The Silent Witness: Charles VI’s Écu Amid France’s Collapse
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In the late 14th and early 15th centuries
France was torn apart by war abroad and civil strife at home,
one coin stood as a quiet witness to the nation’s suffering and resilience—the écu of Charles VI.
Charles VI, infamously dubbed "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,
authorities kept turning out the écu,
a monetary symbol rooted in the legacy of Louis IX.
This silver coin featured the king, regal and upright, sheltered by a canopy, clutching both the royal scepter and the sacred fleur de lys,
emblems of God-given sovereignty and monarchical power.
The reverse side displayed a radiant cross, each arm tipped with fleurs de lys, encircled by the Latin legend: "Carolus Dei gratia Francorum rex".
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,
economic strain, deliberate reduction of precious metal content, and English occupation of key provinces led to gradual devaluation.
The portrait of Charles VI persisted, a steadfast symbol in a landscape of betrayal and fractured oaths.
Merchants, peasants, and soldiers alike handled these coins,
each piece bearing the silent legacy of a monarch’s collapse and a people’s perseverance.
At the moment of Charles VI’s death in 1422, France was no longer a unified realm.
Through the Treaty of Troyes, France’s throne was legally transferred from Charles VI’s son to the English monarch Henry V.
As Henry V assumed the French crown, the people still trusted and アンティーク コイン traded with Charles VI’s coin.
its likeness of the monarch still etched in the minds of those who remembered his reign.
Only a handful of these coins endure today, making them coveted treasures among historians and collectors alike.
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 quiet dignity of a people who kept using the currency of their king, even when he could no longer rule them
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