5 Centime France

1814, French States, Antwerp (City), Napoleon I. 5 Centimes Coin.

Mint Year: 1814 

Mint Place: Naval Arsenal (Antwerp, Belgium) 

Reference: KM-2.2, Gadoury 129a. 

Denomination: 5 Centimes

Weight: 12.66gm 

Diameter: 30mm 

Material: Bronze

Obverse: Initial letter of Napoleon I of France within wreath. Small “v” letter above bow in wreath. Date (1814) below.

Reverse: Value numeral (5) above denomination (CENT.). Legend: MONNAIE OBSIDIONALE ("Siege coinage.")

The siege of Antwerp took place during the War of the Sixth Coalition and lasted from 14 January 1814 to 4 May 1814. After the German Campaign of 1813, Napoleon had to retreat back over the Rhine. Whereas the two armies of Blücher and Schwarzenberg invaded France and marched on Paris, a third allied army under Bernadotte entered the Low Countries. In January 1814 Napoleon appointed the old republican Lazare Carnot as governor of Antwerp. The 10,000 men garrison was composed of troops from I Corps, and the Young Guard, including a 500 strong battalion of Irish troops. After the French defeat at Hoogstraten, Carnot retreated to the fortified city and the Antwerp Citadel, which was then besieged by Prussian, Russian, and British forces. The French garrison under Lazare Carnot, aided by a French naval flotilla under Missiessy, then resisted the Allied siege and only surrendered the city after Louis XVIII of France signed an armistice upon Napoleon’s abdication.

Napoleon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – May 1821) was a French military and political leader who had a significant impact on the history of Europe. He was a general during the French Revolution, the ruler of France as First Consul of the French Republic and Emperor of the First French Empire.

Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, he rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led successful campaigns against the First and Second Coalitions arrayed against France. In 1799, Napoleon staged a coup d’etat and installed himself as First Consul; five years later he crowned himself Emperor of the French. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, he turned the armies of France against every major European power and dominated continental Europe through a series of military victories – epitomised in battles such as Austerlitz and Friedland. He maintained France’s sphere of influence by the formation of extensive alliances and the appointment of friends and family members to rule other European countries as French client states.

The French invasion of Russia in 1812 marked a turning point in Napoleon’s fortunes. His Grande Armee was wrecked in the campaign and never fully recovered. In 1813, the Sixth Coalition defeated his forces at Leipzig, invaded France and exiled him to the island of Elba. Less than a year later, he returned and was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon spent the last six years of his life under British supervision on the island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The autopsy concluded he died of stomach cancer though Sten Forshufvud and other scientists in the 1960s conjectured that he had been poisoned with arsenic.

Napoleon developed few military innovations, drew his tactics from different sources and scored major victories with a modernised French army. His campaigns are studied at military academies the world over and he is widely regarded as one of history’s greatest commanders. While considered a tyrant by his opponents, he is remembered for the establishment of the Napoleonic code, which laid the administrative foundations for much of Western Europe.