FRENCH COIN COLLECTING ?
Coins of the Louis Kings.
 |
A half-franc, struck by Henri IV, in Lyons in 1603. Estimated at : 2 500 FRF |
 |
A 15-sols, of Louis XIII, struck in Paris in 1643. Estimated at : 1 800 FRF
|
| Henri IV, a Protestant, who converted to Catholicism in order
to take the crown, was the first king of modern-day France whose
numismatic system was close to our present one : a portrait of the
king, a simplified monetary system, an almost complete disappearance
of feudal striking, in favour of the king's coins, national territory
,well-controlled by central power; the state is almost a modern
one.
His son, Louis XIII and his grandson Louis XIV were going to have a big influence on European numismatics for they were to systematise the use of machines for striking coins . The engravers trained in Paris were going to work in England and help spread the image that we are familiar with today of an industrial coin. |
 |
A half-ecu of Louis XIV, struck in 1655 in Paris. stimated at 2 200 FRF.
|
| Coins are varied and struck in many different mints which again
means that there is no reference collection and that many coins
are only found in very few examples.
The numismatics of Kings Louis XIII, XIV, XV and XVI, from 1610 to 1792, covers the beginning of Modern Day History and the vision of civilisation which dominated the West until the appearance of the United States of America. The reign of the Louis Kings is the era of Versailles and of the Louvre, the beginnings of zoology and chemistry, the first flight of a human being, with the Montgolfier brothers; it was a civilisation of courtesy and good manners, which was the reason for French being spoken in nearly all the royal courts of Europe. |
 |
An Ecu with the headband of Louis XV, struck in Metz in 1752. Estimated at 3 500 FRF
|
 |
An Ecu 'à la vielle tête' struck by Louis XV in Rouen in 1733. Estimated at 4 500 FRF
|
| The reign of the Louis kings is the era of furniture from Boule,
of tapestries from Aubusson and carpets from la Savonnerie, porcelain
from Sèvres, paintings by Watteau, Fragonard or Greuze, literature
ranging from the 'liaisons dangereuses' to the Marquis de Sade, and
including Voltaire and Rousseau. It is the age of the coins and jetons
of Jean Warin and Nicolas Briot. To collect the coins of this period
is to participate in this culture and in this Art of Living.
It is the era of the Cardinal de Richelieu, of the three musketeers and of the heroic deeds recounted by Alexandre Dumas. The political ideas that developed during the 'Siècle des Lumières' (period of Enlightenment ) are ideas which are at the forefront of modern-day western civilisation - that men are born free and equal, that the government has a social contract with its subjects, belief in the separation of powers, the separation of Church and State. |
 |
An Ecu of Louis XVI, with olive branches, struck in La Rochelle in 1787. Estimated at : 3 000 FRF.
|
|
All these ideas which are at the root of modern society, were defined and put into place during the reign of the Louis kings, to be confirmed in the Declaration of Independence of the United States and in the Declaration of Human Rights of the French Revolution. These ideas were already well anchored amongst the French nobility and bourgeoisie well before the Revolution : it was not by chance that La Fayette went to help the 'insurgeants'. The numismatics of the Louis kings is varied in that many different types of coins were struck over a century and a half, by many different mints all over France. A thorough search of the archives is being carried out at present and no complete reference catalogue yet exists. Of course there is no existing reference collection except that of the French National Library (BnF) but only for type coins . Prices vary from under fifty francs for small bronze 'double tournois' to four hundred thousand francs (80 000 dollars ) for the very rare 'Dix louis d'or' huge, prestigious coins each struck only in a few examples. There is no existing classification of the finest known examples, even though, now and again, specimens of a quality AU 58 or even higher do appear . |
