The Amiral Baudin class was a type of ironclad of the French Navy built in the late 1870s and late 1880s. The class comprised two ships: Amiral Baudin and Formidable. After the Italian Navy began building a series of very large ironclads in the mid-1870s, public pressure on the French naval command to respond in kind prompted the design for the Amiral Baudin class. New, very large guns were developed to counter the weapons carried by the Italian ships; Amiral Baudin and Formidable were equipped with a main battery of three 370 mm (14.6 in) guns in three open barbettes, all on the centerline. Begun in 1879, work on the ships proceeded slowly and they were not finished until 1888–1889, shortly before the first pre-dreadnought battleships began to be built, which rendered older ironclads lik