1 Franc - Chambre de Commerce de la Creuse [23]

The Creuse department had no significant banking infrastructure of its own, and when the wartime coin shortage hit France in 1915 — driven by hoarding and the suspension of specie payments — the local Chambre de Commerce stepped in as issuer by administrative necessity, not financial authority. These emergency fractional notes, known collectively as monnaie de nécessité, proliferated across provincial France that year precisely because the Banque de France had no efficient mechanism to supply small change to rural departments.

Printed by Pierre Dumont in Limoges, the note carries a watermark — unusual attentiveness to security for a body with no tradition of currency production.