Denier Bourdelois - Louis XII

Louis XII inherited a monetary system already producing the denier bourdelois, a coin so debased by the late fifteenth century that its silver content had fallen to near-symbolic levels. The type continued essentially unchanged across his reign — a deliberate policy of monetary conservatism following the upheavals of Charles VIII's Italian campaigns, which had drained French coin stocks considerably. Bourdelois deniers circulated primarily in southwestern France, where the old Bordelais monetary tradition persisted long after the region's English-era coinage had been absorbed into the French crown system.