Denier Tournois - Francis I 2nd type

The denier tournois had been struck at Tours since the Capetian period, but by 1575 the coin was a ghost of its medieval self — debased so thoroughly over successive reigns that billon had long since displaced any meaningful silver content. Francis I's second type reflects a mid-sixteenth-century attempt to regularize the petty coinage system amid the fiscal pressures of the Italian Wars, which drained the royal treasury across nearly four decades of intermittent campaigning.

Ciani 1194 and Duplessy 873 treat this as a distinct emission from the first type on the basis of minor legend differences traceable to specific mint workshops.