Amiral Duperré was an ironclad barbette ship built for the French Navy in the 1870s and 1880s; she was the first vessel of that type built by France. She carried her main battery of four 34 cm (13.4 in) guns individually in open barbette mountings, which offered increased fields of fire compared to earlier central battery ships, though they were less well protected. Amiral Duperré was ordered as part of a French naval construction program aimed at countering the growth of the Italian fleet, which had begun work on the very large ironclads of the Duilio and Italia classes in the early 1870s. The Italian vessels, armed with 45 cm (17.7 in) guns, prompted public outcry in France that pressured the navy to develop larger guns for its own ships. Amiral Duperré's design served as the basis for several follow-on classes, including the Bayard and Amiral Baudin classes.

The Bayard class was a pair of two ironclad warships built for the French Navy in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The class comprised two ships: Bayard and Turenne. The class is sometimes referred to as the Turenne class. They were based on the ironclad Amiral Duperré, adopting the same general arrangement, but were scaled down in size. They were intended for use overseas in the French colonial empire, and as such, they retained a sailing rig for long-range cruising and copper sheathing for their hulls to protect them when they would be unable to be dry-docked regularly. They carried a main battery of four 240 mm (9.4 in) guns that were mounted in individual barbettes; two were in sponsons forward, abreast of the conning tower, and the other two were on the centerline aft.