10 Ducats - Louis XII

Louis XII of France seized Milan in 1499 after defeating Ludovico Sforza, whose flight to the Habsburgs left the duchy briefly uncontested. These large multiple-ducat gold pieces — struck across the thirteen years of French occupation — served the immediate political need of an occupying power asserting legitimacy over a wealthy northern Italian state, and their production was likely intermittent rather than systematic. The CNI V#1 reference places this as the primary citation type, but surviving examples are genuinely rare; few institutions hold more than one.

Louis lost Milan definitively in 1512 when the Holy League expelled French forces, ending this coinage abruptly.