10 centimes (essai de Moullé, piéfort au quadruple)

The essais of 1848 were produced in the chaotic months following the February Revolution that toppled Louis-Philippe and established the Second Republic. Moullé submitted this design in response to an open competition for republican coinage — a competition that generated an extraordinary number of trial pieces across multiple metals and weights as the provisional government struggled to define what French money should look like in the new political order. The piéfort au quadruple format, struck at four times the standard flan weight, was a deliberate proof-of-die submission rather than anything intended for circulation.

Gold-plated copper piedfort essais from this competition survive in very small numbers, most traceable to institutional collections or the original submission archives.