 They recoaled four days later and the mobilized on 2 August.Before the French declared war on the German Empire on the morning of 4 August, Vice Admiral () Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère, commander of the 1st Naval Army (), as the Mediterranean Squadron had been renamed in 1913, ordered most of his ships to concentrate off the Algerian coast to escort troop convoys to Metropolitan France and to blockade German shipping in the Mediterranean.Despite this deployment the German battlecruiser and light cruiser were able to bombard Bône and Philippeville on 4 August.