Jules Michelet
During the First World War, "Jules Michelet" was part of the Mediterranean Fleet, spending the whole of the war in the Mediterranean. At the start of the conflict, "Jules Michelet" and the armored cruisers and were mobilized as the First Light Division and tasked with hunting down the German battlecruiser and the light cruiser . The French ships, along with a flotilla of twelve destroyers, were to steam to Philippeville on 4 August, but the German cruisers had bombarded the port the previous day. This attack, coupled with reports that suggested the Germans would try to break out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, prompted the French high command to send "Jules Michelet" and the First Light Division further west, to Algiers to block the Germans.