Joseph Christian Franz von Hohenlohe-Bartenstein served as Prince-Bishop of Breslau from 1795 until his death in 1817, making this 1796 ducat one of the earliest struck under his authority. By this point Breslau's ecclesiastical mint was operating under Prussian sufferance — Frederick the Great had seized Silesia from Austria in 1742, and the Bishopric's coinage rights survived the conquest largely intact but increasingly as ceremonial prerogative rather than practical monetary policy.
The ducat's 1796 date places it in the same year as Napoleon's Italian campaign, when gold was being hoarded across Central Europe.
Joseph Christian Franz von Hohenlohe-Bartenstein served as Prince-Bishop of Breslau from 1795 until his death in 1817, making this 1796 ducat one of the earliest struck under his authority. By this point Breslau's ecclesiastical mint was operating under Prussian sufferance — Frederick the Great had seized Silesia from Austria in 1742, and the Bishopric's coinage rights survived the conquest largely intact but increasingly as ceremonial prerogative rather than practical monetary policy.
The ducat's 1796 date places it in the same year as Napoleon's Italian campaign, when gold was being hoarded across Central Europe.