Agincourt, Orléans, Austerlitz, Waterloo. These are the names that spring to mind as one considers the great sweep of European history that is about to culminate in a final conflict: for mastery of a pan-European currency, the euro.
The battle has already begun. And some observers believe that only one of the major European financial centres London, Paris and Frankfurt will emerge victorious.
Others are less bloodthirsty. They foresee a Europe in which various financial centres cooperate to serve a stable trading area as large as the Americas and Asia, backed by a currency as powerful as the dollar, more powerful than the yen.
But that's a long way off, and tribalism and nationalism are hardly dead.
Last month the chevaliers of the Marché à Terme International de France (Matif) unveiled their plan to make Paris the "benchmark market" for the new currency when it is born on January 1 1999. There were no great surprises: a drive to perfect French franc interest rate futures contracts all along the yield curve, so that they will have a critical liquidity when the franc is exchanged for the euro.