Episode 3 of 4

1853 Imperial Inscription Change

When: 1853
Where: France
Part of: France issues its first postage stamps, the Ceres series

After the proclamation of the Second Empire in 1853, the stamp inscription changed to 'EMPIRE FRANC' with Napoleon III's head.

In 1853, following the proclamation of the Second Empire, the stamp inscription was changed to 'EMPIRE FRANC'. The design retained the head of Napoleon III in the medallion, marking the shift from the republican to the imperial era in postal history.

Sources

Postage stamps and postal history of France Wikipedia, revision of 2026-01-08

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.