3 Deniers - Louis XIV

Louis XIV was five years old when this coin entered circulation. France was governed by the regent Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, whose fiscal policies — including aggressive currency manipulation and tax farming — helped ignite the Fronde, the civil wars that would scar the young king's childhood and later harden his instinct toward absolute control of the state's finances. The 3 deniers was the smallest practical copper denomination of the period, absorbed almost entirely by the urban poor and market traders.

Mazarin's administration debased and revalued copper coinage repeatedly between 1643 and 1648, making precise attribution of individual strikes to specific mint years genuinely difficult.