I visited Chateau de Vincennes near Paris when I was on vacation, and one of the rooms was used as the treasury for when Charles V of France resided there. The information on the room said Charles kept something like 1/3 of all moveable royal wealth in that room.
Now with that said, I was struck by how utterly small this room was, probably the size of a small walk-in closet. Plus I figure that this room likely wasn't filled chest high a la Scrooge McDuck's money bin. So with that in mind, it puzzled me as to what the physical contents of the treasury were.
Can anyone shed some light on this subject? What was the physicality of the royal treasury? What items were in it?
You would not believe how small these things can get. In 1248, at the Battle of Parma, the Guelf Parmesans captured the entire treasuries of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily (which were both ruled by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen), as well as the crown jewels. These were evidently small enough to fit in one moderately sized cart. Salimbene Degli Adami, the Franciscan chronicler, records all of this and IIRC says that the majority of the treasury consisted of German coinage, precious stones, and a few reliquaries. Now, its important to emphasize that the stones and reliquaries would not actually be spent, rather, these kinds of non-currencies were usually put up as collateral for loans. In that manner they acted more as lines of credit than actual currency.
Theres also a funny anecdote about the capture of the Imperial crown jewels at Parma. Apparently an ordinary footsoldier nicknamed Short Step because of his diminutive stature managed to get his hands on the crown during the melee, and proceeded to wear it around Parma rather boastfully for a few days following the battle. Eventually, the city elders were forced to pay him 200 gold coins and a nice house on the river so that he would give them the crown back.
NOTES: Salimbene Degli Adami, Chronica, in Placid Herman, trans., XIIIth Century Chronicles, (Franciscan Herald Press, 1961).