Variously translated as "Old Sequins and Armor" and "Antique Gold and Ancient Armor", the piano suite Vieux séquins et vieilles cuirasses is one of a series that Satie composed from 1912 - 1915. The "sequin" in question was a Venetian gold coin in use from the end of the thirteenth century until the fall of the Venetian Republic under Napoleon, 500 years later. Satie satirizes those dealing either in precious metals or the military both in this suite's music and in commentaries printed among the staves.

The first piece is "Chez le Marchand d'or (Venise, XIIIe Siècle)" (At the Gold Merchant's) [Venice, thirteenth Century]. With a sighing figure, Satie slowly builds to a quote from the "Song of the Golden Calf" from Gounod's opera Faust. The patterns alternate between modal, whole-tone, and chromatic writing, as the merchant continues to goes wild over his merchandise.

The second piece is the "Danse cuirassée (Période grecque)", variously translated as the "Armored dance" and "Armor-plated dance". This piece makes continuous variations on a famous bugle tune, "Aux champs (en marchant)." The tempo is marked "Pas noble et militaire" (Noble and military step). The bugle melody uses only the pitches of a G-major chord, but it is subjected to interesting chromatic harmonies in the lower voices. Satie humorously imagines the dance "in two rows": "The first row does not move" (the lower harmonization produces low chords in semi-ponderous open fifths). "The second row is motionless" (the lower line moves more melodically in thirds). On the slowly diminishing coda, Satie adds the image, "Each of the dancers receives a sabre blow that cuts off his head"—a sort of nothing-war, where everybody just dies and gets it over with.

In the third and last piece, "La Défaite des Cimbres (Cauchemar)" (The Defeat of the Cimbri [Nightmare]), Satie combines several historical battles and commanders; they merge in the surreal nightmare of a young boy who has been given "a kind of strange, short course in General History" drawn from the vague memories of his aged grandfather. Satie quotes two tunes that are not only respectively associated with commanders Dagobert and John Churchill, but also by way of Satie's commentaries with Boïorix and Marius. A mention of "Les Dragons de Villars" refers to Aimé Maillart's operetta, but there is no musical quote—just an eerie ascending passage with a chromatic bass and white-keyed triplets. This is a mirror to an descending triplet passage earlier in the piece with the notation "Pluie de javelots" (Rain of javelins). The skipping and smooth triplet rhythms throughout the piece are like those of hunting calls and martial drum rhythms.

There is a final cryptic notation that appears at the head of the tuneful coda, marked "Grandiose". The text refers to "Le Sacre de Charles X (267 bis)" (The coronation of Charles X [No. 267a]). Musicologist Alan Gillmor suggests that this is the "reactionary, ultraroyalist Comte d"Artois, crowned King of France as Charles X in 1825 ... the musical reference to the dissolute and by most accounts intellectually rather undernourished monarch takes on a deliciously satirical overtone in the context of the song's ["Le bon roi Dagobert"] opening verse: ' The good king Dagobert had his pants on inside out, The great Saint Eloi said to him: O my king, Your majesty is badly trousered. It's true, replied the king, I'm going to put them on again right side out'."

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