25 Francs Union française Essai

The Union française — the constitutional framework that replaced the French Empire in 1946 — was already fracturing by 1956. Dien Bien Phu had fallen two years earlier, Morocco and Tunisia were newly independent, and the Algerian War had begun. Essai pieces like this one were produced as official trial strikes by the Monnaie de Paris for proposed circulating coinage, but this denomination never entered production for general circulation, leaving the essai as the only struck form it takes.