5000 Francs

The Trésor Public issues designated P#M13 were military payment instruments, not general circulation notes — printed by the Banque de France for use within the French armed forces stationed in specific overseas territories during the mid-1950s, a period when France was managing two grinding colonial conflicts simultaneously in Indochina and Algeria. Keeping military pay segregated from local economies was the operational logic, limiting black-market leakage and currency arbitrage by troops and locals alike.

Armanelli and Rigal were both established Banque de France engravers, their credits here indicating full intaglio production rather than a simplified field-issue process — unusual care for what was, functionally, scrip.