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During the final decades of the 1300s and the opening years of the 1400s

France struggled through the turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War and internal political chaos,

the écu of Charles VI emerged as an unspoken testament to national endurance amid collapse.

The monarch later remembered as Charles the Mad

inherited the throne as a child and ruled during one of the most turbulent periods in French history.

His reign was marked by bouts of severe mental illness that left the kingdom vulnerable to factional struggles between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs.

Amid relentless internal conflict and relentless English offensives,

the royal mint continued to produce the écu,

a tradition dating back to the reign of Saint Louis.

The écu of Charles VI was struck in fine silver and bore the image of the king standing beneath a canopy, holding a scepter and the fleur de lys,

emblems of God-given sovereignty and monarchical power.

On the reverse, a cross adorned with fleurs de lys radiated outward, encircled by the Latin inscription meaning Charles by the grace of God, king of the French.

The design was elegant, deliberate, and meant to project stability—even when the realm was anything but.

As the conflict stretched into decades, the écu’s worth became unstable,

inflation, debasement of the coinage, and the loss of territory to the English meant that the silver content of the coin was sometimes reduced.

The portrait of Charles VI persisted, a steadfast symbol in a landscape of betrayal and fractured oaths.

Traders, farmers, and foot soldiers passed these coins from hand to hand,

each one carrying the weight of a king’s madness and a nation’s endurance.

At the moment of Charles VI’s death in 1422, France was no longer a unified realm.

The Treaty of Troyes had disinherited his son, the future Charles VII, アンティーク コイン in favor of Henry V of England.

Even while English forces held the title of French king, the écu remained in daily use.

the king’s face, though no longer ruling, remained deeply familiar to the populace.

Modern numismatists treasure the few remaining écus of Charles VI as rare and invaluable artifacts.

More than currency, they embody a people’s desperate grasp at dignity and structure while their world disintegrated.

The coin tells a story not of triumph, but of persistence.

the unspoken resolve of a populace who continued to accept the écu, even as their sovereign ceased to govern