Sale: Triton XIII, Lot: 1774. Estimate $750.  Closing Date: Monday, 4 January 2010.  Sold For $750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

FRANCE, Royal. Charles IX. 1560-1574. AV Écu d’or. La Rochelle mint. Dated 1566. (spiral) CAROLVS : VIIII : D : G : FRANCO REX · M · DLXVI, crowned coat-of-arms of France / + CRISTVS : REGNAT : VINCIT : ET : IMPER (wolf’s head), cross fleurée; H at center. Cf. Duplessy 1060bis; cf. Ciani 1346; Friedberg 378. In NGC slab, graded AU-55. An unlisted year in Friedberg for La Rochelle.

Born to Henri II and Catherine de’ Medici, Charles IX is best known for the deadly group of assassinations and the ensuing mob violence known as the Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy (St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre) which occurred near the end of his reign. Following the wedding of his sister to the Protestant Henri III de Navarre, a number of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots gathered in the overwhelmingly Catholic Paris. On the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle (23 September 1572), the targeted murders began, spreading throughout Paris and lasting for several weeks. The fallout was so great from the massacre that Charles himself was plagued by remorse and anger towards his mother, whom he felt to be responsible and the mastermind of the events, and succumbed, most likely to tuberculosis, in the spring of 1574.