Ernest Renan was an armored cruiser built for the French Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, she participated in the hunt for the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben and then joined the blockade of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic. She took part in the Battle of Antivari later in August, and the seizure of Corfu in January 1916, but saw no further action during the war. After the war, the British and French intervened in the Russian Civil War; this included a major naval deployment to the Black Sea, which included Ernest Renan. She served as a training ship in the late 1920s before she was sunk as a target ship in the 1930s.

Edgar Quinet was an armored cruiser of the French Navy, the lead ship of her class. She and her sister ship, Waldeck-Rousseau, were the last class of armored cruiser to be built by the French Navy. Edgar Quinet was laid down in November 1905, launched in September 1907, and completed in January 1911. Armed with a main battery of fourteen 194-millimeter (7.6 in) guns, she was more powerful than most other armored cruisers, but she had entered service more than two years after the first battlecruiser—HMS Invincible—had rendered armored cruisers obsolescent.