French Pretender Coinage

By the way, erafjel, thanks for responding to my posts. I've learned a lot and it has helped focus my thoughts on the issue. And I'll add the page from the Bulletin Numismatique nr 53 to my meager collection of reference material.

Thanks, jbuck. I appreciate it.

Perhaps, and I don't have a problem with that. There are a lot of questions in history that must remain unsolved. But I've only been researching this issue for three days now, so I'm not quite ready to give up. I'd still like to see any other firsthand documentation or examples from other members that might help shed some light on this, and I'll probably keep digging for awhile myself.

Again, thanks for your insight and analysis.

Despite being a hairy, wine swilling coin and medal freak, I 've had a side gig for the last 50+/- years as an academic.

The research level and subject comprehension in this thread is rarely met in most of the papers I have to review.

Here's an interesting observation I've made regarding the Napoleon II overstrike sample described and depicted in the Bulletin Numismatique nr 53 (at least I've found it to be so).

I'm posting 6 images of two separate Napoleon II 2-franc pieces. O1 and R1 are the obverse and reverse of the overstruck coin pictured and described on page 11 of the Bulletin. O2 and R2 are the obverse and reverse of a Napoleon II 2-franc piece taken from the Heritage Auction website. O3 and R3 are obverse and reverse overlays of these two coins.








I hope my formatting here hasn't messed up anyone's browser display.

My observation is simply that these two coins were struck from different dies. Note the two stars on either side of "1816" in the lower legend region of R2. They're missing from the lower legend region of R1. I've also tried to line the two coins up in the overlaid images O3 and R3. First I resized the images so that the coins were the same size. For the obverse I tried to match the two portraits, but note the details I've starred. At the top, you can see that the upper outline of the head doesn't quite match. At the leftmost star, the curl of the hair at the temples doesn't match. At the lower middle star, the top of the ears don't match. And at the rightmost star the upper right legend doesn't line up. In fact, the typography looks different.

I didn't bother to mark the differences between R1 and R2. In R3, I matched the size of the coins, then tried to line up the "2" above the word FRANCS. In addition to the missing two stars, hardly anything matches between the two coins, either in shape or position.

I did a search for Napoleon II 2-franc coins at the Heritage Auction website, and got 4 matches from past auctions. Two of the matches had the stars on the reverse side, and two did not.

Since the two coins were obviously made from different dies, I don't think we can draw any general conclusions from the fact that coin 1 has been shown to be an overstrike. That coin could have been struck at any time relative to coin 2, including 56 years later.

A search on Google Images brings up a lot of pictures of the Henri V coins, and a few of Napoleon 11.
Follow up research on these pictures, and perhaps add some more info, seems to be appropriate for this thread.

Haven't found any good information on mintage numbers, but COIN QUEST does provide some info on values for coins of Henri V

Now it is getting really interesting. No doubt you have identified two different dies. Looking at Napoleon II 2 francs coins that have been on sale by CGB (cgb.fr), I see examples of both dies (the one with stars also has a point above E in ESSAI which recurs on all such examples at CGB). This variation does not show for ½, 1 and 5 francs coins that I can find on the Internet - all ½ francs are without stars, all 1 and 5 francs are with stars.



Very interesting! (How do you find all this information?!) The Napoleon IV coins are generally believed to have been struck in Brussels, Belgium, so this is an interesting piece of information.

I agree with your conclusion. I think the presence vs absence of engraver initials is also a strong suggestion that the Napoleon IV and Napoleon II coins have different origins. The style of the reverse is another difference - 2nd empire vs 1st empire coins - but that of course can be attributed to the different eras for the two pretenders.

Great find, erafjel. Like so much of the limited information available on these coins it reads like mere speculation. The main point of interest is the evidence that the coin was in existence in 1861. It's a bit amusing that the author's speculations center on the coin being struck to fool the collector, apparently without giving any thought to any actual political propaganda purposes the coin might have had.

I keep going back to the report by Gruner in the summer of 1815. Of all we've seen, it seems one of the most reliable pieces of evidence. If the coins were struck for seditious propaganda purposes, as he appeared to suspect, then perhaps dating the coins for 1816 was intended to have an impact on public perception. Suggesting that the accession of Napoleon II to the throne was a foregone conclusion and his reign would be stable enough to extend into the future. Just speculation, of course.