From the 1860s to the 1880s, Prussia and later the German Empire built a series of screw corvettes to expand and modernize its fleet of cruising warships. In total, twenty-three ships of the type were built, mostly between six different ship classes. The first two ships, the Nymphe class, were built in the early 1860s as Prussia began to prepare for an eventual conflict with Denmark over the Schleswig-Holstein Question, though only Nymphe entered service in time for the Second Schleswig War in 1864. During the war, Prussia purchased the two Augusta-class corvettes that had been secretly ordered by the Confederate States Navy from France, after the French Emperor Napoleon III blocked their delivery to the Confederates. The three ships of the Ariadne class were laid down in the late 1860s