1 Franc - Chambre de Commerce de Laval and de la Mayenne 53

French Chambers of Commerce were authorized to issue small-denomination emergency notes — billets de nécessité — following the acute coin shortage that began with the First World War and dragged well into the early 1920s. The Laval chamber's issues were purely a local stopgap, circulating within the Mayenne department while metal coinage remained scarce or was hoarded. Henri Dalibard was a Laval-based printer, not a specialist security printer, which is worth noting: the watermark represents the most substantive anti-counterfeiting measure on a note produced by a regional commercial press with no particular background in fiduciary work.