Sedan's status as an independent Calvinist principality under the La Tour d'Auvergne family gave it the right to strike its own coinage, a privilege it exercised with particular assertiveness in the early seventeenth century as confessional tensions across France sharpened. The Liard Tournois format was nominally tied to the French monetary system, yet Sedan's issues circulated within a pocket of sovereignty that Paris could not easily discipline — the principality would not be absorbed into France until 1642, when Richelieu moved against the Duc de Bouillon following the Cinq-Mars conspiracy.
Sedan's status as an independent Calvinist principality under the La Tour d'Auvergne family gave it the right to strike its own coinage, a privilege it exercised with particular assertiveness in the early seventeenth century as confessional tensions across France sharpened. The Liard Tournois format was nominally tied to the French monetary system, yet Sedan's issues circulated within a pocket of sovereignty that Paris could not easily discipline — the principality would not be absorbed into France until 1642, when Richelieu moved against the Duc de Bouillon following the Cinq-Mars conspiracy.