his palace. He was portrayed on a French banknote, the designed at the end of the Third Republic, in use under Vichy France and until June 1945. Streets and squares named after Jacques Cœur exist in numerous French towns and cities, including Bourges, Montpellier, and Paris. Bourges honored its native son in multiple instances, e.g. the (Cœur High School) and the Théâtre Jacques Cœur (Cœur Theater). In Montpellier, Jacques Cœur is associated with the development of the local port of Lattes. Several projects were named after him in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as the city expanded towards the sea along the river Lez. These include a marketplace in the Antigone neighborhood along the Lez; an artificial lake, the Bassin Jacques Cœur in the city's new district; and a theater in Lattes. The is a scenic route that links together a number of sights and castles near Bourges, many of which however have no historical associations with Jacques Cœur. Assessment In a 1997 biography, French historian revises the established view in French historiography, according to which Jacques Coeur exhibited outstanding skills and success as a merchant. He notes that there is no evidence that Cœur's ventures, e.g. in mining near Lyon, were particularly profitable, and that the fleet he established for Levantine commerce was modest in size (never more than four galleys) compared with those of prominent Italian or Catalan merchants. Instead, Heers suggests that Cœur's success was overwhelmingly due to his position at the royal court, and that his riches came from leveraging his privileged access to state resources. Thus, Heers implies that, rather than a brilliant merchant, Cœur is best viewed as a skilled technocrat and a predecessor to the likes of Nicolas Fouquet or Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Cultural references François Villon, in his poem Épitaphe, refers to Cœur's fabled wealth: De pauvreté me guermantant, Souventes fois me dit le cœur : "Homme, ne te doulouse tant Et ne démène tel douleur: Si tu n'as tant qu'eut Jacques Cœur, Mieux vaux vivre sous gros bureau Pauvre, qu'avoir été seigneur Et pourrir sous riche tombeau." To ease my poverty, my heart sometimes says to me: "Don't fret so and go crazy with pain: If you haven't as much as Jacques Cœur, it's better to live in your coarse burrel, poor, than to have been lord and rot in your rich tomb." Jacques Cœur appears in Fulcanelli's Mystère des