Carlo Ludovico di Borbone ruled Lucca as a dependency of the Napoleonic settlement, his authority ultimately guaranteed by Vienna rather than any local mandate. By 1837, the duchy's days were numbered — the Treaty of Florence had already stipulated that Lucca would revert to Tuscany upon the death of the last Bourbon-Parma claimant, which duly occurred in 1847. This coin was struck less than a decade before that absorption.
The .666 fineness places it within the debased silver standard that plagued many of the smaller Italian states, a compromise that kept coinage viable without draining already thin treasury reserves.
Carlo Ludovico di Borbone ruled Lucca as a dependency of the Napoleonic settlement, his authority ultimately guaranteed by Vienna rather than any local mandate. By 1837, the duchy's days were numbered — the Treaty of Florence had already stipulated that Lucca would revert to Tuscany upon the death of the last Bourbon-Parma claimant, which duly occurred in 1847. This coin was struck less than a decade before that absorption.
The .666 fineness places it within the debased silver standard that plagued many of the smaller Italian states, a compromise that kept coinage viable without draining already thin treasury reserves.