2 1/2 Baiocchi - Pius VI

Fermo's copper coinage of 1796–97 exists entirely because of Napoleon. As French forces swept through the Papal States in the spring of 1796, the disruption to Rome's central mint operations forced peripheral papal cities to strike emergency issues under local authority. Fermo, an Adriatic coastal town with its own mint rights, produced this denomination in three documented die varieties — reflected in the KM#2.1 through 2.3 distinctions — across a production window that closed when French occupation rendered further papal civic coinage moot.

The Papal States ceded Fermo to France in the Treaty of Tolentino, February 1797.