2 Francs - Commune de Cornimont [88]

Cornimont is a small industrial commune in the Vosges, and when war mobilization in August 1914 caused an immediate coin shortage across France, hundreds of local authorities and private firms improvised their own emergency scrip. Chagué & Cie — almost certainly a textile or manufacturing concern, given the industrial character of the upper Moselle valley — issued this note to keep wages and small transactions moving when official coinage had effectively vanished from circulation.

The watermark is notable for a note of this origin; most Vosges emergency issues of 1914 dispensed with security features entirely, printing on whatever paper stock was available.