5 Francs

Rumillies is a village of a few hundred souls in the Walloon Brabant — the kind of commune that under normal circumstances would never have issued currency at all. The German occupation of Belgium beginning in August 1914 strangled the normal money supply almost immediately, forcing thousands of municipal administrations, no matter how small, to print their own emergency scrip to keep local trade functioning. This note is a direct product of that administrative chaos.

The printer, Lithographie & Cartonnage de Tournai, produced emergency notes for numerous Hainaut communes during this period — Tournai itself fell to German forces in late August 1914, meaning the press was operating under occupation from very early in the war.