10 Centimes

Marengo was a French colonial settlement in the Mitidja plain west of Algiers, renamed from the Berber Douaouda after the Battle of Marengo in 1800 — one of dozens of Algerian villages handed Napoleonic battlefield names during the colonization period. By 1916, wartime metal shortages had stripped small change from circulation across France and its territories alike. Communes throughout metropolitan France and Algeria issued their own emergency fractional notes, typically in runs just large enough to cover local market needs.

The Ville de Marengo series is among the scarcer Algerian municipal issues of the period, reflecting both the town's modest size and low original print quantities.