1 Teston - Peter Berard

Desana was among the smallest feudal lordships in Piedmont, a pocket territory that somehow retained its autonomy amid the relentless Habsburg-Valois wars that consumed northern Italy during precisely these years. Peter Berard — Pietro Berardo — held the county during a period when French and Imperial armies were effectively dismantling the political map around him. That a teston was struck at all under such a minor lord speaks to the prestige value of the denomination itself, which had spread rapidly through the Italian states after its introduction in Milan in the 1470s.