4 Pfennig - Charles I

Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was drawn into the Seven Years' War almost by default — the duchy sat squarely in the path of French and Prussian maneuvering across northern Germany, and Charles I had aligned himself with Britain and Prussia through the Convention of Westminster. Small billon issues like this one flooded local circulation during 1760–61 precisely because wartime disruption to trade made larger silver increasingly hoarded. The extremely low silver content reflects deliberate debasement under fiscal stress, a practice widespread among the smaller German states during this conflict.