons" series was followed by "The Flowers," "The Arts" (1898), "The Times of Day" (1899), "Precious Stones" (1900), and "The Moon and the Stars" (1902). Between 1896 and 1904 Mucha created over one hundred poster designs for Champenois. These were sold in various formats, ranging from expensive versions printed on Japanese paper or vellum, to less expensive versions which combined multiple images, to calendars and postcards.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: His posters focused almost entirely on beautiful women in lavish settings with their hair usually curling in arabesque forms and filling the frame. His poster for the railway line between Paris and Monaco-Monte-Carlo (1897) did not show a train or any identifiable scene of Monaco or Monte-Carlo; it showed a beautiful young woman in a kind of reverie, surrounded by swirling floral images, which suggested the turning wheels of a train.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: The fame of his posters led to success in the art world; he was invited by Deschamps to show his work in the "Salon des Cent" exhibition in 1896, and then, in 1897, to have a major retrospective in the same gallery showing 448 works. The magazine "La Plume" made a special edition devoted to his work, and his exhibition traveled to Vienna, Prague, Munich, Brussels, London, and New York, giving him an international reputation.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: The Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, famous as the first grand showcase of the Art Nouveau, gave Mucha an opportunity to move in an entirely different direction, toward the large-scale historical paintings which he had admired in Vienna. It also allowed him to express his Czech patriotism. His foreign name had caused much speculation in the French press, which distressed him. Sarah Bernhardt stood up on his behalf, declaring in "La France" that Mucha was "a Czech from Moravia not only by birth and origin, but also by feeling, by conviction and by patriotism." He applied to the Austrian government and received a commission to create murals for the Pavilion of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Exposition. This pavilion displayed examples of industry, agriculture and culture of these provinces which in 1878, by the Treaty of Berlin, had been taken away from Turkey and put under the tutorship of Austria. The temporary building built for the Exposition had three large halls with two levels, with a ceiling more than twelve meters high, and with natural light from skylights. His experience in theater decoration gave him the ability to paint large-scale paintings in a short period of time.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha's original concept was a group of murals depicting the suffering of the Slavic inhabitants of the region caused by the occupation by foreign powers. The sponsors of the exhibit, the Austrian government, the new occupier of the region, declared that this was a little pessimistic for a World's Fair. He changed his project to depict a future society in the Balkans where Catholic and Orthodox Christians and Muslims lived in harmony together; this was accepted, and he began work. Mucha immediately departed for the Balkans to make sketches of Balkan costumes, ceremonies and architecture which he put into his new work. His decoration included one large allegorical painting, "Bosnia Offers Her Products to the Universal Exposition", plus an additional set of murals on three walls, showing the history and cultural development of the region. He did discreetly include some images of the sufferings of the Bosnians under foreign rule which appear in the arched band at the top of the mural. As he had done with his theater work, he often took photographs of posed models, and painted from them, simplifying the forms. While the work depicted dramatic events, the overall impression given by the work was one of serenity and harmony. In addition to the murals, Mucha also designed a menu for the restaurant of the Bosnia Pavilion.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: His work appeared in many forms at the Exposition. He designed the posters for the official Austrian participation in the Exposition, the menu for the restaurant at the Bosnian pavilion, and menu for the official opening banquet. He produced displays for the jeweler Georges Fouquet and the perfume maker Houbigant, with statuettes and panels of women depicting the scents of rose, orange blossom, violet and buttercup. His more serious art works, including his drawings for "Le Pater", were shown in the Austrian Pavilion and in the Austrian section of the Grand Palais.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: His work at the Exposition earned him the title of Knight of the Order of Franz Joseph from the Austrian government, and the Legion of Honour from the French Government. During the course of the Exposition, Mucha proposed another unusual project. The French Government planned to take down the Eiffel Tower, built especially for the Exposition, as soon as the Exposition ended. Mucha proposed that, after the Exposition, the top of the tower should be replaced by a sculptural monument to humanity be constructed on the pedestal. The tower proved to be popular with both tourists and Parisians, and the Eiffel Tower remained after the Exhibit ended.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha's many interests included jewelry. His 1902 book, "Documents Decoratifs", contained plates of elaborate designs for brooches and other pieces, with swirling arabesques and vegetal forms, with incrustations of enamel and colored stones. In 1899 he collaborated with the jeweler Georges Fouquet to make a bracelet for Sarah Bernhardt in the form of a serpent, made of gold and enamel, similar to the costume jewelry Bernhardt wore in "Medea". According to Jiri Mucha, this bracelet was created to conceal Bernhardt's arthritic wrist. The spiraling design of the snake is a nod to Mucha's swirling Art Nouveau painting style. The Cascade pendant designed for Fouquet by Mucha )1900) is in the form of a waterfall, composed of gold, enamel, opals, tiny diamonds, paillons, and a "barocco" or misshapen pearl. After the 1900 Exposition, Fouquet decided to open a new shop at 6 Rue Royale, across the street from the restaurant Maxim's. He asked Mucha to design the interior.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: The centerpieces of the design were two peacocks, the traditional symbol of luxury, made of bronze and wood with colored glass decoration. To the side was a shell-shaped fountain, with three gargoyles spouting water into basins, surrounding the statue of a nude woman. The salon was further decorated with carved moldings and stained glass, thin columents with vegetal designs, and a ceiling with molded floral and vegetal elements. It marked a summit of Art Nouveau decoration.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: The Salon opened in 1901, just as tastes were beginning to change, moving away from Art Nouveau to more naturalistic patterns. It was taken apart in 1923, and a replaced by a more traditional shop design. Fortunately most of the original decoration was preserved, and was donated in 1914 and 1949 to the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, where it can be seen today.


