500 Francs Marshal Kœnig

Henri Kœnig commanded the Free French forces at Bir Hakeim in May–June 1942, where roughly 3,700 troops held off Rommel's Afrika Korps for fifteen days before executing a successful breakout — long enough to blunt the German advance on Tobruk. The engagement became one of the foundational episodes of Gaullist resistance mythology, which explains why Kœnig's face eventually found its way onto French commemorative coinage decades after his death in 1970.

The .920 fineness is characteristic of the French commemorative gold program of the 1990s rather than the older .900 standard used on pre-war circulation pieces.