1 Franc France Copper/Silver/Nickel

1902, France (3rd Republic). Silver 1 Franc “Sower” Coin.

Mint Year: 1902 Mint Place: Paris (A)  Designer: Louis Oscar Roty  Denomination: 1 Franc (“Sower”) 

Condition: Certified and graded by PCGS as MS-64! Material: Silver (.835) Diameter: 23mm  Weight: 5gm

Obverse: Female togate personification of the French Republic (Francia) walking left and sowing seeds. Sun rising in backround. Designer´s signature (O.Roty) below. Legend: REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE . Reverse: Denomination (1 FRANC) above olive-wreath. Legend: LIBERTE . EGALITE . FRATERNITE (privy mark: cornucopia) 1902 (privy mark: torch)

The French Third Republic (French: La Troisième République, sometimes written as La IIIe République)   was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second   French Empire collapsed, to 1940, when it was replaced by the Vichy   France government after the French Third Republic’s defeat to Nazi   Germany in the early stages of World War II.

The early days of the Third Republic were dominated   by the Franco-Prussian War,   which the Republic continued to wage after   the fall of the Emperor.   Harsh reparations exacted by the Prussians   after the war resulted in the   loss of Alsace-Lorraine, social   upheaval, and the establishment of the Paris Commune.   Early   governments of the Third Republic considered re-establishing the     monarchy; however, confusion as to the nature of that monarchy, and who     among the various deposed royal families would be awarded the throne,     caused those talks to stall. Thus, the Third Republic, which was     originally intended to be a transitional government, instead became the     permanent government of France.

The French Constitutional Laws of 1875 gave the Third   Republic its shape and form, consisting of a Chamber of Deputies and a   Senate forming the legislature, and a President serving as the head of   state. Issues over the re-establishment of the   monarchy dominated the   Presidency of the first two Presidents, Adolphe Thiers and Patrice de   Mac-Mahon, though a series of republican presidents during the 1880s   ended any hope of a monarchy. The Third Republic established many French   colonial possessions as France acquired French Indochina, Madagascar,   French Polynesia, and large territories in West Africa during the   Scramble for Africa, all acquired during the last two decades of the   19th century. The early years of the 20th century were dominated by the   Democratic Republican Alliance, which was originally conceived as a   centre-left political alliance, but which came to become the main   centre-right party over time. The period from the start of World War I   to the late 1930s featured sharply polarized politics, between the   Democratic Republican Alliance and the more Radical socialists. The   government fell during the early years of World War II, as the Germans   occupied France and was replaced by the Vichy government of Philippe   Pétain.

Maurice Larkin (2002) argued that political France of   the Third Republic was sharply   polarized. On the left marched   democratic France, heir to the French Revolution and fully assured of   the power of reason and knowledge to create a   better future for all   Frenchmen and all mankind. On the right stood   conservative France,   rooted in the peasantry, the Church and the army,   and skeptical about   “progress” unless guided by traditional elites. Adolphe Thiers called   republicanism in the 1870s “the form of government that divides     France least”. The Third Republic endured seventy years, making it the     longest lasting government in France since the collapse of the Ancien Régime in 1789.