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha's next project was a series of seventy-two printed plates of watercolors of designs, titled "Documents Decoratifs", which were published in 1902 by the Librarie Centrale des Beaux-arts. They represented ways that floral, vegetal and natural forms could be used in decoration and decorative objects. In about 1900 he had begun to teach at the Academy Colarossi, where he himself had been a student when he first arrived in Paris. His course was precisely described in the catalog: "The object of the Mucha course is to permit the student to have the necessary knowledge for artistic decoration, applied to decorative panels, windows, porcelain, enamels, furniture, jewelry, posters, etc."


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: Mucha made a considerable income from his theatrical and advertising work, but he wished even more to be recognized as a serious artist and philosopher. He was a devoted Catholic, but also was interested in mysticism. In January 1898 he joined the Paris masonic lodge of the "Grand Orient de France". Shortly Before the 1900 Exposition, as wrote in his memoirs, "I had not found any real satisfaction in my old kind of work. I saw that my way was to be found elsewhere, little bit higher. I sought a way to spread the light which reached further into even the darkest corners. I didn't have to look for very long. The "Pater Noster" (Lord's Prayer): why not give the words a pictorial expression?". He approached his publisher, Henri Piazza, and proposed


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: the book, in these words: "First a cover page with symbolist ornament; then the same ornament developed in a kind a variation on each line of the prayer; a page explaining each line in a calligraphic form; and a page rendering the idea of each line in the form of an image."


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: "Le Pater" was published on 20 December 1899, only 510 copies were printed. The original watercolor paintings of the page were displayed in the Austrian pavilion at the 1900 Exposition. He considered "Le Pater" to be his printed masterpiece, and referred to it in the "New York Sun" of 5 January 1900 as a work into which he had "put his soul". The critic Charles Masson, who reviewed it for "Art et Decoration", wrote: "There is in that man a visionary; it is the work of an imagination not suspected by those who only know his talent for the agreeable and charming."


title: Alphonse Mucha

text: In March 1904, Mucha sailed for New York and the beginning of his first visit to the United States. His intent was to find funding for his grand project, "The Slav Epic", which he had conceived during the 1900 Exposition. He had letters of introduction from Baroness Salomon de Rothschild. When he landed in New York, he was already a celebrity in the United States; his posters had been widely displayed during Sarah Bernhardt's annual American tours since 1896. He rented a studio near Central Park, in New York, made portraits, and gave interviews and lectures. He also made contact with Pan-Slavic organizations. At one Pan-Slavic banquet in New York City, he met Charles Richard Crane, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, who was a passionate Slavophile. He commissioned Mucha to make a portrait of his daughter in a traditional Slavic style, More important, he shared Mucha's enthusiasm for a series of monumental paintings on Slavic history, and he became Mucha's most important patron. When Mucha designed the Czechoslovak bills, he used his portrait of Crane's daughter as the model for Slavia for the 100 koruna bill.