The Lovely Lowly Liard

Thanks, jbuck and kg5. Glad you enjoyed it!

Very interesting!

You are too kind, paralyse, but I'm glad you appreciate it!

We will get to Liège eventually - I look forward to seeing your liards!

Is anything more precise known about the tenure of Monald of Lucca at the Krakow mint than "1393-94"? It would be hilarious if you manage to get an 1393 coin for the Walking Back thread after all

(presumably it ended partway through 1394 because the next guy was 1394-95, but I'm not sure if any sources name specific months or days; if they do I wasn't able to find anything)

You probably have a better grasp on those sources than I do. I am not aware of any finer dating than 1393-1394 (from auction listings ... I don't have any recent Polish catalogs, only Gumowski).



This can been as a chapter just past the midpoint of the 1000+ year history of fighting over this part of Europe.

CHAPTER 11: Holy Roman Billon (Lorraine)

= Late 16th Century =

France bordered the Holy Roman Empire in the northeast. The Empire consisted of many hundreds of states, ranging in size and importance from large lands to small towns. They were in many respects independent and self-governing, and the border states were under a lot of influence from their neighbors. Such was the situation for the Duchy of Lorraine and the County of Burgundy, or Franche-Comte in daily speech, both with long borders to France and with long-lasting historical ties to that country. One result of the French connection was that the monetary system became a mixture of French and Empire, with francs, livres, sols and deniers from France and gros(chen) and thalers from the Empire. And liards, of course, otherwise I wouldn't bring them up here.

Have a look at the map at the beginning of Chapter 8, if you want to see the location of Lorraine and Franche-Comte.

Lorraine

Lorraine was an independent duchy in the Holy Roman Empire but with economic, cultural and linguistic ties to France. There were two monetary systems in use: The franc lorrain (or franc barrois, it had its origin in the once independent Duchy of Bar), divided into 12 gros, each divided into 16 deniers lorrains. In parallel, there was the livre lorraine, with the same division as the French livre into 20 sols, each sol with 12 deniers lorrains. (There were coins for gros, sols, and deniers; the franc and livre were moneys of account.) The Lorraine livre was worth around 5/6 of a French livre tournois, and the relation between the denier lorrain and denier tournois was the same.

The first liards of Lorraine arrived in the 16th century, inspired by the French liards most likely (without trying to copy them).

Liard (3 deniers lorrains), Lorraine 1545-1608, Charles III, Nancy. Billon (0.167). 0.58 g, 14.5 mm.



Obverse: CARO D G LOTHO DVX (Carolus Dei Gratia Lothorum Dux / Charles by Grace of God Duke of the Lorrainians). Sword, strip with three alerions (coat of arms of Lorraine).
Reverse: MONETA NANCEII CV (Moneta Nanceii Cusa / Money coined in Nancy). Cross with fleurs-de-lis.

Charles's long reign was due to him becoming duke at the age of two. There are several varieties of this liard and with more extensive reference material than I have at hand, it is perhaps possible to narrow the time span.

The sword and the alerions are classical attributes of Lorraine and its coins. The floriated cross is rare on Lorraine coins and looks very much like the cross on the contemporary liard of Henry III of France that I show in Chapter 6.

Liards do not seem to have been a big thing in Lorraine. Numista lists only three types, basically one per century from 1545 to 1729 (the last type will show up in a later post).

Next

We move on to Franche-Comte.

CHAPTER 12: Holy Roman Billon (Franche-Comte)

= Mid 16th Century =

Burgundy/Franche-Comte

Some sources say the County of Burgundy got its casual name Franche-Comte from its 12th century Count Renaud III, who refused to pay homage to the Emperor. A bold or "frank count", in French "franc comte", thus would have given rise to the name Franche-Comte, after a couple of centuries and linguistic distortions. Since franche also means "free", a more mundane explanation is that it simply means "free county", which has to do with it developing from a territory with its own ("free") jurisdiction into a self-governing area. The German name Freigrafschaft Burgund translates to exactly that. Whatever the reason, the name stuck and the region, today part of France, still goes under the same name.

