5 Centimes

Besançon issued its own emergency coinage in 1917 under the authority of the municipal government, as the French state's wartime metal requisitions had effectively stripped normal copper and bronze coinage from circulation. Aluminium, still considered a strategic material itself, was used here because the city had access to local stocks. Hundreds of French municipalities issued similar nécessités during the First World War, but Besançon's series is among the better documented, catalogued under Elie Morin's reference work on French local emergency issues.