 Complete the following phrase:  Upon completion, the ships were assigned to the 1st Battle Squadron and sent to join the fleet at Corfu; by this point, the fleet had settled into the blockade of the southern Adriatic and so the Bretagnes saw little activity during the war. The ships spent the 1920s and 1930s in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Squadrons, undergoing periodic refits and modernizations, and in the late 1930s, they took part in the non-intervention patrols off Spain during the Spanish Civil War. After the start of World War II, they operated as convoy escorts in the Atlantic and in 1940, as war with Italy became increasingly likely, they were concentrated with the bulk of the French fleet in the Mediterranean as a deterrent. and were in Mers El Kébir when Germany defeated France in June 1940, and during a British operation to neutralize the French fleet, were 