500 Francs - Old type

This note predates the Banque de France itself — it was issued under the Caisse des Comptes Courants, one of several private Parisian clearing banks operating in the final years of the Directoire, before Napoleon's consolidation of French banking in 1800. The involvement of Charles Percier and Firmin Didot places it at an interesting intersection: Percier was already developing the neoclassical vocabulary he would later deploy across Napoleonic interiors, while Didot was reshaping French typography. Andrieu, the engraver, was simultaneously working on coinage dies for the Consulat.

The 12,175,000 printed represents a substantial run for the period, issued into an economy still raw from the assignat collapse of the mid-1790s.