Regensburg's status as seat of the Perpetual Diet — the permanently convened imperial assembly that sat from 1663 until Napoleon dissolved it in 1806 — gave the city both the prestige and the legal authority to strike its own coinage well into the eighteenth century. This thaler was issued in the year the Seven Years' War neared its close, with Francis I still nominally presiding over an empire whose finances had been severely strained by Austrian participation in that conflict. The Dav GT II variety designation 2618c places it within a tightly documented sequence of Regensburg thalers distinguished by subtle die differences in the city's arms and the imperial titulature.
Regensburg's status as seat of the Perpetual Diet — the permanently convened imperial assembly that sat from 1663 until Napoleon dissolved it in 1806 — gave the city both the prestige and the legal authority to strike its own coinage well into the eighteenth century. This thaler was issued in the year the Seven Years' War neared its close, with Francis I still nominally presiding over an empire whose finances had been severely strained by Austrian participation in that conflict. The Dav GT II variety designation 2618c places it within a tightly documented sequence of Regensburg thalers distinguished by subtle die differences in the city's arms and the imperial titulature.