Obverse. Photo © NumisCorner.com
  • 1 Centime 1848-1851, KM# 754, France
  • 1 Centime 1848-1851, KM# 754, France
Description

The French Second Republic was a short-lived republican government of France under President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. It lasted from the 1848 Revolution to the 1851 coup by which the president made himself Emperor Napoleon III and initiated the Second Empire.

Engraver: Augustin Dupré

Obverse

Marianne wearing a Phrygian cap, left, surrounded by the country name. Engraver's name below.

Marianne is a national symbol of the French Republic, an allegory of liberty and reason, and a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty. It is a significant republican symbol, opposed to monarchy, and an icon of freedom and democracy against all forms of dictatorship.

The Phrygian cap is a soft conical cap with the top pulled forward, associated in antiquity with several peoples in Eastern Europe and Anatolia, including Phrygia, Dacia, and the Balkans. In early modern Europe it came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty through a confusion with the pileus, the felt cap of manumitted (emancipated) slaves of ancient Rome. Accordingly, the Phrygian cap sometimes is called a liberty cap.

REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE
• Dupré •

Reverse

Facial value and the date. Mintmark below, surrounded by the privy marks of the Engraver General and Mint Director.

UN
CENTIME
1849
A

Edge

1 Centime

2nd Republic
KM# 754 Gadoury# 84
Characteristics
Material Bronze
Weight 2 g
Diameter 18 mm
Thickness 1 mm
Shape round
Alignment Coin
Mint
Paris Mint (A)

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