1 Ducat - Immobilization in the name of Charles V

Besançon held a peculiar constitutional position — technically a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, yet geographically embedded within the Franche-Comté, a Spanish Habsburg possession. This created the legal fiction that sustained the city's coinage: long after Charles V had died in 1558, Besançon continued striking gold in his name, a practice known as immobilization. It was a deliberate political maneuver, preserving the city's minting rights under an imperial charter while avoiding the need to navigate the competing claims of Spanish and Austrian branches of the Habsburgs.

The practice ran for decades after his death, with this issue dated to the 1641–1656 window. By then, the Franche-Comté itself was increasingly contested, eventually ceding to France by the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678.