20 Ducats - Charles Albert

The 20-ducat denomination was essentially a presentation piece — struck not for commerce but for diplomatic gift-giving and court ceremony, a practice the Wittelsbachs maintained with particular enthusiasm throughout the eighteenth century. Charles Albert was at this moment consumed by his ultimately ruinous bid for the Imperial crown, a campaign that would briefly make him Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII in 1742 before Austro-Hungarian forces occupied Munich and effectively ended Bavarian ambitions. Coins of this weight and fineness were currency of a different kind: tools of alliance-building at a court perpetually short of the military resources to back its political pretensions.

The Fr#227a designation distinguishes this from the more common single-strike 20-ducat issues of the same year.