France - Bayonne 1776 (L) France ecu 1776 L Bayonne Louis XVI silver olive branches KM 564.9 Gadoury VF

Kingdom of France, écu aux branches d'olivier, 1776, mintmark L for Bayonne, Louis XVI, silver of .917.

Obverse: bust of the king to the left, in an embroidered coat and wearing the order of the Holy Spirit, the hair tied at the nape of the neck with a ribbon. Legend LUD · XVI · D · G · FR · ET NAV · REX ·, in full Ludovicus XVI Dei Gratia Franciae Et Navarrae Rex, Louis XVI, by the grace of God king of France and Navarre.

Reverse: oval crowned shield of France between two olive branches. Legend SIT NOMEN DOMINI BENEDICTUM with the date 1776, and at the bottom the mintmark L. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Edge: inscription in relief, DOMINE SALVUM FAC REGEM, Lord, save the king.

References: KM# 564.9, Gadoury 356, Duplessy royales 1708, Ciani 2187.

The dies of this type are the work of Pierre-Benjamin Duvivier. The écu was the large silver piece of the livre tournois, the money of account in use since 1204. The type with the olive branches ran from 1774 to 1792 and so covers the whole reign of Louis XVI.

The letter L stands for the mint of Bayonne. In 1776 Bayonne struck 1,039,000 of these écus, more than any other French mint that year. Bordeaux followed with 692,000 pieces and Paris with 513,000. A year later the output at Bayonne fell back to 94,400 pieces.

In France 1776 was a political year. On 12 March 1776 the king compelled the parlement of Paris in a lit de justice to register the six edicts of his minister Anne Robert Jacques Turgot. With them the corvée and the guilds disappeared. Resistance was strong and in May of that same year Turgot was dismissed.

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Coins have been part of my life for almost thirty years. It started with the things I found in the ground as a boy, and it never stopped. First the searching, then the reading and figuring out, and the collecting. Dealing came much later, and even though it is how I make my living now, I still enjoy looking at every piece the way a collector does.

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Kind regards, Vincent

vanzandwijkmunten: Because one coin is never enough

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