2 Baiocchi With mintmark

The Roman Republic of 1798–1799 was a French-client state born from Napoleon's Italian campaigns, replacing papal temporal authority after Pius VI was taken prisoner and eventually died in French captivity at Valence. This copper issue belongs to a currency reform that explicitly abolished the old papal monetary system — the baiocco itself was retained as a unit, but reauthorized under republican auspices, a pointed act of symbolic repudiation. The republic lasted barely seventeen months before Neapolitan and later Austrian forces restored papal rule.

The mintmark variants catalogued across Munt#89/91–95 and Pag#33–35 reflect production across a compressed and chaotic window, making die-matched pairs genuinely difficult to assemble.