Douzain of Dauphine - Francis I 9th type

The douzain — worth twelve deniers — was the workhorse of French small silver coinage throughout the sixteenth century, and Francis I overhauled the type repeatedly across his reign, producing a bewildering succession of variants that catalogers have never fully resolved into clean sequence. This ninth type of the Dauphiné issue reflects the administrative distinctiveness of that province, which retained its own monetary workshop at Grenoble even after its absorption into the French crown in 1349. The Ciani gap is telling: the type fell through the cracks of that reference entirely, making Duplessy the essential authority here.