Shortly after the end of the war, British and French warships began to operate in the Black Sea in what became a large-scale intervention in the Russian Civil War against the Bolsheviks. "Ernest Renan" was among the first Allied warships to enter the area; she arrived in Novorossiysk with the British light cruiser and two torpedo boats on 23 November 1918. On 18 March 1921, the leadership of the Democratic Republic of Georgia was evacuated on board "Ernest Renan" to France after the Red Army invasion of Georgia.