½ Thaler - Albrecht von Wallenstein

Wallenstein received the Duchy of Sagan in 1627 as partial compensation from Emperor Ferdinand II, who lacked the cash to pay his most effective general by any other means. The arrangement was politically awkward — Sagan was carved out of Silesian holdings and handed to a Bohemian Catholic commander deeply resented by the local Protestant nobility. Coinage from this brief lordship, struck across just a few years before Wallenstein's dismissal in 1630, functioned partly as a deliberate assertion of territorial authority over a population that had not asked for him.

His first dismissal came the year after this piece was struck. The assassination at Eger followed in 1634.