Mantua fell to Austrian forces in July 1799 after a French garrison held out for months under siege — this piece is among the emergency coinages struck inside the city during that blockade, when normal supply lines were severed and conventional minting materials were unavailable. Billon was the practical compromise, alloyed down from whatever silver could be sourced under those conditions.
The Cisalpine Republic itself ceased to exist in its first form that same year, dissolved after the War of the Second Coalition reversed nearly all of Napoleon's Italian gains. Coins from this siege are among the few material artifacts of that republic's final, desperate months.
Mantua fell to Austrian forces in July 1799 after a French garrison held out for months under siege — this piece is among the emergency coinages struck inside the city during that blockade, when normal supply lines were severed and conventional minting materials were unavailable. Billon was the practical compromise, alloyed down from whatever silver could be sourced under those conditions.
The Cisalpine Republic itself ceased to exist in its first form that same year, dissolved after the War of the Second Coalition reversed nearly all of Napoleon's Italian gains. Coins from this siege are among the few material artifacts of that republic's final, desperate months.