3 Scudi - Ercole III

Ercole III d'Este was the last reigning Duke of Modena, and this coin was struck just over a decade before Austrian forces and then Napoleon dismantled the Este dynasty entirely. The 1782 dating places it in a window of relative stability before the upheavals of the 1790s — the French invaded in 1796 and Ercole fled, dying in exile in Treviso in 1803 with no male heir to inherit a duchy that no longer existed.

The MIR 857 attribution reflects limited die variety documentation for this type; C#19.1 acknowledges only a single primary variety for the date.