Jean the Blind ruled Luxembourg for nearly four decades while spending almost none of that time in the county itself — he was perpetually campaigning across Europe, from Lombardy to Lithuania, accumulating wounds and debts in roughly equal measure. This half esterlin belongs to a fractional coinage necessitated partly by the financial strain of those campaigns, struck to facilitate small transactions in a territory its count rarely visited. Jean died at Crécy in 1346, charging blind into the English lines at the age of fifty, his reins reportedly tied to those of his knights.
Jean the Blind ruled Luxembourg for nearly four decades while spending almost none of that time in the county itself — he was perpetually campaigning across Europe, from Lombardy to Lithuania, accumulating wounds and debts in roughly equal measure. This half esterlin belongs to a fractional coinage necessitated partly by the financial strain of those campaigns, struck to facilitate small transactions in a territory its count rarely visited. Jean died at Crécy in 1346, charging blind into the English lines at the age of fifty, his reins reportedly tied to those of his knights.