1/5 Ecu - Louis XV

By 1773, France's finances were in chronic disorder, and the mint system that produced this coin was itself part of the problem — a sprawling network of provincial mints, each with its own overhead, that Louis XV's government repeatedly attempted to rationalize and never quite did. The 1/5 écu denomination had been introduced earlier in the century as a practical subdivision, but by this late period of the reign it was being struck in diminishing quantities as silver supplies tightened ahead of the monetary reforms that would come under Louis XVI.

Louis XV died in May 1774, making issues from that year's production transitional pieces struck under a king already gravely ill with smallpox.