"The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution" Topic

"French revolutionary money is funny stuff. In my own collection I have a five-sous coin that is little short of a work of art, a handsome bronze disc with a veritable bas-relief of revolutionary symbolism – yet this was produced not by the state, but as a private token, a medaille de confiance, one of a proliferation of initiatives to relieve the shortage of small change, in this case by the Monneron Brothers bank. What is more, it was coined not in Paris, but Birmingham, at Matthew Boulton's revolutionary steam-powered Soho mint. I have another coin that is very much the official product of the French state – marked ‘République française' and the year, 1793, made in a yellowish metal quite possibly the product of melted church bells. Yet it bears the likeness of Louis XVI, probably already dead by the time it was struck, and shows other signs of having been worn as a medallion in his memory.

Both objects point to the central historical dilemma discussed directly by Rebecca Spang, and in a looser sense also by Timothy Tackett – how could people in revolutionary times know how to trust everyday social interactions, when the signs and symbols of the cultural landscape that inscribed meaning into such interactions were endlessly displaced? And how were they supposed to feel about this situation?…"
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Amicalement
Armand