2 Mites - Louis II de Male

Louis de Male spent much of his reign navigating between French and English commercial pressures, his county's textile economy utterly dependent on English wool imports while his dynastic obligations pulled toward Paris. The billon mite was the workhorse of Flemish small commerce during this period — struck in quantity to feed a merchant economy that ran on fractional transactions the larger silver coinage couldn't serve.

VGH 229 is struck in particularly debased billon, reflecting the monetary deterioration common across the Low Countries in the 1370s as silver supplies tightened and minting authorities progressively reduced fineness to maintain volume.