The fakes were nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. The paper and watermarks were perfectly replicated, and the signatures—done with facsimiles—even looked better than on genuine rubles, since in Russia they were still hand-applied to every note. But Napoleon's skilled forgers were undone by Cyrillic: the Parisian craftsmen, unfamiliar with Russian, made spelling errors.

On early batches, "хоДячею монетой" (circulating currency) and "госуДарственная ассигнация" (state assignat) came out as "хоЛячею" or "госуЛарственная." Napoleon's secret services printed masses of these before spotting the mistake. Once corrected, though, it became extremely hard to tell the Paris "rubles" from authentic ones with the naked eye.

Paris counterfeited all denominations but focused on 25-ruble notes—the most common large bills. Ahead of the 1812 invasion, over 20 million fakes were shipped to Warsaw, with some entering circulation via local banker Samuel Frankel, who had extensive contacts and accounts in Russia. On Napoleon's orders, distribution was handled by Bernard Maret, then France's foreign minister.

During the Russian campaign, fake rubles were issued to Napoleon's soldiers for personal expenses. To Napoleon's surprise, only a few million entered market circulation on occupied territory—far short of plans—since, unlike ordinary Western Europeans, Russians weren't eager to trade with occupiers.

Only during the retreat did the French start handing out fakes en masse. Merchant Pyotr Nakhodkin, appointed "city head" by occupiers during the taking of Moscow, received 100,000 counterfeit rubles. Even more circulated in 1813-14, when Russian forces operated abroad, where note authenticity couldn't be checked. So upon our troops' return from France, a special operation was launched: by special order, all servicemen had to surrender large-denomination paper rubles for inspection. Bank specialists from Moscow and St. Petersburg were sent to each Russian corps headquarters. One-fifth of the notes turned out fake.

"Napoleonki"—as the folk dubbed these counterfeit rubles—circulated for years thanks to their high quality. Russian bankers meticulously tallied that from 1813-19, fakes worth 5,614,380 rubles were detected. In 1820, during the exchange of paper money for new-issue notes, another 6,794,520 rubles in "Napoleonki" were identified.

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