2.400 Reis

The Real Erário — Portugal's Royal Treasury — issued this note in 1807, the same year Napoleon's forces were advancing toward Lisbon and the Bragança court was preparing its extraordinary flight to Brazil. Whether notes from this series actually circulated before the royal family departed in November 1807 remains genuinely unclear; the evacuation was chaotic, and much of the Treasury's operation was disrupted in the process.

The 2,400 réis denomination corresponds to roughly one cruzado novo in the old accounting, a denomination meaningful to merchants rather than common laborers. Cotton substrate was the standard choice for Portuguese domestic issues of this period, printed in-house rather than contracted abroad.

Pick 19 is scarce, almost certainly because surviving notes from this brief window of Royal Treasury operation were largely withdrawn or lost during the Peninsular War years that followed immediately after.