66 Livres

The 66 livres coinage of Martinique emerged from a chronic shortage of specie that plagued the French Caribbean colonies throughout the revolutionary period. Rather than mint new coin, colonial authorities authorized the cutting and restamping of Spanish colonial gold — principally the full escudo pieces circulating in the region — with local countermarks to assign them a fixed livres value for internal use. The practice was improvised monetary policy under wartime conditions, with British naval blockades making regular supply from metropolitan France effectively impossible.

KM#27.1 specifically identifies the countermarked type on cut Spanish gold, distinguishing it from later restruck issues.