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

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.

The monarch later remembered as Charles the Mad

ascended to power as a boy and governed through France’s most fractured epoch.

Periods of profound psychological collapse rendered the crown powerless, fueling bitter civil war between rival noble houses.

Yet even amid civil strife and English invasions,

the king’s mint persisted in striking the écu,

a tradition dating back to the reign of Saint Louis.

This silver coin featured the king, アンティーク コイン 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.

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.

This imagery was carefully crafted, refined, and intended to convey order and permanence despite the kingdom’s unraveling.

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.

Merchants, peasants, and soldiers alike handled these coins,

each coin echoing the burden of royal insanity and collective survival.

When Charles VI passed away in 1422, the kingdom lay in shards.

The Treaty of Troyes stripped Charles VII of his birthright, naming Henry V of England as heir.

As Henry V assumed the French crown, the people still trusted and traded with Charles VI’s coin.

its image of the French king still familiar to the people who had lived under his rule.

Today, surviving examples of the écu of Charles VI are rare and prized by collectors.

But beyond their numismatic value, they are artifacts of a time when a nation clung to symbols of order even as it fell apart.

This is not a tale of victory, but of quiet endurance.

the steadfast dignity of subjects who honored the coin, though their king had lost his mind