1 Sesino - Francesco I Sforza

Francesco I Sforza seized Milan in 1450 after a prolonged siege, ending the short-lived Ambrosian Republic and founding the Sforza dynasty. The sesino was a fractional denomination essential to everyday Lombard commerce — the currency of markets, not courts — and Francesco's decision to place his name on even this minor silver carried deliberate political weight for a man whose claim rested on military force rather than dynastic right. His condottiere past made legitimacy through coinage particularly urgent.

MIR MI#182 covers a four-year emission window during which the new regime was still consolidating its monetary administration from the Visconti-era mint infrastructure it had inherited.