2 Kreuzer

Augsburg's output during these years falls squarely within the Thirty Years' War, a conflict that devastated the city's economy and population — the city changed hands between Catholic Imperial and Swedish Protestant forces, and by the war's end had lost roughly a third of its inhabitants to plague, famine, and violence. Municipal coinages like this one continued partly from civic necessity and partly to assert a degree of autonomy that was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain under Imperial pressure.