1 Thaler - Charles VI Hall

Charles VI issued this thaler from the Hall mint in Tirol during the immediate aftermath of the War of the Spanish Succession, a conflict he had spent over a decade fighting under the belief that the entire Habsburg inheritance — Spain included — was rightfully his. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713 forced him to relinquish that claim, leaving him with the Austrian lands, the Netherlands, and the Italian territories, but not the Spanish throne he had styled himself around since 1703. These early Viennese-period thalers coincide almost exactly with that bitter diplomatic settlement.

The Hall mint had been striking silver from Tirolean mountain sources since the 15th century — it was, in many ways, the original industrial-scale silver mint of the Habsburg domains.