Upon completion, the ships were assigned to the 1st Battle Squadron and sent to join the fleet at Corfu; by this point, the fleet had settled into the blockade of the southern Adriatic and so the "Bretagne"s saw little activity during the war. The ships spent the 1920s and 1930s in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Squadrons, undergoing periodic refits and modernizations, and in the late 1930s, they took part in the non-intervention patrols off Spain during the Spanish Civil War. After the start of World War II, they operated as convoy escorts in the Atlantic and in 1940, as war with Italy became increasingly likely, they were concentrated with the bulk of the French fleet in the Mediterranean as a deterrent. and were in Mers El Kébir when Germany defeated France in June 1940, and during a British operation to neutralize the French fleet, were attacked in the port by the British Force H. "Bretagne" was destroyed and "Provence" was badly damaged, later being refloated and returned to Toulon for repairs, where she was scuttled in 1942 to prevent her capture by the Germans. Meanwhile, was seized by the British while she was moored in Alexandria, Egypt and then turned over to the Free French Naval Forces. She saw action during the last years of the war bombarding German forces in occupied France. After the war, she was used as a training vessel and later a barracks ship, ultimately being scrapped in 1953.