FRANCE François II 1559-60 silver teston 1560 Nantes mint

Description

This coin was made in the name of Henry II, father of Francis, who died in 1559.

François II (Francis) was king for only two years. He was crowned after his father, Henri II, was killed in a jousting accident. There was an informal regency that tried to hold back the Protestant Reformation. There was violence at home. He was married to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, which was supposed to bring Scotland to France, but he died too soon.

France was ancient Gaul. The Romans were active, then the Merovingian kings maintained a vassal relationship with the Byzantine Empire until the advent of Charlemagne. France diverged from Germany thereafter, going through a period of feudal decentralization. A series of powerful kings gradually brought into being the modern country.

The political arrangements that resulted in the nations of modern Europe began to emerge out of anarchy starting in the 7th century AD or so. Europe, for our purposes stretches from Greenland to somewhere in Russia. Collectors of Europe would likely include Russia. Collectors of Asia, even though about 2/3 of Russia is in Asia, probably not.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.