Philippe IV's monetary manipulations are among the most aggressive in medieval French history — he systematically debased coinage to fund wars against Flanders and his prolonged conflict with Pope Boniface VIII. The bourgeois simple had already been degraded repeatedly before this 1311 striking, earning the "faible" designation as a formal acknowledgment of reduced silver content rather than a minting accident.
Philip died in 1314, and within three years all three of his sons had reigned and died without male heirs, collapsing the direct Capetian line. Coins from his final years circulated through one of the most turbulent succession crises France would see until the Hundred Years' War.
Philippe IV's monetary manipulations are among the most aggressive in medieval French history — he systematically debased coinage to fund wars against Flanders and his prolonged conflict with Pope Boniface VIII. The bourgeois simple had already been degraded repeatedly before this 1311 striking, earning the "faible" designation as a formal acknowledgment of reduced silver content rather than a minting accident.
Philip died in 1314, and within three years all three of his sons had reigned and died without male heirs, collapsing the direct Capetian line. Coins from his final years circulated through one of the most turbulent succession crises France would see until the Hundred Years' War.