The Edgar Quinet was an armoured cruiser of the French Navy

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

, the lead ship

Lead ship

The lead ship or class leader is the first of a series or class of ships all constructed according to the same general design. The term is applicable military ships and larger civilian craft.-Overview:...

 of her class.

After her commissioning, Edgar Quinet was appointed to the 1st light cruiser division in the Mediterranean, under Capitaine de vaisseau

Ship-of-the-Line Captain

Ship-of-the-line captain is a rank that appears in several navies...

Émile Guépratte

Émile Paul Amable Guépratte

Émile Paul Aimable Guépratte was a French admiral.Guépratte was born in Granville to a family of naval officers. He studied at the Lycée impérial in Brest from 1868, and joined the École Navale on 1 October 1871....

.

During the First World War, she served off Montenegro and Tunisia, notably taking part in the evacuation of the Serbian Army in 1916 and in December, in operations against Greek royalists in the Noemvriana

Noemvriana

The Noemvriana of November–December 1916 was a political dispute, which led to an armed confrontation in Athens between the royalist government of Greece and the Allies forces over the issue of Greece's neutrality during World War I....

. In 1918, she was off Malta.

In 1923, Edgar Quinet took part in the evacuation of refugees of the Armenian Genocide

Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide—also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime—refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I...

 after the fall and Great Fire of Smyrna

Great Fire of Smyrna

The Great Fire of Smyrna or the Catastrophe of Smyrna was a fire that destroyed much of the port city of Izmir in September 1922. Eye-witness reports state that the fire began on 13 September 1922 and lasted until it was largely extinguished on September 22...

, ferrying 75 people to Marseille on 23 February.

From 1929, she was used as a schoolship in Toulon. On 4 January 1930, she ran aground off Algeria and four days later, she started breaking up. She became a total loss, though all the crew was safely evacuated.