1 Franc - Chambre de Commerce de Cette 34

Cette — now Sète — was a major Mediterranean port, and its Chamber of Commerce was among dozens of French regional bodies that began issuing small-denomination emergency paper in 1914–15 when metal coinage effectively vanished from circulation, hoarded by the public and consumed by wartime industrial demand. The Banque de France had no mechanism to fill the gap quickly at the local level, so the chambers stepped in under a temporary legal authorization that few expected to last as long as it did.

B. Arnaud of Lyon was a prolific printer of this type of billet de nécessité, supplying numerous southern chambers during the war years. The watermarked paper was a modest deterrent to forgery given the low face value.