This article provides a brief guide to the monetary terms used in Alexandre Dumas' popular romances of the adventures of the Chevalier d'Artagnan, which include a number of obsolete units and denominations. These can be confusing not only to foreign readers, but to many modern Frenchmen as well, accustomed as they are to the decimal franc in use from the Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 until the adoption of the Euro.

The livre

The official unit of account under the ancien regime (except from 1577–1602) was the livre tournois

Livre tournois

The livre tournois |pound]]) was:#one of numerous currencies used in France in the Middle Ages; and#a unit of account used in France in the Middle Ages and the early modern period.-Circulating currency:...

, or "pound of Tours". As instituted by Charlemagne, the livre

French livre

The livre was the currency of France until 1795. Several different livres existed, some concurrently. The livre was the name of both units of account and coins.-Etymology:...

(from Latin librum) had originally meant one Roman pound of silver, subdenominated into 20 sol

French sol

The sol was a coin in use in Ancien Regime France, valued at a 20th of a livre tournois. The sol itself was subdivided into 12 deniers.Over the 17th century the term sol was, apart from in a few instances, progressively replaced by sou, reflecting its pronunciation. In 1787 a sol's buying power was...

s (solidi) of 12 denier

French denier

The denier was a Frankish coin created by Charlemagne in the Early Middle Ages. It was introduced together with an accounting system in which twelve deniers equaled one sou and twenty sous equalled one livre...

s (denarii) each. This Frankish system was also adopted in England, with the pound sterling

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

 of 20 shillings of 12 pence (abbreviated d.) However, by the time in which the Musketeers novels are set, the French livre had been devalued far more than the English pound, so that its exchange value was approximately one shilling and sixpence.

The livre was a money of account, only: there was no actual livre coin in d'Artagnan's day. From the Middle Ages through the period in question, French coins had no marked denomination or fixed value. The worth of a coin in the official units of livres, sols and deniers was set periodically by royal decree.

The franc

There had been medieval francs

French franc

The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...

struck in gold with an original value of one livre, but by the 17th century such few of these coins as might have remained in circulation had a value far greater. From 1575 to 1586 silver "white francs" had been issued at 20 sols or one livre, but these had been discontinued when rising silver prices caused their bullion value to exceed their exchange value. Nonetheless, among bankers "franc" began at this time to be used as a synonym for "livre"; some English translations substitute franc for livre throughout.

The pistole

Dumas tends to express large sums in gold pistoles. Although the Valois kings had occasionally minted gold francs and écus, in the earlier 17th century Spanish coins comprised most of the gold circulating in France. By pistole

Pistole

Pistole is the French name given to a Spanish gold coin in use in 1537; it was a double escudo, the gold unit. The name was also given to the Louis d'Or of Louis XIII of France, and to other European gold coins of about the value of the Spanish coin...

, just possibly a contraction of 'piastre espagnole,' the French meant the Spanish 6.7-gram 22-karat double escudo

Spanish escudo

-Gold escudo:The first escudo was a gold coin introduced in 1535/1537, with coins denominated in escudos issued until 1833. It was initially worth 16 reales...

, the "doubloon

Doubloon

The doubloon , was a two-escudo or 32-reales gold coin, weighing 6.77 grams . Doubloons were minted in Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Nueva Granada...

" of pirate lore. Its value fluctuated throughout the period relative to the official silver standard; Dumas simply but not inaccurately postulates it to be 10 livres, on the model of the louis d'or.

To confuse matters, Dumas has Aramis' mistress send him a purse of "Spanish double pistoles", which are valued at 20 livres. But by this is meant not the double escudo, which is itself the pistole, but rather the four-escudo piece. Similarly, d'Artagnan bribes the choirboy with a half-pistole: a one-escudo.

The louis d'or

Dumas occasionally uses louis d'or as an equivalent or alternative to pistole, but at least in The Three Musketeers, set in the 1620s, this is an anachronism: the first gold louis weren't minted until 1641. A very slightly larger coin (6.75g) than the double escudo, of which it was a deliberate copy, its official value was pegged at 10 livres until 1690.

The crown

The English text makes something of a poser here, as there has never been a French coin called a "crown" except the medieval écu d'or a la couronne, and the Renaissance blanc a la couronne. However, Dumas clearly had in mind a denomination less valuable than the old gold écu and far more valuable than the old one-sol "white crown:" in the episode of Athos' sapphire he indicates "at least 300 crowns" as being worth approximately 1000 livres or 100 pistoles. It appears that what was meant, again anachronistically, was the 25.4g silver écu

ECU

ECU may refer to:Automotive terms* Electronic control unit, a generic term for any embedded system that controls one or more of the electrical systems or subsystems in a motor vehicle...

or louis d'argent introduced in 1642, valued at that time at 3 livres, which prominently featured a crowned royal shield on its reverse.

The use of "crown" by Dumas (or his English translators) is not so unreasonable in light of the fact that in his own day the five-franc piece was still colloquially known as an écu, and this coin was very similar in size and value to the English crown or five-shilling piece; indeed "crown" was something of a universal term for silver coins of the one-ounce class (along with thaler

Thaler

The Thaler was a silver coin used throughout Europe for almost four hundred years. Its name lives on in various currencies as the dollar or tolar. Etymologically, "Thaler" is an abbreviation of "Joachimsthaler", a coin type from the city of Joachimsthal in Bohemia, where some of the first such...

and dollar

Dollar

The dollar is the name of the official currency of many countries, including Australia, Belize, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United States.-Etymology:...

).