Struck: Paris, 1817.
Description: white metal medal, 41 mm, obverse the bust of Louis XVIII with Latin titles.
Condition: attractive but with wear including several scuffs and bumps, notably to highlights, some die or strike errors (possibly due to the alloy).

“Rex Christianissimus” issue of the Freycinet voyage medal

A rather damaged but very curious survivor: a rare example of the medal struck to commemorate the departure of the Freycinet expedition from France in 1817 with a most unusual variant of the obverse, featuring a similar but less flattering bust of Louis XVIII, with the accompanying legend in Latin not French.

The medal includes on the reverse the long description of the voyage signed Puymaurin, which is identical with other examples of the Uranie medal: it describes the scientific ambitions of the expedition, as well as mentioning the two senior French Naval officers of the era, Louis-Antoine d’Artois de Bourbon, Duc d’Angoulême, then Amiral de France, and the Vicomte du Bouchage, Ministre de la Marine.

The interest of the present example is on the obverse of the medal showing the bust of Louis XVIII, with the legend in Latin and signed in rather small letters “Andrieu F.” (for fecit) unlike most known examples of the medal which have a legend in French. The Latin refers to Louis as “Rex Christianissimus” (most Christian King) rather than “Roi de France et de Navarre.”

Indeed, despite a great deal of interest in the Uranie Medal, it has been little noticed that there are two issues of the Roi de France issue, that by Gayrard/Puymaurin and a second by Andrieu. This is therefore a third issue, and is rare enough that it might be a trial or in some sense unused version of the medal: why the variant was struck and why the design was not widely used remains unknown. Was it a trial strike? A later re-issue? It is intriguing that Andrieu and Puymaurin would soon team up for the next voyage medal struck in France, that of Duperrey in 1822.

At least one other example (in bronze) of what might be called the Rex Christianissimus issue was listed in the famous nineteenth-century Welzl von Wellenheim collection.

References: Catalogue de la Grande Collection... de Mr. Léopold Welzl de Wellenheim... Volume II. Tome I (Vienna, 1844), no. 1111; Peter Lane, ‘For Natives of New Found Lands: the Exploration Medal’, Journal of the Numismatic Association of Australia, vol. 17, p. 83.