1 Taler

Ulm's civic coinage in the 1540s was struck under the shadow of the Schmalkaldic War, the armed conflict between Charles V and the Protestant princes of the Schmalkaldic League — of which Ulm was a member. The city capitulated to Charles in January 1547, among the first of the imperial cities to do so, and was forced to pay a substantial indemnity and surrender its autonomous governance. Coinage from precisely this window documents a free imperial city in the last years of that freedom.