1/2 Thaler - Charles Eugen

Charles Eugene assumed the Württemberg dukedom in 1744 at age sixteen, and the early coinage of his reign was produced under the financial supervision of a regency council still wary of handing full fiscal authority to an adolescent. He would later become notorious for his extravagant court spending — modeled self-consciously on Versailles — which eventually forced the Estates into open constitutional conflict with him in the 1760s. The half thaler issues of his first regnal years are consequently among the more carefully administered of his entire output.