The monetary system used in Franche-Comte in the 15th-16th centuries is confusing, at least to an external observer many centuries later . At some time at least, it looked like this: 1 franc = 12 gros = 24 carolus = 48 blancs = 144 angrognes = 216 deniers estevenants. The angrogne was a regional Burgundian coin, also known as niquet and worth (at least at this time) 1/3 blanc or 1½ denier estevenant. The denier estevenant was the denier minted in Burgundy's largest town, Besançon, since the 9th century (named after Saint Stevens, who figured on the coins; Besançon, by the way, had its own minting rights and coinage in parallel with that of the County). The carolus, finally, was also a local coin, so named because it had the image of the emperor Charles on it. It was worth two blancs; a double blanc, however, was a double denier, and the denier was, quite logically, called half double (demi double).

Having come that far in my piecing together data from multiple partially contradicting sources, I found that there had also been "strong" and "weak" francs in the 16th century, with different values toward the livre tournois, and in turn divided into "strong" and "weak" gros, etc. Sensing a slight headache, I decided to pretend I hadn't seen that, and halt any further research. So to be honest, I might have missed some aspect of the Burgundian monetization.

And, let's not forget that in addition to the County of Burgundy, there was also the Duchy of Burgundy (bordering the County on the west). From 1384 they joined in a personal union, with the same ruler being both duke and count.

But, the liards, where are they? Well, that is a good question. They are found in Vanhoudt's book and they are found in Numista. In other places those coins are called demi-blancs, that is, half blancs. Yet other sources call them doubles. Assuming they are ½ blancs, a Burgundian liard would then be the same as 2 and 1/4 denier (estevenant), or 1/96 of a franc. Completely ignoring that this liard thus seems to be neither 3 deniers nor 1/80th of something , here it is:

Liard/Half blanc, Burgundy 1555, Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, Dôle. Billon. 0.73 g, 15 mm. Vanhoudt 243.



Obverse: C V R IMP C BVRGV (Carolus V Romanorum Imperator Comes Burgundiae / Charles V Emperor of the Romans, Count of Burgundy). Crowned coat of arms for Franche-Comte.
Reverse: M C BVRGVNDIE (Moneta Comitatus Burgundiae / Coin from the County of Burgundy). Cross pattee.

Minted in fairly large numbers 1550-1559 (last issue posthumous), with a couple of variants in design and inscription, rarely in really good condition.

The coat of arms is worth a few words. It shows a crowned lion rampant on a field with bars (a few are visible if you look closely). Originally the coat of arms for the County of Burgundy had an eagle, like so many other states in the Holy Roman Empire (like Lorraine with its three alerions/eagles). Towards the end of the 13th century, count Otto IV decided to change that. He wanted to strengthen the ties with France when marrying the grandniece of King Louis IX of France, and to demonstrate that, he disposed of the imperial eagle. There are no lions in Burgundy, but it's a great symbol for a ruler . The bars, a bit unclear what they symbolize - logs from the Burgundian forests?

But what about the ties with France? Emperor Charles V, of the Habsburg house, certainly was no vassal of the French king and in the 16th century relations with France were quite frosty. We have to go back some 80 years to se why. In 1477 future emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg married duchess Mary of Burgundy (after she rejected the French king's proposal to marry his six year old son, future Charles VIII; and yes, Mary was both duchess of the Duchy of Burgundy as well as countess of the County of Burgundy). Hostilities followed, the Duchy was taken over by France and in 1493 the County was taken over by the Habsburgs. Charles V got the title of count in 1506, at the age of six, and held it until his death in 1558. After that, the county went back and forth between France and the Empire a couple of times, before finally being taken over by France in 1678.

How much was a Burgundian liard (or whatever it was) compared to a French liard then? Comparing the Burgundian franc with the French livre should give an answer. However, opinions on the relation of those differed. The count figured a 1:1 relationship would be handy. The French king thought that a value of 2/3 livre for a franc could suffice. So in practice, the exchange rate varied over time and with place and depending on who you asked. If we go with the king's opinion, the resulting calculation yields a value of about 5/3 (1 and 2/3) denier tournois for the Burgundian liard.

Next time: The Copper Age

Copper began to replace low grade billon coins in France and other countries in the 16th century. For liards, the Low Countries were first with copper. We begin with the Spanish Netherlands in the next Chapter!

And since that is a quite a leap, from French billon to Low Countries copper, I will wait a couple of days before posting the next Chapter. I hope to see some billon liards from you folks in the mean time!