The French delayed the change for some years, as we see. M. De Bussy, the designer of the _Redoutable_, and a most accomplished naval constructor, built a very large part of the ship of steel, and by so doing brought the French dockyards into early acquaintance with the superiority of that material to iron for constructive purposes. The _Redoutable_ has armor of more than 14 inches in thickness upon her belt, and of 9½ inches upon her central battery. She carries eight 25-ton guns[26]—four in her central battery, two in barbette half-towers, and two on revolving platforms at the bow and stern respectively. She also carries eight light 5½-inch guns. This ship generally resembles her successors, the _Dévastation_ and the _Foudroyant_ (by the same designer), in so far as that her batteries fire past sides, with great tumble home. Lord Brassey (in this respect somewhat erroneously following Mr. King, of the United States navy, in his able work upon “The War-ships and Navies of the World”), says, “The faculty of firing parallel to the line of keel is secured in the French ship by the tumble home of the ship’s sides, and not by the projection of the battery beyond them, as in the English vessel (the _Audacious_).” It is difficult to understand what this means, because it is obviously only by the projection of the battery beyond the sides of the ship which are before and after it that fore and aft fire can be obtained from the battery in either case. But it is not true that the battery of the _Audacious_, any more than the battery of the _Redoutable_, projects beyond the breadth of the ship at the water-line, which would seem to be what is intended, and Lord Brassey may assure himself of the fact by looking at Plate III. of his own work on “The British Navy,” from which the above words are quoted. The _Redoutable_ is a full-rigged ship, and nevertheless steams 14¼ knots per hour. There is one particular in which the _Dévastation_ and the _Foudroyant_, like her as they are in general design, differ materially from the _Redoutable_. I refer to the armament. The former two ships each carry four 34-centimetre 48-ton guns in the main-deck battery, in lieu of the four 25-ton guns of the _Redoutable_.