Cassini was the second member of the D'Iberville class of torpedo cruisers built for the French Navy in the 1890s. The class is also sometimes classified as torpedo gunboats or torpedo avisos. The D'Iberville-class ships were a development of earlier torpedo cruisers, with the chief improvement being a significantly higher speed. Cassini was armed with three 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes and a single 100 mm (3.9 in) gun as her primary offensive armament.