French écu

The term écu (French pronunciation: ​[eky]) or crown may refer to one of several French coins. The first écu was a gold coin (the écu d'or) minted during the reign of Louis IX of France, in 1266. Écu (from Latin scutum) means shield, and the coin was so called because its design included a shield bearing a coat of arms. The word is related to and escudo. The value of the écu varied considerably over time, and silver coins (known as écu d'argent) were also introduced.

When Louis IX took office, France still used small silver deniers, which had circulated since the time of Charlemagne to the exclusion of larger silver or gold coins. Over the years, French kings had granted numerous nobles and bishops the right to strike coins and their “feudal” coinages competed with the royal coinage. Venice and Florence had already shown that there was demand for larger silver and gold coins and in 1266 Louis IX sought an advantage for the royal coinage by expanding it in these areas. His gold écu d'or showed a shield strewn with fleur-de-lis, which was the coat of arms of the kings of France at the time. These coins were valued as if gold was worth only 10 times as much as silver, an unrealistic ratio which Edward III of England had unsuccessfully tried to use. It failed again, Louis IX’s silver coins were a great success but his gold was not accepted at this rate and his successor discontinued gold coinage.

Philip IV reintroduced gold coinage to France in 1296 and began a sequence of extravagantly designed but rapidly changing types. These coins were generally named for their obverse design and the écu a la chaise which Philip VI introduced in 1337 showed a shield with the coat of arms of the kings of France beside the seated king. Philip IV spent vast quantities of these coins subsidizing his allies in the Netherlands at the outset of the Hundred Years' War and this coin was widely copied in the Netherlands.

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